May is a one of the super-special months in the year. Why? Because it comes before June….one of the two biggest dividend months in the year 🙂 Other than that, May was a dull month. And I have missed my update for April 2017….I do remember writing it…but I guess I forgot to publish it…I found it in my Drafts folder. So, it is going to be a 2-month update for some categories!

Let us look at the numbers for May 2017.

Main Takeaways this month

• Passive Income Stream
  • Passive Income for May 2017 ($470.72) is appx 26% higher than May 2016 ($371.51).
  • I have stolen as much money I can from all my other goals to fund my passive income streams…especially from our home down payment fund. This has resulted in double digit year-over-year gains. But, next year, I will not see this kind of gains…I will enjoy them while they last hey!
• Additional Investments
  • International exposure
    • Just like prior months, I have continued to increase my exposure outside the US market. Dividend investors are not supposed to look at the stock price…but US stocks seem so overvalued that I just can’t bring myself to add to it.
    • On the other hand, I want my passive income streams to come from many countries all over the world to spread the risk of a single part of the world going through a bad phase. So, I added some more funds to my existing investments in Emerging markets (via VEIEX) and Euro-Pacific Developed Markets (via VTMGX).
• Build a tiny cash fund again
  • I am accumulating some money in a money market fund. I want to have a small cash fund accumulated to take advantage of any market dip(s) in the US market.
• Capture gains in my IRA/401K
  • Seeing the insane manner in which the US market stocks are going up, I can’t shake the feeling that we are at the top. I see all the signs of a big drop except the market is going up and up. It is tapering now and I feel that a major dip is quite near.
  • My IRA lost a lot of its value (total return) in the 2008 downturn and I had to wait almost 6 years for it to come back up. I was a financial fool at that time and did not even attempt any corrective actions….I could have moved to preserve some of my gains…but did not know any better.
  • For the upcoming downturn, I do not want to lose the gains in my IRA. So, I cashed out most of the gains accumulated in my IRA over the last few years and have parked them in cash inside my IRA. When the next dip happens, I will put them back to work. Until then, I am okay with losing 2-3% in dividends versus losing 10-20% of the stock price.