Quick quiet update in case some of you guys subscribe to my blogs.
Ok, this year is not as good as last year in terms of yields largely because of the problems in the shipping trusts I bought, but the capital gains are satisfactory so far.
So far my dividend income for 2010 was $25434.37 which was about 7% yields based on my current cash portfolio size. Capital gains have been ok judging from the nice run-up in January 2011.
2011 should be a better year yield-wise with great yielding new REITs IPOing. Hopefully, I would be able to hunt down a bunch of small-caps which yield above 8% to complement my REIT-heavy portfolio. Of course, if a REIT comes along with 8% yield and below 30% gearing, I will be all guns ablazing for 2011.
It's taken quite a while to get here, clearly $2,100 is barely enough to get along a month. I've got a daughter coming in April this year so expenses are bound to go up even though I have eliminated bulk of my personal spending.
Priorities for this year is :
a) Reining in my blood sugar levels ( 7.9 right now. Way better than my old HP-SGX days of over 10.1 ).
b) Preparing for the arrival of my daughter. Still can't figure out what the costs will be, but will channel some income to ensure that she gets a safe arrival.
c) Rapidly uncluttering all my belongings, first starting with all my RPGs and books and then moving all my assets into the cloud/hard-disk. By de-materializing all my needs, I can channel my finances towards my family.