Millennial – AIM For Your FIRE

This morning when I woke up, I didn’t think there would be any more surprises this October. I check my phone to see where the market is pre-market and I remembered that there were some earnings reports being released today. Come to find out that one of the stocks that I’ve been holding onto has increased their dividend by over 10%! They had a very good quarter based on their earnings report and they were able to raise the dividend because of it.

$ABBV is the company that I’m so fond of as of this moment. They already had a great yield of over 5.5% and now with this dividend increase from $1.18 to $1.30, their yield is almost reaching 6.5%! Their payout ratio is still between 40-60% which means their growing dividend is safe in my opinion.

They were able to raise their dividend because of their other financial metrics highlighted in the earnings report. Their revenue has increase 52.1% from last year which was higher than expected. Their earnings per share (EPS) was $0.06 higher than expected as well. With $ABBV being a health care company that deals with pharmaceuticals, it’s no wonder why they’ve done so well during the pandemic.

With the current political landscape, they have no reason to be doing badly for the upcoming years. Although, if we had a candidate who was fighting for a universal healthcare system, drug prices would be lowered and companies like $ABBV would suffer from it. But I think we’re a long ways away from that and until that day comes, my portfolio will just keeping reaping the rewards that they give me.

I just wanted to share my thoughts about this morning and the surprise I found for my portfolio! As always, thank you so much for reading the blog and I’ll catch you on the next one!

Marcus

Hi everyone, welcome to AIM for your FIRE! My name is Marcus and it’s about time that I give this blog thing a shot and make this essentially a journal for my wife and I and our journey towards Financial Independence. I just want to give a quick background behind my wife and I and where we are currently in our financial journey. I’m not doing this to brag or to boast, I’m doing it so if you’re reading this, you can understand how a very average couple can build wealth and to prove to everyone that you don’t need a six figure income to achieve early retirement.

I am 27 and my wife is 25. We both graduated from Boise State University in 2017, I obtained my B.B.A. in Marketing and my wife got her B.S. in Criminal Justice. We live in Boise, Idaho and we recently just bought our first house in March. The big thing that we have going for us is that through all that we have been through already, we don’t have any outstanding debt… except for our mortgage of course. Our combined income is nothing spectacular at $81,000. We are very frugal and love our lifestyle! We like to refer to ourselves as AIMs (Average Income Millennials)

We have a few different investment accounts that we currently contribute to every month. I am maxing out my Roth IRA and have been doing this since I opened my account two years ago. My wife just got her Roth IRA set up as well and she is currently maxing out her’s as well. We also have a separate investment account that focuses on dividend growth investments that we contribute to every month so we can grow it to an amount that will help us retire before we get to our 60s.

Our big goal that we’re always working towards is achieving FIRE. Many of you already know what financial independence is, but for those of you who don’t, I’ll tell you what this phrase means.

FIRE, Financial Independence Retiring Early, is a phrase that has come up more and more over the past two decades. It essentially means that you have the freedom to live off your assets/investments and that you don’t have to work to make ends meet in order to cover your expenses. This is a goal that many strive to achieve because no one wants to work until they’re in their 60s unless they really enjoy what they do for work. It’s very attractive to many people in the Millennial generation because they want that freedom and to not be tied to work their entire lives.

Although a lot of my time is tied up in my work and my hobbies like playing pickleball and researching dividend stocks to find my next income stream, I really want to start this blog to document our financial journey and to help anyone else who is looking for additional information on where to start with their finances as well.

In this blog, I’ll be talking mostly about how to achieve FIRE and specifically how to do it with just an average income. It is absolutely doable, all you need is a plan and stick to it. There are going to be many tips and tricks that I will dive deep on to help everyone who follows the blog. I’ll also go over certain dividend stocks and explain what I look for when I invest as well as what the key metrics are to understand which companies are better than others in this specific style of dividend investing.

I’m looking to post at least 3 times per week especially just starting out having never blogged before. Once I get a schedule going, I’ll most likely be posting every day, but I want to work up to that amount over time.

I just want to close out this first post by giving a disclaimer. I am not a licensed financial professional. You should do your own research and investing on your own terms. This blog is to document my thought process on investing and to give helpful hints and information to help you make a better financial decision on your own or seek out a professional for yourself. Past performances of all the stocks that I’ll be discussing are not guarantees of future results.

So now that we have that stupid jargon to help cover my own ass so no one sues me for anything, I finally just want to say how excited I am to get started on this new project and to share my knowledge with all of you! Once I get everything started and going more smoothly, I’ll set up something so we can build this community and have a dedicated home so I can bring everyone more content more often.

If you’ve gotten this far in the blog, I really appreciate you following along and admire your dedication to reading.

Thank you so much for following along and I’ll catch you on the next one!

Marcus