Over the past couple of years, I’ve been shifting a big chunk of my equity positions into dividend equities and a little bit of bonds. By far the lions share of it sits in SCHD, but I have a handful of other positions. The next biggest is in JEPI.
I had a strange thing occur in my brokerage account that hasn’t happened to me before with one of the others. I had a relatively small chunk in EEMD, which was an emerging market equal weight dividend fund. It had been churning out 8%+ dividends. My position was liquidated yesterday, and it appears maybe it just closed shop. However, I see no news about this anywhere.
I didn’t lose the money of course. It’s just cash in my account now.
I’ve notched up to another $100k increment in my stash, I’m not ready to go full Klaymen but I’m getting close to the point where I’m going to NGAF about things.
Even notching up the first $100K increment is an achievement -
In 2022, about 46% of households reported any savings in retirement accounts. Twenty-six percent had saved more than $100,000, and 9% had more than $500,000.
Even taking age into consideration it was still pretty low. The % of 50-54 over 100K was 35%, 55-59 36% and 60-64 36%.
My first job out of college was pricing and product development in the retirement planning space. As part of that role, I had access to things like account balances. I also worked on annuity quotes for people who were retiring. Our largest client was the National Education Association, and it was always depressing to see that not many teachers saved what I’d consider enough.
Good news. The turn to retirement was rather sudden for me but was a couple years in the planning. 2023 caught me by surprise when stocks did well and I gained some inheritance to hit my $1.5M goal. By the end of 2024Q1 when I left I was already $132K above my goal. And now…
You have to admit Trump’s timing was perfect. He lowered income taxes set to expire at the end of 2025, so now he has the perfect mechanism to lower taxes again in 2026 (I’m opposed).
The investment stash has gone from about 1.2 to 1.5 this year with about .1 in new money before a promotion that has not yet been realized as most of it is long term comp. I can’t expect a good market return every year, but the new money could more than double in the coming years. NGAF is not far off @ +.3 a year. 3M xhouse before 50 is looking possible.
No, the U.S. can’t afford tax cuts while it’s running a 6-8% deficit (% of GDP) and no plans to meaningfully cut spending, but the stock market doesn’t care because the next Congress will spend even more lavishly and the Fed will keep bankrolling it to keep the dance party going.
And as long as people are dancing, you gotta dance.
Expect a new QE move at some point - not to save the economy (though that will be the claim), but because it’s needed to fund the national debt once buyers suddenly get cold feet over only getting 4-5% yields. Jeffrey Gundlach had a great commentary weeks back about this.
When George W Bush was President at one point there was a budget surplus or something, and he gave a speech saying it was the “people’s money” and he was going to return it to them. No thought was given to paying down the “people’s debt”.
Whether we can AFFORD tax cuts usually isn’t the issue, sadly. I’m waiting to see who is willing to publicly step up and do something about this (Powell doesn’t count).
The Republicans have never once been fiscally responsible. That they have somehow managed to convince people that they are is one of the great cons pulled off against the American people.
