AWESOME!!!!!!!

Congrats! Just always make sure any retirement accounts get transferred from institution to institution through wire transfer or check made out to the next institution. NEVER have the money come into your hands when switching accounts. You'll get hit with taxes regardless of intent or how long it's in your hands.

Awesome! Welcome to the crew gearheads78!

Yea I made sure. One account will be a direct wire transfer the other will be a check sent from Vangaurd to Schawab.

Lance ---


I - once again - am not pitching any stocks… I don't care what people choose to buy.. I just use stocks to make a point -- or for 'teaching' -- which in this case is what I'm trying to do for you.

Go to Google Finance - or some other website and pull up a 3 year chart of Altria (MO)…

What I want you to see is that this is a BORING STOCK --- it's Terbacky and booze… People smoke and drink - it's a sin stock. I don't care about that - I just want to make a living off them…

What I want you to SEE is that in 2011 they paid you .38 a share PER QUARTER to own the shares -- at the time (beginning of 2011) the share price was $25…. Today the share price is $38.10 -- but more importantly - without your having to lift a single finger -- they are now paying .48 per share per quarter.

This is a BORING STOCK -- the grocery store clerk is not talking about how they made a gazillion dollars last year trading it. Your friends aren't talking about it. But if you'd have bought it in January 2011 -- and held it -- your TOTAL RETURN would be 83%

Oh sure -- the guy that was lucky enough to have bought Netflix at the low - would have 300% this year.. but what are the odds that you would have been so lucky? I'll take that rising cash flow -- and the increase in my capital -- and sleep real tight. There's a ton of stocks out there that have done this… this is just one that I own (I own 25,000 shares of it…) and is pretty "typical" of the style/type of investing that I'm talking about as a core holding. People are going to continue to drink and smoke… can't stop that. Might as well make some money off of 'em. :thumbsup:

Greg,

Just for giggles, I quickly looked back at Altria's 14 year history...and I'm seeing weird results. On yahoo finance, it shows the last split was April 97 3:1 and the share price at time after the split was somewhere around $40.00 (can't get the chart to zoom in for exact price on a date).

Google finance shows the share price was in the $10 range then in Feb 2003 where it jumped up to $37.62. I think the splits are screwed up on that chart.

The yahoo chart of Altria from 1997 to 2013 pretty much mimics my investing history of returns.

Lets say I had 1000 shares of Altria a $35-40 stock in 1997, it looks like MO paid anywhere from $1.00 to $3.00 a share per year during that 14 year period (more during the good times, much less during the bad times).

Two different ways to look at that period, if reinvesting or if taking the money to live off of.

If reinvesting, when it was paying $3.00 per share, you were buying back in at close to $80.00 a share, so you ended up with 37 more shares per year. In the $1.00 per year years, it looked to be about about the same, $1000 at $30 bought you 30 some shares a year. (all VERY rough numbers here mind you).

So for 14 years you added almost 500 shares...at todays $37 = about $18,000 return on $40,000 investment over 14 years... That's about 3% a year is it not? Please correct me if I'm wrong, I'm doing this very rough and very fast.

If you just took the dividend to live off of, in the beginning you made around $1200 a year, in the 2000s it went from $2000-3000 a year, then in 2008 the dividend shrunk back to around $1200 a year, today it would be back to $2000 a year. Figuring the ROI on this method is much more involved and I have to get to work so don't have time for it right now.

I'm not doing this to be pro or con Altria or anything else...this is just how I look at things. If any calculation I did here was wrong, please correct me. I'm not swearing any of it to be gospel as I did it very quickly (and I'm still not sure I trust the numbers as the two charts are very wonky against each other). Still pretty curious results to me though.

On one hand, 3% a year for that period ain't all that bad (if I figured it correctly). As a comparison I did a little over 4% over the same period with my total portfolio. (edit...that isn't an exact comparison as I cashed out in 2011 with a 4+ % ROI when MO was trading at around $26.00 per share) But still nowhere near the 10% a year that some like to use as a benchmark for market investing returns.

I know I know, figures lie and liars figure... ;) wish I had more time to spend on this exercise but I must get to work at my day job to earn my paycheck. You all are gaining on me, and drawing me back in...but maybe an exercise like this will at least help you understand why I still feel a bit tainted by the market. My time in the market was just real REAL bad timing in the grand scheme of things.

If someone corrects my findings above and shines a better light on MO, well...we'll just see. ;)

Altria (MO) split off Philip Morris (PM)… in 2008 When you take part of your company and split it off -- the value of the split off is shown in the stock price.


You REALLY need to get over all the analytics --- and learn what's important to making money and analysis never made anyone a dime. I'm really serious here .

What part of TOTAL RETURN don't you understand??

Just using Altria (MO) one year is 19% -- three year is 84% - five year is 240%


Do you really need any more analysis than doubling your money in THREE years or understanding a 240% total return in five??

Lance -- While you're busy calculating why you SHOULD NOT be investing -- I'll be out spending the $12,000 dividend check from MO I get in January.

Well that explains part of the huge share price drop in 2008





Hey, you are the one that told me to look at the charts, I just chose a different time period than you did is all. ;)

That's true -- I accept full responsibility!


Really though -- you're still doing a lot of "thinking" and detailed accounting… and it's not that complicated… only if you make it that way. What I'm trying to show you is really how SIMPLE it is if you just stick to basics… in other words - did your capital grow and are you getting paid to hold/own the shares. THAT combo needs to have a TOTAL RETURN component --- and all the rest is just plain mumbo jumbo.