The Next Phase, Recent Buy, & Asset Assessment January 2016

Hey everyone, I hope the New Year has been treating you well. I know we are only about a month into it but oh my do I ever feel as though the priorities of my life changed so much. I will always make Financial Independence one of my main focuses, but I’ve been thinking about this for a while now and I have decided to make real estate and home ownership another big priority.

I understand that whatever decision I make there will always be a compromise, and I finally decided that I want to own my own home so bad that I would delay the growth of my dividend income if that meant I could build my own home and stay mainly debt free in the process which I hope to have accomplished in 2 maybe 3 years.

Why?

I was speaking with my land lord about a month ago and he told me he was thinking of selling his home, and reality bit me hard especially because I worked so hard building a skateboard park inside the shop that was included with the house I am renting. I got firsthand experience of one the biggest disadvantages of renting a home, the lack of control.

So after that sobering moment I started to think…a lot. Aright so I have job security in the area. Within a 40 miles radius of each other there are 3 different health centers I could work at incase I need additional income above what I am making when I decide quit the rat race. Don’t get me wrong, I love the town, people, scenery, and culture but I do need to stress that for my goal of achieving early retirement the ability to generate money is always going to be a consideration for me, and this area just makes sense on top of everything else. In addition I know owning a house with no mortgage will always give me a huge leap closer to financial freedom, as we all know the many added benefits of owning your home.

Phase 1: LAND

So if I plan to build a house I will need a lot to build on. Sometime next week I intend on going to the MD of the county and meet up with a planner. Together we will go over all the residential lots available and I want to see where I could build a home where I could get the biggest bang for your buck. Reason being I intend on spending no more than 20k. Once I have roughly 20k saved up in cash I’ll use the fact that I will pay in cash as a means of increasing my leverage in terms of haggling. Not to mention this will make a great way to use my tax return for 2015. So in order for me to get started with my home ownership goals of 2016, I need to start saving my capital for this purchase ASAP.

Recent Buy:

With the 2016 TFSA contribution and preexisting cash in my TFSA, I invested into more HR.UN. I bought 296 shares at $18.83 for a total cost of $5580.63. During the time I purchased this REIT they had a yield of 7.2% with a payout ratio of 72% and a five year dividend growth rate of 15%. Well even though I bought after the ex-dividend date it still feels good to have this dividend power house in my portfolio at such a great price.

Asset Assessment: