Stocks and cheapness may not seem to go hand in hand. Often, the image of a cheapskate is one who socks dollar bills underneath a mattress. But, in my case, my nose was turned to the stock market about 10 years ago.

I think what happened was that I missed the boat on Netflix somewhere around 20 years ago. I remember talking to my dad about it at the time. It was back when Netflix sent movies to you one at a time. It was really the envelopes that did it for me. How ingenious! Sending the dvd in an envelope that morphed into the return envelope. But, back then, the stock market was still a little bit woo woo. It felt more like gambling. Imagine, this was when Amazon Prime was still something that ”wouldn’t last.”

I did know a lady though. Her words still echo in my brain. She said, ”if you invest in the stock market, you’ll be a very rich woman.” This was 25+ years ago. It stuck with me but it still seemed too risky.

In between now and then? I see the need for retirement and I see the cost of living has shot up in a way that leaves you breathless. It’s not about getting rich, it’s more about taking care of yourself to the best of your ability.

Before I began investing, I started watching YouTube and I learned about FIRE (Financially Independent Retire Early). I read more and became a convert. Maybe it is real. I began to think more about what I was doing with mine and my family’s money.

I’ve always been a saver, even since I was little, and I’d taken every birthday dollar of theirs and put it into a savings account, and then, as my financial knowledge progressed, into CD’s.When I realized that we were making literal peanuts in the CD’s, it propelled me into taking our savings out of the bank.

The entire endeavor was scary which is probably why I don’t remember the details, except a vision of me and my two kids in the car at what seemed a desolate time between dusk and darkness. We’d just left the bank, taken all of our life savings out and I wasn’t quite hyperventilating, but I was definitely stressed out. The bank tellers even somewhat gasped, asking me what I was going to do with the money and if I needed a loan.

They were appalled when I said I was going to put in the stock market.

Back then, driving into the fog, two kids in tow, I could have used some details. So, I’ve decided to go back to something that I was doing previously on this blog—chronical my dividend income with real amounts. I would have loved if someone had done this for me because learning about this online had a sort of ‘unreality’ to it that made me very doubtful and wary. I’ll include the current amounts of dividend income along with the number of stock I hold in each company.

Please remember, I am not an expert and so you can’t take this as advice. Additionally, I plan on talking about this on a later post, but there are some areas that I am planning on changing, so don’t take my information as the thing to do.

For perspective, this account is just around $200,000.

CSWC	388	$70.35
RITM	622	155.50
LTC	10	1.90
BGS	170	32.25
QQQI	24	15.11
SPHD	308	64.37
PSEC	337	15.17
O	296	79.81
STAG	35	13.93
MAIN	90	23.56
GPMT	77	3.85
ONL	7	.14
GBRG	50	.50
OBDC	32	11.84
TWO	101	34.34
IVR	11	1.32
UL	8	4.44
DIV	3	3.30
JEPI	348	144.18
KOHLS	10	1.25
TOTAL		$677.11