How to – Evaluating Dividend Paying Stocks

Good morning,

Looking out the window today, everything around is covered in fog, visibility is down to almost nothing. Leaning back, sipping on my coffee and starting to read a bit. After a while, the fog is starting to lift, and bit by bit, things take on a clear outline.

The same can be said about the decision to invest. Initially, everything is covered in fog and it is hard to find your way around it. Don’t despair, just pick a starting point and keep at it. The fog will begin to lift!

Finding listings of dividend paying stocks assembled by someone else and sent through the elusive analysis machine already, look great, hold great promise. Yet, when it comes down to it, does the evaluation performed make sense for your goals? Is the applied logic consistent and applicable? Why did this party apply the factors and benchmarks they did?
All good, rather great, questions! Questions that need answers for you to make up your own mind whether the compiled information at hand has any merit for yourself.

In my self-education endeavors, mostly on ‘Seeking Alpha’ (great resource site!), I ran across the below article (in a series). While for me personally, some of the stock choices and their respective slotting in the ranking does not make sense for my investment strategy, I found the approach employed to develop the ranking quite interesting. And most definitely a worth while exercise for anyone learning how to evaluate stocks on their own!

Dividend Growth All Stars – Parsimony Investment Research http://seekingalpha.com/article/2238113-dividend-growth-all-stars-20-dividend-stocks-that-will-help-you-grow-your-income-part-2?ifp=0

Change yourself – Part of SoCS

I would certainly subscribe to Irene’s points about attitude and how everyone chooses their perspective every single day, consciously or unconsciously. And the ongoing challenge is to make each choice a conscious one!

IreneDesign2011

The view seen from my new house

I have met some souls in my life, who are really sucking out all my energy. By trying to find the background for this behavior I found out, that they are often self-focused souls, who have some problems about seeing other souls as equal living being. When I have been in their company for some hours, I feel so tired and exhausted like I did work hard in 12 hours.

I found out, that they often have a negative attitude and everything as are going on, always can be linked to other people. Not very often to themselves. They live in their own little world and have troubles about seeing much longer than to their tip of the nose.

The only way to change this way of living is to change their attituces from negative to positive, which is a big challenge to…

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Creative – next level

Creative – next level

Wow, how creative is this?

Social Media – What does it mean to you?

Big term, popular term, buzzword, lots of meanings depending on context or source….. what does it mean to you?

I’ll try to define what it means to me – today, right now: using offline and online tools to timely reach and motivate engagement in a local community context.

Real world example: a local family lost their home unexpectedly to fire earlier this week; actual cause still unknown. There is nothing left but rubble where the home used to be. The family has two small kids in elementary school, the younger of the two turning 7 years old tomorrow!

Resulting engagement in local community:

within less than 3 days of event, private citizens, school district, PTA and local support organizations coming together to not allow this unfortunate event to overshadow a little boy’s big day!

Immigration into the US – Citizenship

Always a topic at the top of the list for every permanent resident and visa holder in this country.

Is it a good idea, is it feasible, does it make sense for me, and how to best go about it? The answers to any of those questions are both subjective and very personal. Philosophically, assimilation and integration into a chosen culture would and should culminate in citizenship. Not only does it mean a person chooses to maintain his or her center of life in the country, participate in daily life and contribute to society and local communities, such a decision also has a very real implication on one’s own understanding of heritage and roots.

Allow me to elaborate; adopting citizenship usually means giving up (voluntarily by decision) or invariably losing (involuntarily forced) one’s birth citizenship. That’s a very hard decision and realization to arrive at, personally. It is more than just changing the color of one’s passport, being able to participate in official elections somewhere else; citizenship in all its meaning is a very integral part of one’s being, it is very emotional and deeply rooted in one’s understanding of the world.

Aside from the “just do it” mentality of administratively embarking on this process, I have personally struggled with this decision for quite a while. I love both sides of the Atlantic, both contribute something to my life and outlook that I do not want to miss or have to go without. It is traditions, mentalities and perspectives that I value as each “world” contributes to my daily life in its own unique ways.

OK, time to get real then. Unbeknownst to me, and quite a number of other Germans abroad, the German legal system has changed in 2000 / 2001. It is now possible, as a German abroad, to adopt another country’s citizenship without losing German citizenship by default! It is called ‘Beibehaltungsgenehmigung’. A mouthful of a word, great for your next Scrabble game, yet, it holds great promise as it opens the door for dual citizenship following a successful petition to the German government.

As with any official legal matter, it has some quirks and procedural steps that will need to be strictly adhered to, yet, given that this window of opportunity has been in existence for almost 14 years now, there is a treasure trove of information to be found on the Internet about Germans who have already embarked on the journey and now successfully maintain two citizenships.

One of those sources has provided immense help to my own journey a few years ago, and which continues to be the go-to site for anyone with a personal interest to do the same: Yahoo Groups – Zweipaesse