For the month of December, the DOW gained 1758 points. That was a gain of 328 from the previous month. My investments increased by 1.8% during the month. Interest and dividend income was $16,858 for the month. As expected, the end-of-year dividend payouts were very good this year. For the year, my investments gained $84,684. The majority of the gains (75%) were in a tax deferred retirement fund. I will have about $15,908 in Non-IRA taxable income to report to the IRS. During the past month, I sold UGI CORP and added CIBR, a cybersecurity ETF passively managed by First Trust. I also added 100 shares of FINX, which is down about 14% in the past month. FINX is scheduled to payout a $2.16 per share dividend on 1\/7\/22. Some investors will sell shares after the dividend record date, just to get the payout, and then buy back in when the price drops. I expect to see a recovery after the dividend payout. FIN Tech and crypto stocks have suffered this past month, which could be a buying opportunity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In a few months, I will be 59-1\/2, and will be able to start withdrawing money from my IRA without a penalty. Any money I take out will be taxed as ordinary income. I am currently taking $440 from a Non-IRA account every month. That amounts to $5280 annually. Our monthly living expenses are about $1300. That doesn’t include extras like travel or entertainment. With my girlfriend not working in 2022, I will need to cover for her half of our living expenses. If she continues to pay the food bill out of her savings, I will need to take a minimum of $660 out of my IRA every month. Annually, that would be $7920 in taxable income. If you add the Non-IRA income, I would have to pay taxes on about $24,000 in 2022. I probably won’t have as much Non-IRA income in 2022. It will take some luck to get similar gains in the coming year. 2021 had a lot of up and down investing days and I expect the same in 2022. I just have to avoid buying stock in companies that are not profitable and hold onto the ones that are going up!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
For the month of December, the DOW gained 1758 points. That was a gain of 328 from the previous month. My investments increased by 1.8% during the month. Interest and dividend income was $16,858 for the month. As expected, the end-of-year dividend payouts were very good this year. For the<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.budgethomepage.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/410"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.budgethomepage.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.budgethomepage.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.budgethomepage.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.budgethomepage.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=410"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/www.budgethomepage.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/410\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":415,"href":"http:\/\/www.budgethomepage.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/410\/revisions\/415"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.budgethomepage.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=410"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.budgethomepage.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=410"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.budgethomepage.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=410"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}