For the month of March, the DOW rose 786 points. The DOW is now down 4.8% year to date. My investments increased by .78% during the month. YTD my investments are down 3.7%, only slightly better than the overall market. Interest and dividend income was $1056 this month. Withdrawals for living expenses came to $727 for the past month. The investment account used for living expenses generates an average of $780 per month. This means that there is still positive cash flow for now. In March I added 100 shares of YYY and 100 shares of Walgreen (WAG), and added $3000 to FPURX in my retirement account. YYY is a high income closed end fund that pays a 9.9% monthly dividend. I have money in six different closed end funds with an average dividend of 8.48%. Closed end funds that hold stocks have been holding up well. The ones that hold bonds have gone down in value, but still pay a nice monthly dividend. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
I filed my 2021 taxes this past week. The TurboTax fee was $148, and I owe $308 in State taxes. I had income from a municipal income fund that had to be added to my state income. This was my first full year without any earned income or unemployment income. I am now 59-1\/2, but I want to hold off taking money out of my retirement fund for as long as possible. Although I won’t be charged a penalty, any money I take out will be taxed as regular income. In my case, withdrawals would be taxed at 10%. As opposed to dividends from non-retirement accounts that have 0% tax if your income is under $41,675 in 2022. I had far less than the limit, which is why I didn’t have to pay any federal tax in 2021. Inflation is the biggest worry right now. The value of my home has increased by %13 in the past year. I expect home insurance will also go up again this year. My property tax bill increased by $560. It now costs me $420 per month, just in insurance and property taxes. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
For the month of March, the DOW rose 786 points. The DOW is now down 4.8% year to date. My investments increased by .78% during the month. YTD my investments are down 3.7%, only slightly better than the overall market. Interest and dividend income was $1056 this month. Withdrawals for<\/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\/446"}],"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=446"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.budgethomepage.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/446\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":448,"href":"http:\/\/www.budgethomepage.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/446\/revisions\/448"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.budgethomepage.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=446"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.budgethomepage.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=446"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.budgethomepage.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=446"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}