Supplementing Passive Income - Cashback Portals (Ebates)

I mentioned before when i spoke about the money saved/earned by leveraging credit card rewards, i like to supplement passive income received by buying high quality dividend paying stocks by looking for other avenues as well.

The one i will talk about today is using my favorite shopping portal - Ebates.

Latest Buy - Microsoft (MSFT)

Just recently, i wrote about how i have missed out by not investing in Microsoft.

Even though i have exposure to the stock via index funds that i hold in non-taxable accounts, i always missed out on purchasing MSFT as an individual stock.

Till now.

The one that got away - Microsoft.

I have been investing in individual stocks on and off since 2004. I still remember back then when i first transferred money from the bank account to the brokerage account, i contemplated hard between Yahoo, Microsoft, Apple and Google. I was fairly confident that investing in any of those 4 will result in capital appreciation over a few years.

I was looking to hold long term but did not necessarily look at dividends and the whole dividend growth investing style back then. I obviously ended up picking the worst of the 4 and purchased Yahoo. I mean, make no mistake i sold those shares back after over a year and still made over 20% - so don't get me wrong - it wasn't a bad choice, it just wasn't the best one, or the second best or the third :)

Dividend Increase - AT&T (T)

AT&T (T) declared a $0.50/share quarterly dividend. It is a 2% increase from the prior dividend of $0.49.

This is payable Feb 1 for shareholders on record Jan 10 (ex-dividend date Jan 9)

AT&T keeps its tradition of increasing the annual dividend by 4 cents a share (1 cent a quarter) every December. Even though the increase is small in terms of percentage, the good part is that the base this is being increased upon is well above a 5% yield.

The market meanwhile continues to go up everyday in anticipation of the tax deal. Value investors like me are both happy because existing positions are doing well, but not so happy because fair value is harder to find with every passing day in this red hot market.

Dividend Increase - W.P. Carey

W.P. Carey (WPC) declared a $1.01/share quarterly dividend.

Even though it is just a 0.5% increase from the prior quarterly dividend of $1.005, it is not bad because they have increased their dividend every quarter for a while. Forward dividend yield is at 5.77%

10% off Target Gift cards.

For today (12/3) only, target is offering 10% off Gift cards purchased online or in store. This is up to $300 per order. It is a great way to either stock up on Target GC's to effectively get 10% off every target purchase for the next year or a great way to buy GC's for friends and family at a discount.

If you have a discover cashback card, this deal can be paired with it to get an additional 5% cashback on target purchases for this quarter for an effective ~15% off (10% discount + 5 % cashback) on future target purchases.