My primary goals in joining Wanderer Financial were to learn how to manage risk and to learn how professional traders trade through all sorts of economic conditions to produce a regular income. I'm pleased to say that I've made great progress on both goals. I have fallen into a comfortable rhythm of trading that fits my personal risk tolerance with the tools I've learned at Wanderer Financial. Basecamp is a remarkable source of trading ideas and feedback, as well as being just a generally very pleasant corner of the internet where I enjoy spending some time with like-minded traders most days.

One part of my trading style that I really enjoy now is being able to share these ideas—this investing knowledge—with my young children. I'm determined to pass good financial behaviors onto them. Though they are but 7 and 9 years old, they are far ahead of where I was at their age in financial education. We all know kids are sponges when it comes to learning, and that goes for all types of learning, even something as non-traditional as early financial lessons.

I'm the Dad that is always telling everyone, "Turn off the lights, I don't own the electric company!" It is this mindset that led to the creation of what we call our Dividend Energy Portfolio (DEP). The idea was to spend about the same amount of money that we would have on a solar panel installation for our home to instead buy dividend paying stocks that would offset our family's monthly electric bill.

I felt like this would be a good use of the skills I've learned over the last several years at Wanderer. I've learned that so much of good trading involves a logical entry price combined with a nearby stop loss in case I'm wrong (i.e. learning how to read a chart). This technique is valid even for a portfolio that I intend to hold long-term for the dividend yield.

Our Dividend Energy Portfolio, as of today, holds 24 different stocks with an average yield of 8.55%. In 2023 our "DEP" offset 73% of our families cost of electricity.

We attempt to not become overly focused on any one company to minimize risk and to spread out payments as we are looking for a monthly payout that matches our electric bill.

Our largest position size is GUT at 10.3% (8.85% yield), followed closely by RITM at 9.6% (9.4% yield and I believe was a Wanderer Financial pick from several years ago.)

Our smallest position is FSK at just .6% of the portfolio (15.17% yield).

Biggest winner so far is AM and biggest loser IEP (of which we stopped out for a loss).

By far the sectors that have done best since we started this portfolio in late 2021 have been Midstream (AM, EPD, ET) and Financials (HTGC, ARCC, TSLX). We try not to over allocate into those sectors as today's winners may not be tomorrow's winners. Consumer Discretionary have performed most poorly (VFC, NWL, WBA) but we continue to hold them for now.

As of this writing our portfolio is slightly down (-.6%) compared to the SPX being up over the same time period at +4.3%. However, the same investment in the SPX, with its low yield, would not have met the primary goal of paying our electric bill. We are cautiously optimistic that our portfolio is working as planned.

Though my children are young and these metrics are way over their heads I'm super happy that this project has given us a reason to discuss money, investing, stocks and dividends. I hope to impress upon them the general idea that we should be good stewards of our resources, whether that resource is our time, our dollars, or dividends and kilowatt hours.

Thanks to Wanderer Financial and the great group at Basecamp that have given me the education and confidence to put this portfolio idea into action for my family.