BennyEast.Com/Blog The official blog of Kenny West

Up Up and Away

So, part of me cares, but another part of me kind of thinks it's almost comedic... Or, maybe comedic isn't the right word... It's more like, interesting I guess?

There are two things going up in my life... The first?  My dividend income per month.  As time is going by, my monthly dividend income stream has been slowly and steadily increasing.  Eventually... We all know where things are going with that.  It's only a matter of how quickly it rises.  They've even implemented new tracking stuff in my trading account to see the monthly performance, so it's now easier than ever to track my monthly investment income targets...

What else is going up?  The number of open tickets we have in our new ticket software.  Just as I predicted... It's steadily increasing.

Why?  It's simple math... We can't take care of the requests as fast as they come in.  It's just math, there aren't enough of us working and enough hours in the day to do all the work.

What's going to happen?  The tickets will just keep coming in, we'll close some, but more will come in than we can close.  We'll prioritize and then the ones we can't get to will just sit there collecting dust.

I guess because it's only a matter of time until I hit the tipping point on my investments and the income over takes my expenses... I care enough in the short term, but in the longer term, I don't really care as much because I'm on my way out eventually.

I mean, sure I have a few years... And at absolute MOST, I have 15 years of working left no matter what.  It's weird, it's like not winning  the lottery yet, but knowing that you will win the lottery and knowing the exact day you will.

My 50th birthday is big lottery day... In the mean time, my already established extra income wins the lottery on average 10 to 15 days a month.  That's how often I get dividend deposits now on my existing stuff... It's small, like my next one will be $12.60 on the 10th... So in 2 days.  I just got a whole cluster of deposits, like 3 or 4 on Friday, totaling about 20 some bucks.

The thing is... It's passive money too.  So, for example, at work, I get yelled at all day by people who are angry because their tech issue isn't working or mostly because they haven't had an answer yet and they submitted their ticket days before... As I type this, we have 90 tickets open.  I bet we'll be up above 100 open tickets by Friday.

Every time people call all upset and angry, I just look at my dividend deposits and say to myself... It's only a matter of time until some other poor sucker is in this seat getting yelled at.

Or maybe not... Who knows... The day I beat it, they may not decide to replace me... And then my coworkers will be the poor suckers.

The thing about it is... There's nothing they can do about it... Even if I make no additional investments, a lot of my holdings are dividend hiking stocks... So that means, they have a LONG track record for paying and increasing dividend payouts every year.  For example, one of my holdings has been paying a dividend for over 100 years and they have been increasing the dividend for 40 some years.

Either way, even if the company decides to skip a year for dividend hikes and hold steady... I'm still spending less money than I'm making, which means I'm adding to my investments.... And by adding to the investments...

You guessed it.  The dividends go up... up... up.... and away.

Everyone at my job hates it.  It's mostly because I do a lot of work, so I think they hate the idea of me riding off into the sunset to greener pastures... Although to be fair, no one wants to be broken up with... Especially when they've found a keeper... And let's face it, I'm quite the keeper when it comes to model employees, but honey... You just don't satisfy my needs like my investment portfolio is starting to... Sorry sugar.

I work in off hours, and right now, I have like half the open tickets on my plate... SO... I'm kind of a rockstar employee.  I don't mean to brag but... I work my ass off.

See, the thing is though, my passion is making music and writing books, and investing, and just being creative... Not getting yelled at by grumpy people because we don't have nearly the staff we need to reposed to their tech requests as quickly as they would like us to.

But it will certainly be interesting if someone in the VP area of things starts to question why so many tickets stay open... I mean, who knows, I doubt it... But perhaps one day they will notice and then be like... "Hey, maybe they need another tech?"

Wishful thinking.

Oh well... Like said, I only care enough to work hard in the short term because I know that each month that goes by, my investment salary inches up higher and higher getting closer and closer to covering all my expenses and then I retire and work on music and other creative endeavors full time.

For now, I watch the number of open tickets rise, and I watch my dividend salary rise... See which one reaches a tipping point first.