Buying a house is no joke. It takes time, effort, and money. And keeping good investments that will continue to help you along the way is a tall order when you’re looking for money to move around. While stocks are liquid enough that they can be used, sometimes it’s not the best option if you can help it. That’s because you no longer gain any potential from the upside of stocks, and are forced into taking any losses you’ve incurred in lower stock prices. But sometimes that is unavoidable.
Above is my selling history for 2021. On the left is the stock symbol, followed by the purchase price, commission fee, total stock, sell price, sell value, gain or loss, percent gain or loss, and number of days held.
By and large, most of the stocks I sold early to help purchase the house were winners, with the exception of the larger share of ENB and a little off of VZ. But I got $379.59 profit with everything I sold before WPG. I had to tighten my purse strings for a while, and with WPG delisting because of their bankruptcy, I decided I had finally had enough and sold everything I had. To the whopping tune of -$7,393.54! That’s right. My investment, and ultimate decision not to sell sooner, cost me $7,393.54 in loss over the initial purchase price.
Now, we cant just say, “Look, I lost $7,400.” We do have to account for the dividends I received from WPG before the pandemic sent them into a tailspin. Those dividends netted me $621.50. So the real loss on WPG is $6,772.04. Now that’s nothing to scoff at either, and had WPG continued to perform through the pandemic, I could have seen dividends of anywhere between $519.50 and $1,239.00. The stock price might also not have spun down so far if there was no bankruptcy on the table and the malls had continued to function “normally”.
Largely, I blame WPG’s management of the pandemic for their downfall. They had opportunities to stretch and expand their business to warehouse goods in defunct mall locations, host remote socially-distanced workstations, or any number of other innovative ideas that the pandemic allowed to continue functioning. But they lost their anchor stores and a lot of business during lockdowns and couldn’t pivot in time to save themselves.
They’re restructuring now, so they might make a comeback, unlike some other real estate companies that went under and went away, but I am definitely done with them until they can prove they are a stable, realistic asset.
Tesla followed, for a little extra cash out, at a loss of $94.80. But between Tesla and WPG that gave me an extra $1,273.25 to work with, and that helped secure a stable credit balance with my income.
My overall loss was $7,108.75 for the year, not counting dividends received from my remaining investments. And I did add on some extra dividend stocks in low quantities since I still want to hang on to what I can. My current portfolio is below.
STAG has been doing exceptionally well, and I added on a little extra right after I moved in August. At the end of last month, I added ARD, CEQP, and ARCC, which have all done decently since then. As of 10/18/2021:
ARD is offering $0.15 quarterly, but a special dividend of $1.25 was declared on 9/22/2021 for 10/01/2021 and paid 10/12/2021. I received $1.28 for my investment, but had to pay $0.19 in foreign taxes.
CEQP is offering $0.625 quarterly, which will start for me declared on 10/14/2021 for 11/05/2021 and paid 11/12/2021.
ARCC is offering $0.41 quarterly, which will likely start for me on 12/15/2021 and paid 12/30/2021. This dividend has not been declared yet.
While I don’t have a large stockpile in any dividend stocks anymore, I am slowly working on building them back up as I can, while also paying off my mortgage and credit card bills from repairs and other home-related expenses. We’ll see where I’m at later down the road, and hopefully start building a better portfolio now that WPG isn’t the only egg in my basket.
A Beginner's Experience With Investing 