The Elephant in the Room has a Paycheck Book Notes

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David Bressler — Author of ‘The Elephant in the Room has a Paycheck’

Key Topics

Dividend Aristocrats

The foun­da­tion for the Elephant’s Paycheck Blueprint are the set of stocks who con­sis­tent­ly raise their div­i­dends. The div­i­dend aris­to­crat page con­tains use­ful infor­ma­tion for read­ers, includ­ing links to the list of div­i­dend aris­to­crats as well as infor­ma­tion for inter­na­tion­al investors.

Sample Portfolio

When I start­ed writ­ing, I start­ed track­ing a sam­ple port­fo­lio. It’s a Google sheet that any­one can vis­it or copy to track their own port­fo­lio. In addi­tion to link­ing to the sheet, read­ers can down­load work­sheets and read more about how to use the port­fo­lio track­er on the sam­ple port­fo­lio land­ing page.

Worksheets

I cre­at­ed a cou­ple of work­sheets that are used in Part Four of the book to help peo­ple learn-more-about and com­pare com­pa­nies.

Download the work­sheet

Chapter-by-Chapter Extras & Clarifications

Part 1 — Elephant’s Paycheck Raises as Compared to Inflation

As I men­tioned ear­li­er in this sec­tion of the book (foot­note #2), writ­ing about mon­ey is hard. Sometimes it requires some basic assump­tions to prove a point gen­er­al­ly, rather than exact specifics.

I took this quote as rel­e­vant:

Adjusting for tick­et price infla­tion is not an exact sci­ence and should be used to give you a gen­er­al idea of what a movie might have made if released in a dif­fer­ent year, assum­ing it sold the same num­ber of tick­ets.

The movie tick­et price data that I used to demon­strate infla­tion should in real-detailed writ­ing dis­cuss whether the price increase is actu­al­ly a result of infla­tion or of some­thing else.

The point stands, that prices go up over time. If your pay­check does­n’t, you’re falling behind. How much you’re falling behind, or how fast, may be an inter­est­ing con­ver­sa­tion. But the point still holds. You’re Falling behind.

That said, I used infla­tion data about movie tick­et prices that is eas­i­ly found online. Look at the bot­tom, where the list of movie prices and infla­tion adjust­ed prices is pre­sent­ed. At the time of writ­ing, the data only goes through 2012, so I wrote in the book that by 2013 the price was $7.92. I thought that was a fair way to make my point.

If you’d like to explore the effects of infla­tion over time have a look at this infla­tion cal­cu­la­tor.

Part 2 – Dividend Reinvestment Plans

Here are some spe­cif­ic com­pa­nies that offer direct div­i­dend rein­vest­ment plans and links to the pages describ­ing the plans. These aren’t invest­ment rec­om­men­da­tions, just exam­ples:

 

Notice the bot­tom right cor­ner of the P&> share­hold­er rela­tions site (the orange box). You can click on the prospec­tus to read it and see how the plan works. You can click to open and account and invest on the spot.

The page we’re show­ing here is http://www.pginvestor.com/Shareholder-Relations/Index?keyGenPage=326397 (or click on the image).

The orig­i­nal URL for P&> investors is http://www.pginvestor.com. Heading here, you see a green box front-and-cen­ter that says “Individual Investor Information”.

If you head to the bot­tom of Caterpillar’s investor page, you’ll see some­thing called share­hold­er ser­vices (image above). Shareholder ser­vices takes you to a page where you can find out infor­ma­tion about the direct stock pur­chase plan (3^rd from left). Of course, I’m pro­vid­ing a link straight to it but try­ing to help you know how to find it on your own.

Part 4 — Investor Home Pages

It’s so much eas­i­er to show this stuff off in video, or in per­son. I use three exam­ples, for no oth­er rea­son than I’m famil­iar with these three.

Each of these pages show how much infor­ma­tion you can learn about a com­pa­ny direct­ly from its investor page. No need to have “spe­cial research” or “inside access”.

P&>. You can see right front and cen­ter on the P&> investor page is the num­ber of con­sec­u­tive div­i­dend increas­es — 60 at the moment! Also front and cen­ter is a link for indi­vid­ual investors to get start­ed buy­ing stock direct­ly. Of course, P&> pro­vides this pro­gram through an invest­ment man­age­ment com­pa­ny. But, it’s effec­tive­ly buy­ing direct­ly from the com­pa­ny.

Caterpillar. Caterpillar is a fun com­pa­ny for small kids — they love the con­struc­tion equip­ment. Down at the bot­tom right of the main investor page you can find out infor­ma­tion about their “direct stock pur­chase plan”. I did­n’t link straight through, as I think it’s inter­est­ing to see how much edu­ca­tion­al infor­ma­tion and access we have through investor sites direct­ly, includ­ing direct pur­chas­es.

GE. GE does a real­ly great job com­mu­ni­cat­ing with investors. I sug­gest you sign up for their investor email newslet­ter at the top of the investor page. GE high­lights some of the for­mal fil­ings at the top — the CEO let­ter and the 10‑K. Again, click­ing through will give you some real­ly easy to con­sume infor­ma­tion in mul­ti-media for­mat to help you under­stand GE’s strat­e­gy and results.