High Yield Dividend Stock Buy Ideas: AWP, FGB, DHY

10 May, 2018 | Investments | 8 seen

I still haven't opened a decent discount stock broker for buying US stocks (I have been in talks of opening a broker account at Lynx Broker), while in the middle of the process, I decided to investigate some high yield dividend stocks in the US.

There are dozens of great dividend income blogs, I love to read their monthly dividend income reports and of course, compare my self to others. Just google - "+month dividend income report" and you will be amazed finding a ton of great reading.

Some bloggers are high net individuals while others are not. One interesting blog I have been following for about a year is John from DividendQuest.com, by reading John's monthly dividend income reports I noticed he is investing in high yield REIT's, with a dividend yield ranging 7-11%. Now, this is some serious yield, but sure it's more risk as well. What was more surprising (at least for me). John has in his portfolio stocks paying dividends monthly. Wow, I  thought. DividendQuest.com inspired me, and without hiding, I admit I took following stocks from John's portfolio - AWP, FGB, and DHY.

My plan…

Super Charging May 2019 Dividend Income ($300/mo Goal)

8 May, 2018 | Investments | 20 seen

May is one of the busiest dividend paying months from the Baltic Stocks. I've been investing in the Baltic stocks since 2017, and dividend income generated from the Baltic stocks slowly are growing. Nothing to brag about, but still, humble but decent.

In May 2017, I made $65.45 from peer to peer lending and Baltic stocks. Although the May of 2018 is just barely started I'm looking on about $140 this May. That's about $75 increase year on year.

In fact, May of 2018 promised about $200 in passive income, but I rushed a bit and sold one great dividend paying stock, as I believed a dividend cut to 0 is happening, just shortly I sold, it was announced that there will be an increased dividend. I sold with a profit and re-invested this money into other dividend-paying stocks. But after an announcement came I calculated that if I would keep the stock I would make about EUR 45 from this stock in dividends this May. Sadly I sold a day before the announcement. 

As they say, that's life, nothing is granted. What at one point seems like the bad stock, in the other morning can turn into best dividend…

April 2018 Dividend Income Report - $95.47

6 May, 2018 | Investments | 12 seen

Welcome to the twelfth (#12) dividend income report, covering earnings I've made from the Baltic dividend-paying stocks and peer to peer lending (both fiat and cryptocurrencies).

Wow, already twelve dividend income reports, that's one year of tracking my road to the million dollars by the time I will turn 60. The last April marked also a small one-year anniversary since I've been investing in the Baltic stocks, you can read my review here: Baltic Dividend Stock Market Review - Thoughts After Investing for a One Year

April turned out neither good, neither bad. I was looking to crack $100 milestone this month, but because of one dividend payment been paid in May, instead of April, the total income was lower as expected. (That's for the bad news, but still, nothing bad here, as I still will get paid in May). 

Disclosure:  This article contains affiliate links to mintos.com peer to peer lending website, by clicking on links on this page and by making an investment on mintos.com, I might earn affiliate income at no cost to you. Also, I'm not a financial advisor and I don't give you any advice, I'm…

Amazon OneLink? No, Thanks - Improve Page Load times by removing Third Party scripts

5 May, 2018 | Servers | 7 seen

I felt very enthusiastic once Amazon announced OneLink, it seemed like a missing puzzle to serve international customers and boost earnings as an Amazon associate.

Now many months later I have very ambivalent feelings regarding this - yes, I've made some extra dollar (pound and euro) by serving Amazon.co.uk and Amazon.de - on the other hand, earnings from these versions are humble not to say more, and in fact earnings from Amazon.com have started to dip for couple of months (I'm not blaming Amazon OneLink here)

After I decided to remove Social Share buttons from my blog to improve Page load times I discovered that on some pages javascript from Amazon actually is the biggest issue for blogs performance, and with combination of low income from Amazon OneLink, I decided it's time to further limit external javascript in order to improve page load times and speed. 

Here is the test from an article containing amazon associates third-party javascript (OneLink and Recommendations) before optimizing this page for better load times

Page load times for page with Amazon Javascripts

In fact, that's a pretty…

How To Regenerate Drupal GMAP Marker Cache (Request for Invalid Marker Set)

3 May, 2018 | Drupal Development | 25 seen

Although it doesn't happen often, in rare situations you might get in trouble with GMAP marker sets. The most common case is change with folder permissions or migrating site to another host.

How to add Custom Markers for Gmap Module Drupal

Here is how it looks:

Request for invalid marker set notification

And here is how map field looks:

Map with a missing marker (s)

The default map is displayed.

Luckily there is a simple solution - delete gmap.markers.js file from files/js folder, and markers will regenerate by themselves.

Now, run clear cache and all markers should be back

Marker cache cleared

Postcards from Kuldīga

1 May, 2018 | | 7 seen

Kuldīga has been featured on the blog many times, starting old brick bridge over the Venta river, including flying fish over Venta rapid, ending some of the finest Kuldīga restaurants

In today's Piece of Life series - a tranquil sunset from Kuldīga

Statue of Love during sunset in Kuldīga

A cool, wood carved sculpture. Compare this one with the metallic sculpture of Ali and Nino (located in Batumi, Georgia)

Brick bridge in Kuldīga

Brick bridge in Kuldīga over the river of Venta according to some sources is the longest of its kind bridge in Europe.

The brick bridge across the Venta has been serving the people of Kuldīga since 1874. It was according to 19th century standards. The 164 metre long arched bridge with seven spans of brick arches with boulder abutments was not only the largest and most ornate in the territory of Latvia but also one of the most modern in Europe.

Postcards from Kuldīga

Tranquil Sunset at Dubulti

29 April, 2018 | | 5 seen

Dubulti, has been our home since February 2018, we are spending here this Summer.

One of the rare and actually only attractions here is the beach. I've been documenting it a lot lately.

In today's Piece of Life series - a tranquil sunset from Dubulti beach:

Storytelling photo - mother and child in a sunset

Actually, that was here in Jūrmala, I decided to take my second 365 days photo challenge. Photos from today are from folder day 5

Seagulls at sunset

Portrait in a sunset

How To Fix: Error: Call to undefined function curl_init()

28 April, 2018 | Servers | 16 seen

After upgrading from Ubuntu 12 to Ubuntu 16 I discovered an error for Drupal website sending e-mails using Mailsystem + Postmark

here is the error code:

Luckily there is an easy solution, installing missing curl:

Hope, that helps!

Baltic Dividend Stock Market Review - Thoughts After Investing for a One Year

27 April, 2018 | Investments | 28 seen

April 2018, marks a small one year anniversary since I've been investing in the Baltic Stock market, more precisely - Baltic dividend stocks. 

I decided to invest in the Baltic stocks, once I found I'm too short to open Interactive Brokers account for buying US stocks (required opening minimum is $10,000). Buying Baltic stocks from local brokers (SEB bank) is relatively cheap (about 3 EUR commission per trade).

Back in April 2017 I started to acquire first stocks in the Baltics, now a year later I've built a humble (~EUR 7,800 worth) Baltic stock portfolio. In general I could sell of all of my holdings there and put this money to open Interactive Brokers, but that's not the plan (At least not yet)

Since April 2017, I have bought 18 dividend paying stocks in the Baltics, in March 2018, after it was announced that one company is planning to leave Nasdaq Baltics I sold it, got some humble profit). And now I actually hold just 17 dividend paying stocks.

For tracking my holdings in Baltic Stocks I've built a simple Google Spreasheet

In total,in dividends I've received EUR 343,7 giving a dividend yield on cost 4.37%, while…

Planting Onion Springs and Radishes

25 April, 2018 | Home Remodeling | 5 seen

For the past three years, it has been already a tradition planing some veggies in the garden.

For this year's early garden works - planting onion springs and radishes.

Planting spring onions

Planting radishes

Goodbye Social Sharing Buttons (Speed up Page Load time)

24 April, 2018 | Blogging | 8 seen

Google recently announced Google Speed search ranking algorithm to be rolled out in July 2018, after which page load times on a mobile for the first time will be a ranking factor for Google.

People want to be able to find answers to their questions as fast as possible — studies show that people really care about the speed of a page.

Although speed has been used in ranking for some time, that signal was focused on desktop searches.

The “Speed Update,” as we’re calling it, will only affect pages that deliver the slowest experience to users and will only affect a small percentage of queries. It applies the same standard to all pages, regardless of the technology used to build the page. The intent of the search query is still a very strong signal, so a slow page may still rank highly if it has great, relevant content.

As mobile traffic accounts for about 45% for my blog, with this upcoming Google Speed update I decided to make the most, and most probably to boost overall search rankings for mobile search. A time ago I already implemented Google AMP, and now about 20% of search traffic coming to my blog are served by AMP.

How To Migrate Drupal Website From Host to Another Host

22 April, 2018 | Drupal Development | 8 seen

There might be a dozen of reasons why migrating your existing Drupal (or any other CMS) website from one host to another. In today's article, I will share my experience migrating Drupal 7 from one host to another before upgrading to Drupal 8

In this guide, I will migrate Drupal 7 between two separate Linode VPS, at one there is Ubuntu 12.04 and php 5.5 version while at the other there is Ubuntu 16.04 and php 7 version.

Let's start with setting up an environment on host 1 or existing VPS. First I'm going to create data copies for the public_html folder (After investigating folders structure and size, I learned that existing website is at the size of 3.5GB size - that's decent I guess for a more than 4 years and active website).

For seeing folder sizes on your Ubuntu machine, you can run the following command:

Now, let's prepare this folder for migrating to another host.

Run the following command to create a tar.gz archive for public_html folder

Making archive file with Putty

Depending…

Lazy Day in The Beach (Dubulti - Majori)

21 April, 2018 | | 7 seen

it was one of the sunniest days in early April 2018, we opted in for a Dubulti - Majori (Jūrmala, Latvia) lazy hiking trip. The route is easy and distance is pretty short. 

As usual - I was equipped with a camera and captured some moments. The inspiration for this title I took from here: Lazy Day in Beach (Torremolinos, Spain)

In fact, that is a thing I have been thinking a lot lately - Jūrmala could be developed in a style of Spain's Costa del Sol resort towns. I actually met more folks in April at Jūrmala beach than I met in Spain's resort towns. Sure there are no palms in Jūrmala, but they do make lovely sand sculptures

New parents feeding seagulls at Jūrmala beach

Someone has forgot about the baby. A good mood picture. 

Sand sculptures in Jūrmala

Top Family Friendly Hotels in Tbilisi When Traveling with Kids

20 April, 2018 | Hotel reviews | 31 seen

Tbilisi has a lot to offer, traveling to the capital of Georgia with kids actually is a great idea. Fancy attraction parks, lots of outdoor attraction and of course great shopping experience at Tbilisi shopping malls.

In today's article I've listed some of the best family-friendly hotels in Tbilisi (alternatively see: Top 10 Boutique / Luxury Hotels in Tbilisi (Georgia))

Explore Georgia like a local, book an individual tour now!

Disclosure: hotels listed below contain links to Booking.com, by clicking on links on this page and by making a reservation on Booking.com site, I might earn an affiliate income, at no cost to you.

This magnificent 5-star hotel overlooks the main avenue in the centre of Tbilisi, 100 m from the Kashveti Church. Tbilisi Marriott Hotel offers luxury interiors, Fitness centre and sauna. Staff at the 24-hour front desk can help guests with any queries that they may have. On site parking is free at the Marriott Tbilisi.

The spacious rooms at the Marriott Tbilisi are air-conditioned and feature classic décor. All rooms…

During the past 4 years GEL has lost its value against USD by -27.51%

18 April, 2018 | Living in Georgia | 10 seen

It has been a while since I last time examined GEL/USD exchange rates. It seems more than four years have passed already. Back in 2014, I was concerned about GEL exchange rates because I had some deposits in Georgian National currency. Now in 2018 I don't feel anymore too much concerned, because I have diversified a lot across multiple currencies. 

I stopped any deposits in GEL back around 2015, after losing some 20% in a month, back then I thought I will never invest again in national currencies (Except USD or EUR), with the start with 2017 I started to invest again in GEL currency, this time on mintos.com peer to peer lending platform.

Both individuals and entities can invest through Mintos. Individual investors must be at least 18 years old, have a bank account in the European Union or third countries currently considered to have AML/CFT systems equivalent to the EU, and have their identity successfully verified by Mintos. At the moment, US citizens or taxpayers cannot register as investors at Mintos.

Affiliate link here: Sign up to Mintos.com here.( By using this affiliate link for registration both you and I …