August 20

Blogger Interview 11 – Two Investing

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This content was saved from the old investmenthunting.com website, in case anyone was still looking for it (with the help of archive.org)

Welcome to the 11th post of my blogger interview series. I’ve slowed these interviews down so you all don’t get burned out. This interview is with Scott of Two Investing. Scott’s been on the blogging scene for a while. He’s been on a recent hiatus because he relocated to a new city and took his first attending job. Now he’s back and posting again.

Scott just finished his Radiology residency and moved to Minnesota to become an attending Radiologist. Scott is a dividend growth investor and an options trader. Scott has built up a $183k portfolio of quality stocks. This is really impressive. I’m not sure where he found the time to invest; medical residency is brutal. I first synced up with Scott in early 2015 when I was looking for a portfolio tracker. He’s built a great spreadsheet and he’s graciously giving it away. You’ve seen the tracker. It’s the one I use and I’ve seen it on a bunch of sites. I hope you enjoy getting to learn more about Scott and Two Investing. Here’s a link to all of my Blogger Interviews.

20 Questions With Two Investing

Where do you live?
I currently live in Chicago. I moved here for fellowship, which is an additional year of medical training after finishing residency. Previously I lived in Milwaukee, Wisconsin for medical school and residency and will be moving in a couple of weeks to the Minneapolis, Minnesota area for my first official job! (He already moved, but I wanted you all to know where he was previously – Investment Hunting)

What are your hobbies?
Other than investing, I love pretty much any kind of sports. My current favorites are volleyball (predominately indoor, but the beach volleyball is great in Chicago in the summer!). I was playing 4-5 times a week for a while! Volleyball was also the venue that I met some of my new best friends in Chicago! I also love tennis, biking, sailing, and cross-country skiing. Wisconsin has some amazing bike rides. I can ride 40-50 miles on paved country roads and only see a handful of cars the entire time! I also like listening to music and watching theater.

Which countries or major cities have you lived in or traveled to?
I have visited Washington DC (have a friend that lives there now), New York City (to watch the US Open), San Francisco, among many other major US cities. As far as other countries or international cities, I have visited Canada, Mexico, Costa Rica & Nicaragua (medical mission trip in college), Puerto Rico, London, Denmark, Germany, Czech Republic. The farthest away country I visited was a three-week trip in college to Cyprus in the eastern Mediterranean.

Which sports or teams are your favorites?
All University of Wisconsin teams (Go Badgers!). Green Bay Packers. Milwaukee Brewers (though watching the Cubs in Chicago has been fun this year). Chicago Blackhawks. College basketball during March Madness. Soccer during World Cup. Olympics (Team USA!). Federer and Nadal in tennis (previously Agassi and Samprus).

What’s the best vacation you’ve ever taken?
I’ve been on many fun vacations so it is hard to pick just one. Growing up we always did active vacations. We did a lot of mountain biking, skiing, hiking, etc. One of my favorites of those was a week-long rafting trip on the Middle Fork of the Salmon in Idaho. Another was mountain biking in Moab, Utah. The key thing about all the favorites is that they all were with family or friends. Sharing in experiences like that is what makes the vacations so memorable!

When you were a child, what profession did you want to be?
This is going to sound really strange, but I actually wanted to be an Olympic sprinter! If you saw me now that would be the last thing you’d think of! I’m tall and skinny…more of a middle distance runner now (mile to half marathon distance). But, when I was in middle school I was actually the fastest person and the best long distance runner in our school.

What is your career today?
Needless to say, I did not even try out for the Olympic sprint trials. Instead, I’m a radiologist, specializing in body and musculoskeletal radiology.

What is your primary motivation to reach financial independence and retire early?
Radiology is a really fun and interesting field. It is also a field that is constantly changing with new technology and knowledge and the need to continually learn. I’ve enjoyed it very much so far in a training i.e., residency and fellowship standpoint. And, I fully expect to continue to enjoy it as I practice it for my career. However, there are many, many things that I would love to do if I had the time and money to do them. I would definitely not get bored if I were to retire early! My time would be taken up by travel, volunteering, and other fun activities.

At what age are you planning on retiring?
I’m almost 33 years old now and am just beginning my career. I don’t really have a defined age that I hope to retire. It would definitely depend on market conditions but even more so on how I am enjoying working. If I love what I’m doing maybe I’d just cut back the hours initially before tapering to full retirement. But, I would definitely want to be retired by 60 for sure and most likely sooner than that.

What’s the first thing you’ll do when you retire?
It would definitely be something related to travel. It is hard as a physician to take more than a couple of weeks off in a row at this stage in my career so having the free time to travel would be amazing. I might even do a long backpacking trip in the Rocky Mountains!

If money were no object, but you had to have a job what would you do for a living?
Hmm. When I was in high school I thought it would be fun to get paid for being a road biking tour guide. Maybe doing something like that but then coordinate the tours around the world so that I would be forced to travel there beforehand to get the lay-of-the-land.

If you could go back in time, what investment advice would you give to your past self?
Sell everything you own and put it in Apple stock in 1996. Hold until today (well, about a year ago!). I’d also borrow as much as I possibly could to increase my leverage for some perfectly timed puts and calls. Done correctly, the SEC would start to look at my suspiciously!

If you could only use one metric to evaluate a stock, which one would you choose?
Free cash flow growth. You need the cash in order to pay and grow a dividend and to grow the company internally if they don’t (yet) pay a dividend.

How do you stay the course when markets are down?
I use that opportunity to invest more. I’m hoping to not have to touch the principal in retirement. That’s one of the most exciting things about my new job is that I’ll have more capital to be able to invest while actually living in an area that has a much lower cost of living than a high-rise in Chicago.

What’s your favorite aspect of blogging?
It’s the sense of community. I love reading and responding to the comments. It is also a great way to exchange investing ideas.

Why should people read your blog?
I started my investing blog shortly after I resumed investing (following selling everything to pay for medical school). It is a personal story that shows how it is possible to succeed despite people thinking the market is rigged against them.

My blog concentrates on the tried and true dividend investing, but also discusses how I am successfully generating supplemental income through options. Ultimately it will become an outlet for both myself and its co-creator, Johnny. Johnny will hopefully be posting again soon…he’s been regularly working 100+ hours a week during residency so has had little time the last couple of years as you can imagine!

Which 5 blogs do you visit the most?
Div Hut
Hello Suckers
DivGro
The Conservative Income Investor
Roadmap 2 Retire

What’s your best source of traffic to your blog?
By far it is people searching on Google for information on an investment spreadsheet for dividends and finding my Dividend Stock Portfolio Tracker with Transactions Page. Second best is direct from people who reads blogs like this!

Why do you blog?
Because I love writing down ideas in my head. I also see it as a way to express my creativity.

What’s the name and URL of your blog or blogs?
My blog is Two Investing –  http://www.twoinvesting.com

Additional Info On Two Investing

Two doctors in a row. I’ll need to focus on a blogger in a different field next time. As I mentioned in my interview with The White Coat Investor, doctors typically take on a ton of debt and don’t start working until their 30s. At 33 Scott is just starting to earn money. While the income is high, earning and compounding time is limited. I have a lot of respect for doctors; they sacrifice many years before earning an income.

I agree with Scott, if I could go back I’d throw a bunch of money into Apple stock. I’ve told this story before, but I’ll tell it again. When the first iPhone came out I bought it on release day. A few weeks later I was flying to Salt Lake City, watching a movie on my phone. Halfway through the flight pretty much everyone had stopped by to checkout my phone. Even the pilot and co-pilot took turns leaving the cockpit to come talk to me and look at my new phone. This was before 9/11. Pilots used to leave the cockpit all the time.  I got home and told my wife we should put our entire savings into Apple stock. Unfortunately that didn’t fly with her. Damn it would’ve been a nice payout ;-).

I added a link to Scott’s spreadsheet above. It’s the best one I’ve found online and certainly better than anything I could have created. It’s free, but honestly he should charge for it. If you’re looking for a dividend spreadsheet, go get it before he figures out it’s worth money.

Two Investing is only on one social network. The Two Investing Twitter link is listed below.

Twitter 


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