Why we do this

Years ago I read The Richest Man in Babylon, the little book of parables about money that has been in print since the 1920s. One line stuck: "a part of all you earn is yours to keep." Not what's left over. A part, first, every time. I started buying dividend stocks with that part, and I never really stopped.

Somewhere along the way friends started asking what they should buy. I never liked answering. Telling someone what to buy is advice, and advice is a responsibility I don't want and am not licensed to give. What I could do was show them what I actually do, with real money, and let them judge it.

That is this site.

The deal

Every Monday, $100 goes into a separate brokerage account that holds nothing but what you see here. It buys one dividend stock that passes a five-question test we publish in full. We record the price, the shares, the dividend it adds, and the reasoning. When dividends land, they go into the next Monday's buy. Nothing is hidden, nothing is backdated, and when we get something wrong we say so in the open and leave the original in the record.

The point isn't the $100. It is what $100 a week becomes when dividends are reinvested and companies keep raising them, for years. The income line on the front page is the whole show. It only goes one direction if we do the work.

Who this is for

My four kids, first. I want them to see that you don't need to be rich to do this. You need a small amount, a simple rule, and patience measured in years.

Anyone else who has ever wondered whether ordinary people can build an income from owning businesses. You can watch one get built, week by week, including the weeks the market goes against us.

What this is not

It is not financial advice, and it never will be. We document what we did and why. We never tell you what to do. We hold the stocks we write about, which means we are biased in the plainest possible way, and we would rather tell you that than pretend otherwise.

If you want to follow along, the Monday email is the easiest way, and the Five-Box Checklist is the test behind every pick.