Better Living Notes

I Used to Chase Dividends. Now I Wait for Opportunities There was a time when I believed dividends were the answer. Dividend ETFs made me feel productive. Watching monthly cash roll in was comforting — like my portfolio was "doing something." But it also made me passive. I wasn’t responding to the market. I was reacting to fear of missing out, to a need for stability that wasn’t actually grounded in strategy. But I started noticing something strange: the market would rally, but my income stayed the same. I wasn’t participating in growth. I was just collecting crumbs. The Power of Income — and the Need to Look Beyond There’s no denying it: regular income brings comfort. It gives structure, predictability, and a sense of progress. That’s why so many investors chase monthly yields. And for a while, I did too. But in the stock market, comfort isn’t the whole story. If you want to grow, you have to observe. You have to study. You have to wait for the moment that fits...

The Market Rebounded, But Did You? The Fear Came Fast The market crashed when Trump’s tariff comments shook investor confidence. We all felt it. Charts turned red, headlines screamed “collapse,” and portfolios shrank overnight. But something unusual followed: a swift rebound. Major indices climbed again, and to many, it seemed as though the fear had never happened. Some Portfolios Recovered. Others Didn’t. Let’s be honest: not everyone came out okay. Even if the Nasdaq (QQQ) almost recovered its all-time high, that doesn’t mean all investors did. Take TQQQ, the 3x leveraged ETF. While QQQ moved from $540.81 (Feb 19) to $531.36 (Jun 12), nearly closing the gap, TQQQ dropped from $91.12 to $74.78 in the same period. That’s still a long way down. It Depends on What You Did in the Fear Maybe you froze. Maybe you had too much debt, and had to sell at the worst time. Maybe you took the opportunity to invest more — and now you’re ahead. Or maybe you caught ...