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 Outstanding nominal value as of the current date

Average price of a bond, in % of face value

The current yield indicates the ratio of the accrued coupon to the current market price of the bond. It can be used in cases where attachments are considered for a short period of time. In this situation, the change in the market price can sometimes be neglected.

Bond duration is a way of measuring how much bond prices are likely to change if and when interest rates move.

Effective yield to maturity. It considers both coupon income and profit/loss due to the difference between the purchase price and the repayment price. Effective yield shows the investor the return on invested funds with reinvested coupons and depreciation.

Listing level — stock exchange assessment of securities reliability.

The ratio of the annual coupon to the "dirty" price of the bond, including the accrued interest. This type of yield can be used in the case of short-term investments, when the investment horizon is within one coupon period.

Average purchase price of a bond, in % of face value

Up to 2 years - short-term, up to 5 years - mid-term, more than 5 years - long-term

Bond type - goverment, municipal or corporate

Coupon yield % per annum of nominal value (coupon amount per year/nominal value)

 Simple yield to maturity. It considers both coupon income and profit/loss due to the difference between the purchase price and the repayment price. Simple yield shows the investor the return on invested funds without reinvested coupons.

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The fund expense ratio is the annual fee expressed as a percentage of a mutual fund or ETF's average assets, covering management, administrative, and other operational costs. It directly reduces investors' returns.

10 years

12 trailing months

1 day

1 month

1 year

3 months

5 years

6 months

1 week

all time

Choose a period

year to date

Growing up in the early 90s, I was never taught about financial literacy. However, the building blocks were laid from a very young age when it came to understanding the importance of living below my means and not spending more money than I had. I learned that if I wanted something, I had to work for it and exchange my time for money. The idea of creating passive income, or putting my money to work was a foreign, under the radar concept for me. 

I do not come from money. My first job was at 16, working at a donut shop, making $5.15 an hour. After decades of living below my means, side hustling and investing, I retired from my corporate software sales job at the age of 37. I discovered that the harder I worked, the luckier I seemed to be. Putting myself in the position to be lucky through hard work gave me a lot of opportunities that I otherwise would have never had. 

I first started investing in the stock market at the end of 2007. Unfortunately, I didn’t have a crystal ball because shortly thereafter, the global economy entered into one of the worst recessions in modern history. At the time, I was working as a teller at Chase Bank seeing the panic in people's eyes as they came to withdraw their life savings in fear of losing all their money. 

Despite losing most of my money in the stock market during the 

, I learned a valuable lesson that has stuck with me all these years. 

I thought the only way to invest was to time the market. I had to only buy stocks when they were low and only sell them when they were high. Sounds easy enough, right? Unfortunately, I wasn’t that lucky when it came to timing the market. I was too fixated on timing the market instead of time in the market. At this point in my life, I felt hopeless and ready to surrender to the idea that I was playing in a rigged system.  It took me many years to build up the emotional fortitude to start investing after losing so much during that challenging time. 

While working and building my portfolio, I never tracked my progress or analyzed how my portfolio was performing. I wish I had a tool like Snowball Analytics when I first started investing to help me with this.

Financial Independence, Retire Early (FIRE) movement.

 At the time, I worked in a high-stress environment where I knew I couldn't last until the traditional retirement age. As a result of this, I started consuming every piece of content around FIRE that I could find. I was intrigued by the idea of buying my freedom. At first, like many others, I struggled with my own internal naysayers. I would catch myself thinking that reaching FIRE was only for more fortunate people and that I could never actually achieve something like that. It felt like I was standing at the bottom of Mount Everest. 

While pursuing FIRE, I learned that there is no one size fits all and that all roads lead to Rome. When most people think about FIRE, they think about living off the 4% rule, but this was not how I wanted to achieve FIRE. I was inspired by what JL Collins shares in his book, “The Simple Path To Wealth”. However, instead of focusing on investing with the total US stock market with VTSAX or the ETF version VTI and living off the 4% rule, I focused on building a dividend portfolio where I could live off the passive income. I invested primarily in low fee dividend growth index funds with a focus on keeping things simple. I now live off my dividend portfolio an no longer rely on a corporate job to pay for my living expenses.

Focusing on FIRE with dividend investing changed my life because it helped me overcome my greatest challenge - 

. This is because I prioritize the income my investments produce, rather than looking at the share price or total value of my portfolio. 

Financial independence, feeling light as a feather 

In 2023, I reached what is called Barista FIRE. Barista FIRE is where you are living off your investments but also working part time at something that you enjoy.  Barista FIRE has allowed me to buy back my time and focus on other passions in life. I now spend the bulk of my time with my family and creating dividend investing and financial independence content on my YouTube channel 

While pursuing FIRE, I would often wonder what it would finally feel like once I reached my goal. Now having achieved financial independence for 2.5 years, the best way I can describe it is feeling light as a feather. 

Let me explain. Imagine you are going through life wearing a backpack and someone constantly fills that backpack with rocks. While working in various jobs to earn a living, my backpack got heavier as it felt like more rocks got added with time. But once I reached financial independence, it was as if suddenly someone took that backpack off and I was free. I was light as a feather.

Having read thousands of comments on my YouTube channel over the years, I have found that most people are distracted with the illusion that they are going to pick that one stock at the right time and hit it big. Most people focus all of their energy on picking the right stocks and building their wealth 

 their brokerage. I focused my energy in a different way by building my wealth outside of my brokerage account with the intent of bringing the money 

 my investment account. This allowed me to automate all my investments so that they could compound and grow passively. This really helped me control my emotions and have a long-term mindset.

Planning for my financial future is complicated enough, but I don’t believe investing should be. Focusing on a dividend growth investing strategy has been one of the best decisions I’ve made when it comes to creating generational wealth for my family and reaching financial independence at the age of 37.

I retired early with dividend investing at 37

After five years of contributing to my portfolio every single week and reinvesting every single dividend, I finally crossed the $100,000 mark. It took me long enough, I know.

The climb from $50k to $95k felt like it happened in a flash. Two years ago, I was sitting at $53k, and I was at $75k a year later. Things were moving pretty fast.

But once I got near $95k, I found myself stuck in some sort of investing limbo. I kept hovering between $95k and $99k, which was frustrating. And after a while, that elusive final push seemed like it was never going to come.

One random day last week, I got back from a run and saw a bunch of market notifications. SCHD was up a lot. Dividend stocks, in general, were flying.

I opened up Snowball Analytics to see that, lo and behold, the ceiling had finally shattered. My portfolio had officially crossed $100,000 for the very first time!

I can’t tell you how excited I was to see that number. It had been a long time coming.

Over the course of your investing journey, you hit a lot of cool milestones, but some of them feel undeniably bigger than others. Your first $10k, your first $100 month in dividends, hitting $50k—these are all pretty meaningful.

But $100,000…this one felt different for some reason. I think that’s because—as Charlie Munger said—it’s the hardest one to reach, but it’s also the most important.

Once you hit $100,000, the compounding effect in your portfolio really starts to become more noticeable. Once you get there, your returns start to move the needle for you in a much bigger way, as opposed to your contributions doing most of the heavy lifting.

I think that’s why this milestone hits a bit harder than some of the others I’ve experienced. At the end of the day, $100,000 is just a nice, round number. So it’s not really about that, it’s more about what it represents.

To me, it represents five years of showing up and staying the course. Five years of staying focused on working towards a goal. Five years of doing something that didn’t always feel like it was paying off…until it did.

We’ll see if the “hard part” is actually behind me. But if $100,000 really is the hardest, then $200,000 should come a lot easier, and $400,000 even more than that.

And that’s the cool thing about compounding. It just gets better with time.

So if you’re still on your way to your first big milestone—whether that’s $10k, $50k, or $100k—keep going. Don’t worry about being perfect, just be consistent.

Before you know it, one day—on some random Tuesday—you’ll open your portfolio to find that you’ve finally hit that milestone. And when that day comes, you will be so glad you didn’t give up.

With that said, I’d love to hear from you: what milestone are you working toward in your portfolio right now?

$100,000 Later: My Biggest Investing Lesson So Far

When people see my portfolio today, worth over 4.4 million NOK (~€385,000) and paying me dividends every single month, they often think it was always like this. The truth is very different.

I grew up in a humble home where money was always scarce. As a teenager, I sometimes had to fish with my mother just so we had food on the table. Later, as an adult, both my wife and I worked in lower-paying jobs, and the idea of financial freedom felt like something reserved for others. At one point, I was even receiving Christmas cards from debt collectors — that was how far away investing seemed.

In April 2020, I decided to change my story. I started small, with about 30,000 NOK (~€2,600) in savings. But the first year wasn’t smooth. I was lost, trying to find my way in the market. I didn’t have a clear strategy, and I experimented. By a stroke of luck, a few short-term investments worked out and suddenly gave me more cash than I had ever imagined having in my account.

That moment gave me the courage to take a bold step. In 2021, I went all in on MPC Container Ships (MPCC) because I saw the massive dividend potential. Over time, my total investment in MPCC reached about 750,000 NOK (~€65,000). Since then, it has returned close to 1.3 million NOK (~€113,000) in dividends — and I still own the shares.

As my wife and I realized this was the smart move, we made a decision: for the next two years, we would dedicate ourselves fully to the goal. We worked as much as possible, sacrificed every small luxury, and poured everything into growing the portfolio. The key was to reshape our minds to think like investors. That transformation started at home. We took control of our expenses, and most importantly, we began paying ourselves first.

Many people get this wrong — they wait to see what’s left after bills and then try to invest. We flipped the script. We made investing the first bill we paid every month. It wasn’t optional, it was the priority. That discipline changed everything.

MPCC became the engine of my dividend strategy. But once those dividends started rolling in, I knew the next step was crucial: derisking. I used the MPCC cash flow to buy into other strong companies, gradually spreading risk while keeping the compounding machine running. That decision gave me more stability and peace of mind — because no journey should depend on a single ship.

The real breakthrough moment came when I received my first big dividend payment: 476,078 NOK (~€42,000). It wasn’t just money; it was proof. Proof that patience and discipline pay off, and that financial freedom could be built step by step. That emotional moment changed my mindset forever. I was no longer just working for money — money had started working for me.

Since 2022 until today, my portfolio has paid me a total of 2,370,426 NOK (~€207,000) in dividends. These are not just numbers — they represent financial security, choices, and freedom that I once thought were impossible.

Another part of this journey has been about giving the next generation what I never had. That’s why we started “Pengeprinsessen” (The Dividend Princess), a dividend portfolio for my daughter. Since we began, we’ve never looked back. Today, at just 16 years old, her portfolio is already worth more than mine was when I turned 40. For me, that is one of the greatest measures of success: building a foundation for her future that I never had growing up.

The name Utbyttereisen itself means “The Dividend Journey” in Norwegian. It reflects not only my own path from hardship to financial freedom, but also the journey of thousands of ordinary people who are now walking this road with me.

Since then, the story of Utbyttereisen has grown far beyond myself. I’ve shared my journey openly, because I believe dividend investing should not be reserved for experts in suits. It should be accessible to ordinary people, like me and you. That’s why I often say: “Ex-day is my birthday.” Every ex-dividend day is a small celebration, a reminder that freedom is paid quarterly.

Today, thousands follow my journey through YouTube, Substack, and social media. Together, we’ve built a community of over 35,000 Norwegians who share the same dream: to let dividends create stability, freedom, and hope for the future.

If there’s one lesson I want to pass on, it’s this: you don’t need to start big — you just need to start. Even with humble beginnings, patience, and consistency, you can build a portfolio that pays you not only dividends in money, but also dividends in freedom, time, and peace of mind.

Because financial freedom is not a far-off dream. It’s a plan. And plans can be followed.

sparkles

 My journey became Utbyttereisen — The Dividend Journey. But your journey can start today.