Speaker: … have enough money to benefit from the Dividend Machine and whenever you are ready.

Jake: How much money does a person need to start the Dividend Machine? Well, of course, that varies, but I've started my 8 grandchildren with about $10,000 a piece with Dividend Machine stocks and what I've done is I've kind of divided that into 3 or 4 stocks and every time I have a birthday or a celebration I'll buy them 1 or 2 shares of each of those stocks and rather than a present that's the present that they get and I think they are going to learn that they can do their own Dividend Machine before they are 20 years old. So, I don't think you are any too young, one share, but I mean I do 2 or 3 for each of them but that's their Dividend Machine and that's what I have learned from the Dividend Machine and Bill Spetrino.

Speaker: What about the people who may think that they are just not smart enough to follow the Dividend Machine?

Jake: You know, I get the question of well you have to know a lot about economics and money management, but you start reading the Dividend Machine and it only takes a few months to get the feel for the pulse, the feel where you are going and I think that anybody with reasonable intelligence can read the newsletter, follow the newsletter and in a few months you kind of feel confident of what you are doing even though you may have had very limited experience previous to that.

Speaker: Perfect. If you can, finish the following statement, you know, reply back with kind of answering it – the one thing that I want people to know about the Dividend Machine.

Jake: If there was any one thing that I want people to know about the Dividend Machine is that to me it's driven by Bill Spetrino. I now realize that he has no agenda, he is a very honest person and probably the most sincere person in financial category that I have ever met and I think people can put their faith into his philosophy and his techniques.

Speaker: Perfect. If there is one thing that I would like to tell Bill …

Jake: You know I hope in the near future to write a very personal e-mail to Bill about what he has meant to me. I guess I could say it in one word fantastic and thank you (that's 3 words).

Speaker: Perfect. The easy part of this one is you are going to look directly into this camera and just say, you know, my name is Jake Hopsky and I'm a Dividend Machine subscriber.

Jake: This is all edited isn't it?

Speaker: Yeah.

Jake: I'm a Dividend Machine subscriber and the $25,000 you offered me is not enough to do this (laughing). That's why I asked you first. You don't mind that do you?

Speaker: Not at all.

Jake: I'm sorry, what's the question again (laughing).

Speaker: Just into this camera my name is Jake Hopskey and I'm a Dividend Machine subscriber.

Jake: My name is Jake Hopsky and I have been a Dividend Machine subscriber for approximately 3½ to 4 years.

Speaker: Once more and just your name and I'm a Dividend Machine subscriber.

Jake: My name is Jake Hopsky and I am a Dividend Machine subscriber.

Speaker: One more time.

Jake: My name is Jake Hopsky and I am a Dividend Machine subscriber.

Speaker: Perfect. See, that was the easy part.

Jake: The Dividend Machine has made me a very confident investor, but kind of a lazy investor and I'll tell you why. Prior to the Dividend Machine, as I told you, I got a bunch of newsletters so there would be tons of potential candidates each month and if you throw out 30 you are going to have 1 or 2 that hit anyway and those are the ones that the people seem to follow up on. So, I would have to do a lot of research myself and when the Dividend Machine first started out I did the same thing, but as I developed more confidence in Bill Spetrino my laziness has come to the front and I seem to spend almost no time researching the companies because I trust him now. So, in many ways it has made my lazy, but very confident that he has done the research for me.

Speaker: Perfect. Now, we are to the part of the program where I ask you a question and you just kind of give me the thoughts that come into your mind. The cost of the Dividend Machine works out to be about $0.26 a day. If you can give me your thoughts on what you're getting for that $0.26 a day and just start by saying, you know the Dividend Machine works out to be $0.26 a day and that's …

Jake: The Dividend Machine costs about $0.26 a day and that's just unbelievable. I'm getting confidence, I'm getting to direct my own portfolio, I'm getting returns that I've never had before, I mean it's just unbelievable. I feel like I'm just floating on air every time I read it. I can't wait for the next one to come out. I mean I look on e-mails on Tuesdays and sometimes it doesn't show up and I'll say where is it, where is it. I mean it is the first thing that I look for on Tuesdays.

Speaker: Perfect. The next one, please finish this statement, without the Dividend Machine and reply by saying, you know, without the Dividend Machine and what your thoughts are.

Jake: Without the Dividend Machine I would be okay financially, but I would be 25% less in my total portfolio than I have. I'd still be floundering around running from one newsletter to the next. I would be with the money managers that we had previously. I would be okay, but I wouldn't be nearly as comfortable and I wouldn't have the confidence in a single source that I now have.

Speaker: Next one, kind of the flip side of that, thanks to the Dividend Machine and give me your thoughts on that.

Jake: Thanks to the Dividend Machine I now have more resources to live a much more carefree lifestyle that I want to. I don't think about spending money. I know I'm going to leave my heirs a much more comfortable lifestyle as well as a charity foundation that we founded and I have reestablished some integrity toward people who write newsletters. I think that as much as anything else. I have tremendous integrity now toward Bill Spetrino.

Speaker: What do you like the most about the Dividend Machine?

Jake: The Dividend Machine is simple, a few pages. You can understand everything on there. It's not trying to be a snow job and no detailed batters, alphas or charts. It is a reasonable explanation and it just makes good simple sense.

Speaker: Perfect. A lot of people are going to watch this who probably thinks that they are too old to start taking advantage of the Dividend Machine. Give me your thoughts on that and kind of give me your thoughts on the old kind of rule of thumb for financial advice is, you know, at a certain age you just move everything into bonds and you get out of stocks, obviously, that limits people in terms of receiving dividends, any sort of capital appreciation and things like that. So, give me your thoughts on, you know, if someone thinks they are too old for this, you know, what are your thoughts on that and kind of reply by saying, you know, if people think they are too old …

Jake: You know, some people think that as you get older you should have whatever age you are in bonds and the rest in stocks. I've learned from the Dividend Machine that that is not so. You should have what you need in dividends before you do bonds. In other words, whatever your needs are secure that in dividends then, if you want to, go to the bond route. I'm not heavy in the bond route at all, but no I don't think the age part of being older and limiting what you should do in the Dividend Machine has any creditability.

Speaker: How has subscribing to the Dividend Machine made you a more confident investor?

Jake: Well, since getting the Dividend Machine I've become very confident that the limited number of new ideas on either a monthly or yearly basis are very well researched; prior to that, I might get 10 or 20 each week or each month from whatever subscription I was …

Speaker: What I want to talk about next is the investing returns that you were getting before the Dividend Machine and kind of what you have gotten since then and I think in your responses you said that you were averaging about 4 to 5% a year with the money manager and you have averaged about 14 to 15% with the Dividend Machine. I think last year alone you made about 30%. So, if you can just kind of give us that general comparison.

Jake: You know, everyone wants to know and kind of brag to their friends how they are doing compared to somebody else. A lot of times that embellishment, but some people tell the truth. I think my overall results since I started are in the low digits, probably under 5%, 3 to 4% until I stumbled across the Dividend Machine. I've averaged in the high teens since then. Last year (2013), I averaged right at 30%. Now, not every stock do you get a 4 bagger, but like Gilead I've got right at 400% return in the last 2 years, a medical stock. I had heard of the company, but I would not have invested in it but now my problem is with Gilead is what do I do with all of this money; do I sell it or do I keep it? So, I'm hoping Bill to give me some guidance on that and that is in one of his aggressive stocks. Most of his stocks are the conservative stocks and you don’t get a 400% return. You don't look for one. If you get one, something is wrong. It's too high, but I have averaged 30% last year and, you know, usually if somebody said we guarantee you 8% a year for the next 20 years I would take that in a second, but actually now I'm almost looking forward to more like 12% and maybe I'll be disappointed, but so far that's what has been happening.

Speaker: Perfect. Along those lines, if you could tell us some of the biggest gains you got with Dividend Machine and instead of, legally we're not sure if we can say the companies' names so if you could say, you know, one particular stock went up this much and another one went up and just kind of go through some of your largest gains in your portfolio.

Jake: Okay. Well, the largest gains I had is absurd; it's right at 400% and that's in 2½ years. That's in one of the more aggressive stocks that Bill recommended. That's the most I've ever had. In the conservative part of the portfolio, which Bill says keep 90% of your assets in, several of the stocks I'm in the 30% to 40% range; a few of them you know are 5% to 10% and most of them tend to be 15% to 20%. So, that's what I'm looking for.

Speaker: Perfect. How has the value of your portfolio changed since 2010 when you started following the Dividend Machine, just in terms of a percentage or, if you are comfortable, an actual dollar amount?

Jake: Uh, in the last 2½ years my portfolio has returned actually close to $1,000,000 and I was about to, at some point I hope to write Bill a letter or an e-mail to let him know I don't really need the extra $1,000,000. I mean I could always use it. My children will enjoy it, but it is a feeling of being on air so to speak. I can do anything that I want. I don't have to answer to anybody and I'm still looking for an agenda, but he has no agenda and that's what is so beautiful about the Dividend Machine; it's really to help the people who subscribe to this letter. I've never seen it in any other letter. My returns have been enormous.

Speaker: In touching on you mentioned your children will enjoy it, obviously, that will allow you to leave a legacy for them. If you can kind of go into that and talk about, you know, emotionally and as a father the ability to leave a substantial legacy for your children partially due to the money that you have seen as an increase from the Dividend Machine.

Jake: I have 3 children and 8 grandchildren and you worry about them. I don't think the economic opportunities in the country now are quite as much as they were when I was growing up and I hope that we can leave enough legacy that their education, no matter how high it should go, will be taken care of. I don't think I would want to leave any of the kids enough money that they don't have to work, but I would at least like to leave them enough that they don't have to worry about educating their children and we've set up endowment funds with that purpose and also a significant amount of an endowment fund for charity. I do believe in sharing what you have. So, hopefully this will continue and the Dividend Machine will allow me to continue both the legacy to my children and to our endowment fund for charity.

Speaker: And I would like to touch on that to because somebody else last night mentioned that, you know, there are givers and takers in the world and one of their motivating factors was to give back to charities. Can you talk about that a little bit and why that is important to you to leave money for charity?

Jake: You know, we are helping in some ways or others. I went to state schools. I'm totally public educated from high school, to college and to medical school; no private schools and I don't know how much that costs the state or the government, but it did cost a lot and I don't feel like I'm any less well educated for it. I'm sure I can compete; I know I can compete with anybody. So, I think it is important to have other resources that people who are less fortunate can go into. I don't think my children will ever have, as I said, the opportunity to make the resources that I did so, what we're doing is creating a foundation and that we're more or less forcing them to use the proceeds of that foundation for charity so, we're trying to teach them through our own in the grave technique that they have to give this money to charity. So, it is kind of like an educational tool that I'm using. I'm not directing where the money goes, they are going to direct where the money goes, but they can't use it for themselves so, in a way, I am from the grave (and it sounds very gruesome) directing them how I would like their lives to be thankful for what they have and to give back and so this is what me and my wife have planned and have set up.

Speaker: Fantastic. Now, you mentioned I think in your response you're reinvesting I think 90% of dividends 10% you are using to kind of supplement your retirement. If you can talk about what it is like every month to see the dividend checks rolling in, you know, to open the mailbox and there is a large check just for owning a company.

Jake: You know, I like to kind of have hands on and every morning about 6 o'clock I get up. All of my accounts are with the same broker and I look at activity and some days there is no activity, but other days there is a lot like recently one of the higher positions I had one day alone $10,000 came in and it is like getting a check or going on a cruise and putting some down on a roulette wheel and winning. I mean I didn't do anything to get this money and all of a sudden $10,000 popped in there one day. It makes you feel real good and that day, you know, the rest of the day could go bad but that day started off pretty good and so every day I check it and 5, 6, 8 or 10 times a month all of a sudden money shows up from one of these dividends and I say "wow, man this is like owning property" and I don't own any except these things.

Speaker: Perfect. If you can, take us back to the tech bubble and the crash of the 2000. If you can kind of take us leading up to that where your portfolio was and kind of the impact of the dot.com bubble on the value of your portfolio.

Jake: Are you talking about 2002 or 2008?

Speaker: 2002.

Jake: Okay. Going into the 2000s one of our senior men had kind of pushed some of the significant part of the portfolio to be in CDs only. He didn't trust stocks and so going into the last 1990s when his influence reigned we have had like 10 years of CD response and by that time I was fully in charge of the program and that's when we started hiring or at least having more of our personal managers doing our pension portfolios. About the same time, or before that, I had been handling my own finances the money that I would have saved out of our pension plan and I first started with load funds. You would go through a magazine like Forbes and they would have an all-star load program and you would follow that for a while except usually after they recommended some fund the next year it wouldn't do so well. About that same time the no loads became, and this was in the late 1990s to early 2000s, so we went or at least I went to no-load technique and had about the same result and then I started thinking and finding that well you know dividends do pretty good so I started buying dividend stocks for myself then the 2002 tech bubble came and I don't remember the exact loss, but we participated fully in the downturn. We recovered from that and we were, at least our pensions plans were pretty heavily invested in equities by the time the late 2007 to 2008 came in. We had about a 40% to 50% drawdown during that time, of course, everybody lost, but it seemed like the bottom really fell out and that's when I started looking around to do more total management myself and I stumbled across (in about 2010) the Dividend Machine. By that time, I had had maybe 12 or 15 newsletters that I was taken and it seemed like a fairly reasonable cost for a newsletter and over the next year or so the information in there got to impress me more and more without a lot of thinking and I started dropping the other newsletters and more depending on the Dividend Machine philosophy and by early 2013 I had dropped all of the other newsletters and was pretty much 100% dependent for my guidance from the Dividend Machine.

Speaker: If you can, take us back to the late 2007 to 2008 market drop where you saw a drawdown of 40 to 50% emotionally what did that do to you? Did you lose sleep? Did you have retirement concerns? You can say, you know, when I saw a 40 to 50% loss in my portfolio I felt …

Jake: In the 2008, early 2009 drawdown my personal portfolio and pension portfolio at one point was down at least 50%. By the end of the year it had recovered a little bit and I still had sufficient funds in there that I could retire at an appropriate age if I wanted to and not have to sale my house or anything. I might have to give up my golf club or something like that, but I really wasn't worried about how I was going to live, but I felt pretty bad when you see yourself working so hard for 35 to 40 years and all of a sudden half of what you had was gone you don't feel good about it. Slowly it built back and I never sold a stock, I never sold anything out and we have recovered fully over the 3 to 4 years. Actually, I'm higher now than I ever was before.

Speaker: One of the very fortunate ones. So, you have never had to adjust retirement plans or worry about, if it's a question that doesn't kind of apply I won't ask it, you know, for our purposes. You were comfortable with your retirement; you just figured okay I just got to cut back a little bit here and there and everything will be okay. There was never a point where you were worried I might have to keep working for another x amount of years or anything like that?

Jake: If your question comes up were you going to have to work longer than you anticipated, when I started in practice in 1967 my net worth was $600. I've worked 47 years with a good job and a very good compensation so, even though the drawdown that I experienced and it hurt me emotionally, was almost 50% I never worried about having to continue to work if I didn't want to. I'm still working 47 years later at age 76 because I want to. I don't have to work.

Speaker: Perfect. How did, I think you mentioned you started following Bill in 2010 timeframe. If you can, tell us how you first came across Bill?

Jake: You know I found Bill Spetrino and the Dividend Machine strictly by accident. It wasn't unusual to kind of surf the internet for dividend stocks and just put dividends into the web browser and one day it came up and I don't really know how long the Dividend Machine had been around, but I had never heard of it before. So I clicked on the site and it looked pretty good and it was pretty cheap compared to other subscriptions. I think it was about $99 and most of the others were $200, $300, $400 and I said, you know, I'll try it and I tried it thinking it was going to be like most of the others that would attempts to upscale you to something else or some sort of agenda different from what was originally said, but I couldn't find one. I couldn't find another agenda. The agenda was to help the participants of the Dividend Machine and given the opportunity on occasion I would try to contact Bill or write to find out what's the agenda because I had never come across an investment service or a subscription that didn't have an agenda to try and upscale you to a much higher lever. I mean no matter what it is, even Morningstar one of the great investment letters, they keep calling all of the time trying to upscale you to other services. I never go that from the Dividend Machine and I got a sense of reliability and believability and over the last 3½ to 4 years I totally believe that there is no other agenda other than to help the participants of the Dividend Machine. So, I found it by accident and it was one of the best accidental discoveries I've ever made.

Speaker: Perfect. The next question is what was it like when you discovered Bill and the Dividend Machine and I know from your responses and what I would like to have you say is the writing by Bill Spetrino is like apple pie and ice cream and instead of alphas, betas and ___________________ it was plain writing with good sense. You said you stumbled across the Dividend Machine about 3 years ago and it felt like a good fitting shoe or glove if you can kind of go into that, you know, what it felt like when you found the Dividend Machine.

Jake: Well, when I discovered Bill Spetrino and the Dividend Machine it felt like what my philosophy had been. It felt like it was the glove that I had used many, many times before. It was exactly what I had found myself but didn't have the right guidance to know exactly where to go. Our pension person at the time was a very educated terrific person and we would meet with him and he would give us these long charts, all of these alphas and betas and charts and I mean I really never understood them much, but my wife came across something that I've used many times before she would use, you know, call his name and say look all we really want to know is what did we have last year and what do we have now. All of the rest of the stuff is just fluff and this is pretty much what I got in the Dividend Machine; I got why the stock was liked, what you could anticipate and where we wanted to go and it just felt very comfortable and every year, every week the e-mail comes out and every month the newsletter comes out and it pretty much is the same thing; good information that I can understand. It feels comfortable and it's not trying to snow me. Almost anybody who knows anything about money management at all can understand it and it has been consistent and the results have been excellent.

Speaker: It's starting to get warm out here, we're all sweating. I'm going to ask questions and respond back kind of answering the question and then go into the response. A simple one to start with, what is your name and what year were you born?

Jake: My name Jake Kofsky and I was born in 1937.

Speaker: And tell us about your career Jay?

Jake: My career was this I always wanted to be a physician from the time I was 6 years old. I went to the University of Georgia. I graduated in 1957. I went to the medical college of Georgia and graduated in 1961. I then had 4 additional years of training at both Sinai Hospital in Baltimore and the Medical School teaching hospitals in Augusta, Georgia, 2 years in the Air Force and then I went into private practice of radiology.

Speaker: And what is your job title or what is your position now?

Jake: Well, I have been at the same hospital 47 years and I started out as a staff radiologist and I kind of specialized first in nuclear medicine and then I kind of branched off into breast cancer detection, mammography and now for the last 5 years all I do is breast cancer detection.

Speaker: Okay. When you said in your responses it looks like as part of your radiology group of the hospital you, a few years ago (or maybe more than a few years ago) you took over kind of the retirement plan for that. So, you can kind of start by telling me how your investing journey started and then kind of where your responsibilities like now.

Jake: When I graduated medical school and additional 6 years of training in the Air Force after that you are in your early 30s, you are starting to make a living and you know zero about investments, absolutely zero and you know eventually you are going to have to have a retirement program in place, you have to save for your kids' educations so you start reading and then the investment people find their way to you. They know you have a source of income. You get calls every week from people trying to make money from you and you really don’t know what to do so, you kind of run like a chicken with the head cut off. You get one stock, you get one investment idea or one plan and usually those don't work out and throughout the years you start getting a little knowledge. At the same time I became President of my group of 12 radiologists and we started a pension plan and this was about 40 years ago and I found myself in charge of the pension plan. So, it came upon my responsibility to learn more and more and more. We hired professional managers and we had had several managers throughout the years with limited success and then as I became into semiretirement, which I am now, I kind of let the rest of the group fend for themselves and I just took over my own personal responsibility about 10 years ago.

Speaker: When you were in charge of the radiology group and the retirement plan for that group you were with money manager brokers or whoever it was, what was your returns or what was your overall investment success with those groups and if you can kind of just say, you know, when I was with a full service broker or money manager or whoever it was and then give us

Jake: Well, when our group was with a full service broker for all the years by this time I was reading financial magazines, looking at returns of various indices and it kind of came that our returns always mirrored or were slightly below the index for what our managers had assigned that asset class for and, of course, the explanations were that in the up markets it is very difficult to beat an index, but we will flourish in the down markets. Well, when the down markets came, like they always do, we did as bad if not worse in the indices so, I kind of began to lose faith in these professional managers knowing that I still didn't have enough of my own knowledge to manage such a large sum money nor did I want the responsibility so we kind of stayed with managers and we accepted, you know, borderline index returns and that's what my experience has been over the many years of the professional managers; they give you border line, barely indexed returns.

Speaker: Perfect.