I first started to follow the stock market and learned about individual investing while working full-time in my career as an information systems manager for a public water utility. Now retired, I am embarking upon a second career as a writer and investor, managing my Income Compounder portfolio to generate passive income from my investments to supplement my Social Security and pension income.

The need to create this style of investment portfolio on my own became painfully obvious to me after I received an unexpected inheritance from an uncle who passed away far too young. I had a financial advisor at the time, in late 2007, who recommended that I put all of it in mutual funds. Then in 2008 the market began to crash and in 2009 when I had to pay my share of estate taxes, I was forced to sell a portion of my inheritance at a loss of about 30%.

After that experience, I decided to become much better educated about the workings of the stock market, bond markets, closed end funds (CEFs), real estate investment trusts (REITs), MLPs (Master Limited Partnerships), BDCs (Business Development Companies), and other investment vehicles such as Treasuries (e.g., I-bonds - inflation-adjusted treasury bonds, TIPS).

I now have more than 300 published articles on Seeking Alpha that focus primarily on income investments, although I still like to follow and occasionally write about under-followed growth stocks with significant potential.