I Got a Raise!

Two raises in fact!  No it wasn't from my employer but rather these raises came from two of my employees.  Both of them have been working hard this past year and decided to shoot me a little bit more cash every quarter.  That's dividend growth investing in action and eventually with more increases and continued investment will allow me to consider early retirement.

Yesterday, Phillip Morris (PM) increased the quarterly dividend by 6.4% from $0.94 to $1.00 per share.  Since I own 62 shares of PM that's an extra $3.75 coming my way every quarter or $15.00 extra every year.  This increase marks the sixth annual dividend increase by PM and the current yield is now 4.75%.



Good news continued when YUM Brands (YUM) announced an increase as well.  They raised the quarterly dividend 10.8% from $0.37 to $0.41.  Since I own 20 shares of YUM they'll be paying me an extra $0.80 every quarter or $3.22 every year.  This is YUM Brands' tenth consecutive annual increase and what's really impressive is that every increase has been double digit.  The current yield is now 2.26%.

That's the beauty of dividend growth investing.  The companies do the work and if they generate more profits then they tend to increase the payment to the owners.  Find the companies with the right business model and culture to increase the dividend every year and invest your capital there.  So far this year I've received increases from 34 out of 42 holdings in my FI Portfolio and expect another 3 increases later this month.

My forward 12-month dividends are now at $5,070.70 and I'm officially past my $5,000 goal by the end of the year.  I'm still $430 short of my new $5,500 goal but there's still plenty of time to get there.

Comments

  1. Congratulation on the raise!! Your third employee O gave you a raise as well. :)

    ReplyDelete
  2. I own PM and I am excited as well. I was wondering where do you get the information? I come across such news in Google Finance when I am looking at my portfolio, but lot of times, this is lost in the midst of several other news articles. So I was wondering is there a specific blog/site that tracks this information?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. DGJ,

      This site lists them for each day as well as the stocks going ex-div.

      http://online.wsj.com/mdc/public/page/2_3022-dividends-20130123.html?mod=mdc_pastcalendar

      But I'll have to defer to other readers if there's a better way.

      What I've done is in my portfolio spreadsheet where I track my dividends I have the cell highlighted for the month of the last increase announcement for each company. That way I can just start paying more attention to that company during that month and I'll usually check on the exact date of the last announcement as well. Most companies tend to announce the increase at about the same time during the month they normally increase.

      Thanks for stopping by and I hope that helps!

      Delete
    2. DGJ and JC,
      One resource I use to track dividend announcements is to sign up for Breaking News alerts on all my stock holdings through SeekingAlpha.com. The alerts can be sent to email or by downloading the Seeking Alpha dividend investors app for your smartphone. They contain all the important info-dividend increase %, ex-div date, payment date, etc. The alerts also cover any other important news about your stocks (earnings, new products, etc) so you tend to get a lot of email, especially for popular stocks like Apple. In my opinion though its the easiest way to stay on top of any news regarding your stock holdings.

      Delete
  3. Now is the time to be buying more shares. The market tanks to around Halloween then Santa show up for his rally.

    Congrats on the pay raises. That is about the only way to get one anymore.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Anon,

      I'm always on the lookout to buy and would love for a late summer/early fall dip in the markets. Unfortunately the dividend increases have been coming much more regularly than the raises from my employer.

      Thanks for stopping by!

      Delete
  4. PM is one of two stocks I still own after liquidating for my home purchase. Hooray!
    WE#1

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. WE,

      I can't fault you for holding onto PM. Great yield and solid dividend increases for years to come.

      Delete
  5. We don't own either company but they are both on our watch list. Congrats on receiving more money to put towards dividend paying stocks. :)

    cheers to dividend raises! AFFJ

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. AFFJ,

      Raises are always nice. And getting to reinvest those higher dividends is even better and really helps the compounding.

      Thanks for stopping by!

      Delete
  6. Congrats on the raise! It is great when you are the boss and get them for other people doing the work! I need to keep building my DGI portfolio and get some more raises myself.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Kipp,

      There's no way I could work nearly as hard as the millions of people that I have currently working for me! And sending me higher checks each year.

      Thanks for stopping by!

      Delete
  7. How did you find out about your raise? I have 20 or so employees out there lol but I don't get a news stream on them

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    Replies
    1. Evan,

      My way isn't the most efficient but I've gone and looked back at the last dividend increase for each company and put a comment for the date of the increase in my spreadsheet. Since most companies announce their increase around the same time I just go on the lookout for those companies each month.

      You can also sign up for a free SeekingAlpha.com account and add the companies that you own to a list to get emailed/notified of updates from those companies. Although if they're widely followed companies you'll get lots of updates. It's more efficient than my way but there's a lot more noise if you're just looking for dividend increase announcements.

      Hope that helps!

      Delete

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