Dividend Update - July 2019

It's the end of one month and the beginning of another so it's time for my favorite update: my dividend update.  These dividend updates reflect all dividends that I receive through my investing pursuits. I hope they can help inspire you to take control of your own finances and invest to build a passive income stream. What you use that stream for is up to you, whether it's to fund early retirement, just provide some FI/FU money, or even to provide for an annual vacation; the key is that it can provide options and open up all sorts of possibilities. You can check my dividend income or progress pages to see what dedication to an investment plan can give you.

The start of each new quarter is always a bit of a let down after the dividend haul from the last month of each quarter.  However, I can't complain about making money just because my past self invested some of my savings.  My FI Portfolio, taxable account, produced $327.07 in dividends for the month while my Folio First portfolio chipped in another $13.00.  My Roth IRA added another $45.34 while my Rollover IRA contributed $43.44.  That puts my taxable account dividends at $340.07 with a total of $428.85 across all of my accounts in July.  

Making Money While I Sleep

The power of joining the ownership class is that those companies can work much harder for you than you can.  Think about it.  By myself I have to devote my own time to my regular job in order to make money.  However by buying a stake in a high quality business I now get to leverage my own time that I exchanged for money into companies that are working around the clock to make products or provide services for their customers.  Those companies are working 24/7/365 which means that I make money even when I sleep.

During July the companies I own paid me $13.83 per day or $0.58 per hour.  For the year those numbers are $24.71 per day and $1.03 per hour.




FI Portfolio

As I mentioned above my FI Portfolio produce $1,075.21 in dividends for June.  That's a 7.7% decline from April, although the decrease was due to Walmart paying a dividend in April, but not in July.  On a normalized basis it was a more palatable 2.0% quarter over quarter increase.  

Compared to July 2018, which gives a better growth comparison, the increase was 16.6% thanks in large part to some purchases made through the year.  The YTD total through the end of July 2019 showed a 12.6% rise compared to the same period in 2018.

Roth IRA

My Roth IRA generated $45.30 in dividends for July.  That's a pretty modest 0.9% increase from April due solely to dividend reinvestment.

Compared to July 2018, which gives a better idea of the growth, July showed a disappointing 0.2% increase.  The meager year over year raise was due to trimming some positions over the last year that's largely been reinvested into a business that pays in a different month.  The YTD total through July is showing a very healthy 26.5% rise compared to last year.

Rollover IRA



In March I mentioned how I will start reporting on my Rollover IRA.  The bulk of those funds are invested in dividend growth companies, although there's few that aren't, so to give the cleanest picture I will show those during my monthly reports.  That being said I'm not too worried about any particular month/quarter of dividends since my current plan is to be a bit more active with these funds than I would in my taxable accounts.  Companies fall in and out of favor with market participants throughout the year and I want to attempt to capture some of that change in emotion.  If I feel a company is undervalued I'll purchase shares and won't sell until the story changes or the market price hits what I feel is at least 1.3x "fair value".  This is just a little experiment that I wanted to try and if I feel it's too much hassle or that I'm constantly taking 2 steps forward and 1 step back then I'll revert back to my bread and butter buy and hold strategy.

My Rollover IRA produced just $43.44 in dividends during July which was a huge 87.8% increase from April's total of $23.13.  Although that's due to Disney's semi-annual payout coming through.  Normalizing for just the companies that paid out in both times shows a much more modest 0.3% raise.

Dividend Raises During the Month

July was a bit slower on the dividend growth front with just 3 companies in my FI Portfolio announcing raises and 2 within my Roth IRA.  You mean a company I own a piece of, albeit tiny, wants to pay out more of their profits to me just because I own part of the company?  Sign me up!  

Combined the 3 companies in my FI Portfolio boosted my forward 12-month dividends by $7.93.  Thus far in 2019 I've received 31 increases from 28 of 55 of the companies within my FI Portfolio combining to increase my forward 12-month dividends by $211.50.

Looking Forward

My forward 12-month dividends for my FI Portfolio ended July at $7,203.50 while my FolioFirst forward dividends are at $99.89.  That pushes the total taxable account forward 12-month dividends into a new threshold at $7,303.39.  My Roth IRA's forward-12 month dividends increased to $552.19.  My Rollover IRA's forward 12-month dividends are at $1,992.89.  Across all 4 accounts, assuming no dividend cuts or position size changes, I can expect to receive at least $9,848.47 in dividends over the next year.

Monthly Average

Below is the chart showing the monthly dividend totals for each year that I've been investing as well as the monthly average.  It's not always an increase as some companies have weird payout schedules, as we saw above, and eventually some positions will get dropped, but the long-term trend is what matters.  

The rolling 12-month monthly average for my FI Portfolio is at $559.90 per month which is $34.95 or 6.7% above 2018's monthly average of $524.95. 

Dividends Received Breakdown

I've updated my Dividend Income page to reflect July's changes.

Did your dividend haul for July get the second half of 2019 started strong?

Let me know in the comments below!