Dividend Update - February 2020

dividend growth investing | financial independence | freedom | dividends

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.

January got 2020 started in the right direction and while February didn't eclipse January's mark it was still a solid month that kept the dividend snowball moving forward.

My FI Portfolio produced $350.43 in dividends with my Folio First portfolio chipping in another $4.74.  My Roth IRA added $12.71 while my Rollover IRA contributed another $198.27.  That puts my taxable account dividends for February at $355.17 and the total for all accounts at $367.88.

February was also a great month because we were able to cross a milestone in terms of forward dividends.  With the purchases, increases and some dividend re-investment our forward dividends for our FI Portfolio crossed over $8,000 and is knocking on the door of $8,100.

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 February the companies I own paid me $12.69 per day or $1.59 per hour assuming 8 hour work days every day of the month.  For the year those numbers are $14.96 per day and $1.87 per hour.




FI Portfolio

As I mentioned above my FI Portfolio produced $350.43 in dividends during February.  Compared to November 2019 that's a 1.6% increase and compared to February 2019 it's a stellar 13.0% rise.

The year over year comparison gives a better idea of the growth with less possibility for fluctuations due to odd payout schedules.  Compared to February 2019 the YTD total came in at an even better 26.4% due largely to purchases made throughout 2019.

Roth IRA

My Roth IRA generated $12.71 in dividends for February.  That's a solid 1.2% increase from November.

The YTD total through February 2020 shows a 30.7% increase compared to February 2019.

Rollover IRA

In March of last year I mentioned that I would start reporting on my Rollover IRA.  The bulk of those funds are invested in dividend growth companies, although there's a few that aren't, so to give the cleanest picture I will show just the dividend growth investments 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.

As such the time period comparisons are less important for this account since I want to take a more active approach.  

That being said, my Rollover IRA produced $198.27 in dividends during February which was a 2.6% increase from November 2019.  The year over year comparison looks significantly worse at -26.9% compared to February 2019.

Dividend Raises During the Month

February was a huge month in terms of the number of dividend increases with 12 of the companies I own boosting their dividend payouts higher.  Combined the 12 companies in my FI Portfolio boosted my forward 12-month dividends by $83.89.  Through the first two months of 2020 I've received 16 increases from 16 of the 54 companies held in my FI Portfolio increasing my forward dividends by $132.67.

Dividend Increase Source

I've started breaking down the monthly dividend increase into its components: purchases, re-investment and dividend raises.  This lets me see what is the bigger contributor each month in my pursuit of financial independence.  I'm only tracking this for my main FI Portfolio since that is the portfolio that I want to ultimately provide the bulk of our income.
Purchases | Dividend Re-Investment | Dividend Raises | Financial Independence

The grand total for February was an increase of $108.76 with dividend raises doing the heavy lifting.  As expected purchases played less of a role during February partially due to cash being lighter in that account and partially due to the purchases that I did make were in businesses that have lower initial yields but should provide faster growth over the long term.

Looking Forward

My forward 12-month dividends for my FI Portfolio ended February at $8,079.93 while my FolioFirst forward dividends are at $101.87.  That pushes the total taxable account forward 12-month dividends up to $8,181.80.  My Roth IRA's forward-12 month dividends increased to $663.39.  My Rollover IRA's forward 12-month dividends are at $2,558.12.  Across all 4 accounts, assuming no dividend cuts or position size changes, I can expect to receive at least $14,403.31 in dividends over the next year.

Monthly Average

The following chart shows 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 $601.31 per month which is $14.21 or 2.4% above 2019's monthly average of $587.10.
dividend growth investing | dividends | financial independence | freedom

Dividends Received Breakdown
Dividends | Financial Independence | Dividend Growth Investing
Dividends Received Breakdown February 2020

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

How were your dividends for February?  Did they help steady the ship during late February's selloff?

Let me know in the comments below!

Comments

  1. What an awesome month JC. Congrats on yet another strong month. This has been an absolutely crazy few weeks. My market swings with the best of them. But in the end, I wonder what's going to happen when the dust settles, we have more information, and the scope of the coronavirus is identified. They just reported the first few cases in my county this week. I'm sure there is still plenty of more turbulence to come based on some of the reactions.

    Bert

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  3. Great progress all around, JC. However, those 12 dividend raises really stand out. They provided a terrific boost to your forward dividend income.
    Congrats on reaching a $1200/mo. dividend income average across all 4 accounts. That's an amazing income stream already... and it's only getting bigger!

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  4. Nice haul of dividends, JC! I like how you break it down into how much you earn hourly. You have some really nice names in your portfolio. I would really like to own SBUX. For the time being, we both hold T and AAPL. Keep it up!

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