Dividend Update - October 2021

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.

During October my FI Portfolio produced $536.20 in dividends with my Loyal3 FolioFirst Interactive Brokers portfolio chipping in another $25.34.  My Roth IRA added $72.58 and my Rollover IRA generated $232.19.  For the month I received $561.54 across my taxable accounts and $866.31 across all accounts.  Nothing spooky about that!

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 a 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 October the companies I own paid me $39.12 per day or $4.89 per hour assuming 8 hour work days.  Year to date those numbers are $47.86 per day and $5.98 per hour.

FI Portfolio

As I mentioned above my FI Portfolio produced $536.20 in dividends during October.  Compared to July that's a 12.0% increase and compared to October 2020 that's a 25.5% rise.  

Year to date my FI Portfolio has produced $6,676.13 in dividends which is a decent 7.4% increase compared to the YTD numbers for 2020.  That's primarily due to my closing of some positions during 2020 as well as the handful of dividend cuts that were received last year as well.  Moving forward I expect 2021 to start distancing itself from 2020's results.

Roth IRA

My Roth IRA generated $72.58 in dividends during October which is a 10.7% increase versus July.  Compared to October 2020 it's an excellent 36.6% increase although that is coming off a relatively small base so capital deployment each year plays a bigger role.

Through October the YTD total for my Roth IRA is showing an excellent 18.7% increase compared to 2020 with $652.18 being received thus far in 2021.  Just about all of my cash is deployed for this account so further gains will be coming via organic dividend growth and dividend reinvestment until 2022 when I have a better idea on our tax situation for 2021 and can transfer funds.

Rollover IRA

In March of 2019 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.  

My Rollover IRA produced $232.19 in dividends during October which is a 1.9% increase from July due to dividend reinvestment and one dividend increase.  Compared to October 2020 this years dividends showed a 21.4% increase due to additional capital deployment, dividend reinvestment and organic dividend growth.

The YTD total for 2021 sits at $2,965.90 which is an excellent 38.0% increase compared to the same period of 2020.

Dividend Raises During the Month

October saw a big step down in dividend increases compared to September; of course it's hard to top 9 raises in a month.  October did bring about 3 raises that combined to increase my forward 12-month dividends by $17.40.  

I love dividend increases because it means (1) the company is doing better and (2) I get paid more while doing absolutely nothing.  That's about as good as it gets.  So far in 2021 I've received 46 raises that have increased my forward 12-month dividends by a combined $586.65.

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.

October was another solid month in terms of increasing my forward dividends.  Purchases led the way as expected with both reinvestment and dividend increases coming in around $17 each.  All together October saw my FI Portfolio forward 12-month dividends increase by $103.71 across the three legs of the dividend growth stool. What's really exciting though is that I've surpassed a $100 increase to my forward dividends in 7 out of 10 months this year and even better is the average increase is well above that $139.27.

Year to date purchases and dividend increases are the far and away leaders to forward dividend increases with purchases fast approaching $700 and raises on track to be well over $600 by the end of the year.  Reinvestment is well behind the other two although that's partially by design as I've been taking most of my dividends in cash since commissions dropped to zero a few years back.  The 3 sources of dividend growth have combined to increase my forward dividends by $1,392.74 which is awesome to see considering there's still 2 months left to go for the year.

Looking Forward

My forward 12-month dividends for my FI Portfolio ended October at $8,902.20 while my Loyal 3 FolioFirst Interactive Brokers forward dividends are at $178.41.  That pushes the total taxable account forward 12-month dividends up to $9,080.61.  My Roth IRA's forward-12 month dividends are at $886.43.  My Rollover IRA's forward 12-month dividends are at $3,988.08.  Across all 4 accounts, assuming no dividend cuts or position size changes, I can expect to receive at least $13,955.12 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 ended October at $670.61 per month which is $38.48 higher or a 6.1% increase compared to 2020's monthly average of $632.13. 

Dividends Received Breakdown

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

How do you stand with your goals for 2021?  With just 2 months left in the year what are you doing to finish the year out strong?

Let me know in the comments below!