Dividend Update - December 2023 #Dividend

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.

December was a great close out to an otherwise solid year.  My FI Portfolio produced $1,543.45 for the month with my Loyal3 FolioFirst Interactive Brokers portfolio chipping in another $13.52.  My Roth IRA added $156.42 and my Rollover IRA generated $747.58.  For the month I received $1,556.97 across my taxable accounts and $2,460.97 across all accounts.  

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 December the companies I own paid me $79.39 per day or $13.89 per hour assuming 8 hour work days 5 days a week.  YTD that's $48.61 per day and $8.51 per hour.  

FI Portfolio

As I mentioned above my FI Portfolio produced $1,543.45 in dividends during December.  December's results were an excellent 11.2% increase compared to December 2022.  The full year results compared to 2022 have 2023 coming in 14.3% higher.

Roth IRA

My Roth IRA had an excellent month during December producing $156.42 in dividends.  Compared to December 2022 that's a huge 46.5% increase due in large part to additional investments and of course a special dividend from Fastenal certainly helped.  The full year results have 2023 21.1% ahead of 2022.

Excluding the special dividend from Fastenal December was still an excellent 28.0% increase year over year and the full year results showed a 19.1% increase.  

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 a total of $747.58 in dividends during December which is a underwhelming 2.1% increase compared to December 2022.  The full year results have 2023 just 3.1% ahead compared to 2022 due to some partial sales and dividend cuts. 

Dividend Raises During the Month

December was a solid month for dividend increases with 6 of my FI Portfolio holdings raising their dividends.  Combined those 6 companies increased our forward 12-month dividends by $40.26.  For all of 2023 I received 65 total increases which have raised our forward 12-month dividends by $737.82.

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.

December was another pretty strong month especially considering we once again didn't add new cash to the portfolio.  We've been prioritizing cash savings as opposed to new investments because we now have 3 kids in day care and are mulling over other potential opportunities.  

That being said I'm still quite happy to see that we averaged a $79.75 per month increase for the year despite very little capital being added to the portfolio.  Even more so considering we've suffered through two significant dividend cuts that further weighed down the results to the tune of a $15.19 per month drag.  We'd be over the $1,000 increase threshold for the year if it weren't for those pesky dividend cuts.  However, we still came pretty dang close at $957.03.

Purchases have been a non-factor in 2023 adding only $150.56 total to our forward dividends and that's primarily been from cash dividends being used to purchase other holdings.

Luckily dividend growth investing isn't built to rely solely on one source of dividend growth.  When one is lacking you can still rely on the other two to help you out.  

Dividend increases have carried the weight thus in 2023 with a total contribution of 737.82 or a $61.48 per month average.     

Reinvestment also added $250.94 to our forward dividends or a $20.91 monthly average for the year.

That's what's really cool about finally hitting some scale with your investments and dividends.  Dividend reinvestment and organic dividend growth can do the heavy lifting for you and eventually will far surpass what you can do with savings alone.

During December our forward 12-month dividends rose by $91.10 and for full year 2023 they increased by $957.03.

Looking Forward

My forward 12-month dividends for my FI Portfolio ended November at $12,139.78 while my Loyal 3 FolioFirst Interactive Brokers forward dividends are at $248.27.  That pushes the total taxable account forward 12-month dividends up to $12,388.05.  My Roth IRA's forward-12 month dividends are at $1,281.98.  My Rollover IRA's forward 12-month dividends are at $5,072.13.  

Across all 4 accounts, assuming no dividend cuts or position size changes, I can expect to receive at least $18,742.16 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 December at $978.60 per month which is $122.58 higher or a 14.3% increase compared to 2022's monthly average of $856.02.

Dividends Received Breakdown

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

Did you finish up Q4 on a strong note?  What about the full year better than you were hoping heading into the year?

Let me know in the comments below!