May Dividend Income

I won’t pull any punches. May has not been a great month for dividend income. It is the first time since I’ve started down this road of dividend investment that I’ve made less than the previous year’s results. While this may on the surface sound like a pretty big deal, I want to instead approach it as an opportunity to face my portfolio’s time of adversity. Instead of sitting here and talking about what went wrong, I instead want to talk about what went right and what will be going right with these results having come to fruition. Let’s start with what I was paid for the month of May.

Creating a Legacy Portfolio

As a dividend growth investor, my primary focus is on analyzing and selecting solid companies that pay raising dividends over time. By doing so, the hope is to ensure that the portfolio rolls downhill in the same manner as a small snow ball. Over time, the snow ball collects more and more dividend payments (snow) and therefore becomes bigger and bigger. Eventually, the snowball then becomes big enough where the payments made by it are so big that it covers living expenses and allows one to retire on them. I feel like this is the eventual dream of every dividend growth investor. But what happens after the snow ball reaches that point? Yes, your retirement appears very solid but what happens after you kick the bucket?

Dividend Income: February

Where or where did the month of February go? It seems like just yesterday that I was posting the ending results for January but here we are at the annual post for February dividend income already. Without further delay, let's get started.

February 2016 Dividends:

YUM - YUM Brands - $3.22

Total dividend income for February: $3.22
Total dividend income for 2016: $36.52


Stock purchases for the month of February:

2/3/2016 - EMR - Emerson Electric - 16 shares at $45.65/share


All in all, February was a slow month for dividend income but at least it came with the acquisition of a great company, EMR. This means that even though the portfolio is still not at the stage where it necessarily brings in a giant snow ball of wealth, as long as I continue to add to it, the snow ball inevitably becomes bigger and then yields more returns in the following years. This should be and always will be the most important thing to dividend investors such as myself. The short term is something that we cannot be too concerned about. We should instead keep our eyes on the long haul and focus on creating a small piece of a giant masterpiece that is yet to come. Every journey starts with the first step and these are some of my first steps.

Moving forward I want to continue investing in companies that meet the exact criteria of my past analysis on the stocks I already own. The process has worked so far and if it works, why reinvent the wheel? This should ensure continued success in companies that are not short term bets but instead are meant to be seen in the portfolio for many years to come. In the short term, I would like to set my eyes on adding an auto stock or a bank stock to the portfolio. These sectors appear to be down right now given the awkward movement of oil prices and that means that they come at a well deserved discount.

Thanks for reading,
Dividend Monster

Watch List: Darden Restaurants

Have you ever been to Red Lobster? Does your mouth salivate at the very thought of those delicious cheddar biscuits? How about Olive Garden's bread sticks? Do you like those? Do you crave them? If the answer is yes and you also possibly enjoy Long Horn Steakhouse or Bahama Breeze, then maybe DRI is your next acquisition. Darden Restaurants owns and operates nearly 1,900 of these locations in the US and Canada and it is the next stock on our watch list to be reviewed.

My Method of Evaluation

I think the question that I get most from readers is what method of evaluation I use to choose the select stocks that I feel really fit the mold for the Cookie Jar portfolio. After all, it should be the most important question for any dividend growth investor. What really matters to me? What do I hate most and try to avoid?