Measuring your portfolio's performance is an important step of being a dividend growth investor. Our portfolios can be affected continuously by surges in the market, economic downturns, upturns, or even buying and selling if not done carefully. This causes the need to consistently take a look at your portfolio to bench mark the progress - a step missed a lot by the DGI community because of the thought that the dividend payments reign supreme and the portfolio as a whole can be ignored. It is important however to always be checking your portfolio to make sure that none of your assets are looking to strip you of more than your dividend payments could ever make up for.