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.

Dividend Income: November

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas. With the arrival of December comes the monthly honor and duty of counting up the dividends received over the past month and recapping the movement that got us here. That being said, overall, the month was a pretty decent month in relation to others. Here's a quick recap of our payers.

• AT&T - T - $14.88
• YUM Brands - YUM - $3.57
• Abbvie - ABBV - $5.70
• STAG Industrial - STAG - $1.74
• Total: $25.89
• Total Dividends for 2016: $269.08

I know it doesn't look like much in the grand scheme of the portfolio but it looks like a lot to me because it shows the building block style of investing. Only a year ago I was looking at less than $100 total dividends for the entire year (it was actually only barely over $50. That means that this year alone has already completely shattered last year's results. If I can continue that trend, the additional investment income that dividends provide start to become a snowball that rolls itself.

With kids on the horizon, it's important for me and my wife to put away as much as possible right now so it's locked in during the months/years that it will be even harder to find the additional income to invest. Although we have yet to be successful in having kids, it's an almost certainty in the near future and I would be an idiot to not prepare ahead of time for that life adjustment. Anyway, that's all I've got for today.

Dividend Income: August

The best time of the month has finally come. It's time to compile all the dividends received and see just how much is sitting at the bottom of the passive income coin jar. Although this month was not the most extravagant that the blog has ever seen, it wasn't exactly dead either. Let's see what we brought in this month:

Dividend Income: August

STAG - STAG Industrial - $1.74

ABBV - Abbvie - $5.70

YUM - Yum Brands - $3.22

Total: $10.66

Total Dividends in 2016: $171.66

Total Dividends in 2015: $62.25

Increase YOY at Present: $109.41

Alright, so it's not the most that we've ever seen the Dividend Scythe pick up but it's still moving us forward on our way. Like I remind myself every month, it's the sum of the smaller parts that make up the great whole in the end. It's best not to lose sight of that.

That being said, I wanted to make sure to include the difference in this month's tally from the prior year to show just how far the portfolio has come from the year prior. This serves as a good indicator of whether or not we're heading in the right direction and I'm happy to say that it confirms good things. There is at this time a difference of $109.41 over the entire last year's passive income (and we've still got a few months to go!). Even though the $10.66 of income this month may seem small, it is a small piece of a much larger puzzle that is being put together.

Moving forward this month I really want to hone in on a good high yielding dividend stock. I know that there aren't many out there that have solid numbers but the portfolio has reached a point where it can take some chances to further fuel the ship into outer space. If you've got any ideas of where one might find this fuel, please leave your comment in the section below.

Dividend Income: June

Dividends, dividends everywhere! That’s how I feel looking back at my dividend income for the month of June. Wow, what an incredible turn out for the stocks that I own. It’s really great when all the chips come down at almost the exact same time. Pair this month’s huge amount of payouts with the current upward trend of all my stocks now that everything is rebounding from the Brexit news and my week has been nothing short of incredible to watch.

Months like these remind me just how far I’ve come from the start of the portfolio. When I first started I was barely getting anything out of each month’s dividend payments. My eyes would get tired just thinking about how long I thought it might take to finally see some noticeable movement in my portfolio with dividend payments alone. I was seeing the good capital gains in the portfolio (unrealized) but I wasn’t seeing the true power of the dividend payments. I was simply believing that one day they would start to roll in at a more noticeable rate.

That month has finally come even though the total payment is still only just barely a drop in the bucket when you think about it. Regardless, it makes me feel so much better to see months like this when everything happens all at once. It gives support to the future vision of what the payments will be in the future when I collect even more companies that I love and invest even more in those that I already own that I wish to hold more of. With that being said, let’s compile them together and show what has come in for the month of June.

American Railcar – ARII - $6.80

GameStop – GME - $7.40

L Brands – LB - $4.80

STAG Industrial – STAG - $1.74

Emerson Electric – EMR - $7.60

Walmart – WMT - $8.00

Total Dividends Paid in June 2016: $36.34

What a year I’ve had so far in 2016. It’s completely crushing the previous year of 2015 and we’re only barely over halfway through the year! This month’s dividend payments have come together to equal the highest monthly pay out that the Dividend Scythe has seen to date. It also serves to breach the $100 total dividend income for the year which helps to shatter the goal this year of breaching $100 total in dividend payments. I can’t wait to see where it will be at the very end of the year when all the payments are in. I know that I shouldn’t wish for time to go by quickly because time is valuable but it’s so hard not to wish to be there already when you’re seeing progress and growth.

Anyways, onto bigger and better things in the future! Hope to continue to see all of you in the comments section of my various posts through the next month. Let me know how your own portfolios did this last month in the comments section of this post. I’d love to see where my readers are with their own goals.

Dividend Income: May

Another month has come and gone and now it's time to collect the dividend payments that were made to my account in the month of May. All in all, it's been a great month for dividend income. My key player, AT&T (T) has made a payment and some of my other holdings have as well. I was also able to make a great collection of new buys that supplemented income in the future.

Unfortunately however, May did hold a sell off. It was only one but it's very unfortunately whenever even one needs to happen. As you all know, I like to hold my stocks as long as possible (forever if possible) but sometimes it's just not possible. The sell off was of course the sell off of Kohl's (KSS) as it had not even mildly performed as I would hope and there numbers were showing that it did not seem that would be changing any time soon.

This did come with the chance to buy new holdings. In the Month of May I was able to purchase three new holdings - RAI, LB, and GME. Granted, I never thought in a million years that I would be adding GME but it came at a time where I had been proven wrong. The company appears to be doing much better than my initial take on them and I have high hopes for them in the future. With all of this being said, let's compile the dividends for May and see how it all stacks up.

STAG: $1.74

ABBV: $5.70

YUM: $3.22

T: $14.88

Total for May 2016: $25.54

Total for 2016: $96.21

Unfortunately it just wasn't enough to break the $100 total for the year but it's still on track to do very well for the total of 2016. With a few big payments coming next month, there is almost no way that the portfolio won't break $100 for the year by the end of next month. Moving forward, I hope to continue making great stock choices, collecting dividends, and x'ing out any companies that decide that they know better what to do with their money than to pay dividends.