Another month down in the dividend income books.  Monthly I will evaluate and show the results of which companies paid dividends, progress towards the year and comparison to the past.  This is a great way to track my dividends to see if I’m on pace for financial freedom.  We are changing it up going forward to have both Bert & Lanny’s dividend income summary into one post – to save on postings/focus for the month.  This hopefully allows readers to also track and compare Lanny vs. Bert and who is dominating who in the dividend income playing field, isn’t that right BERT?!  Now onto our October dividend income results!  Time to step up to the plate

Lanny’s October Dividend Income Summary

October: I received a total of $211.73 of dividends broken out by the following:

Overall, $211.73 in dividend income for the month of October isn’t too bad, very excited about crossing the $200 mark, that’s for sure.  This is the 4th time I have crossed that mark in the 10 months this year and I am hopeful that it won’t stop at 4… especially with December still off in the background.  I received nice checks from my oil Giant Total (TOT) and from my smoking stack Philip Morris (PM).  Year to date – my dividend income is actually at an astounding $2,911.99 – absolutely crushing my last year total through 10 months ($1,456) – essentially doubling it!  I am hoping to keep this fueled up, as I saved over 60% of my income in the month of October after I released so much capital when I was locked cocked and unloaded into the market on their declines.  I am expecting November’s total to be an average type month, but am gearing up for the quarter end of December.

 Comparison

Now, I look back at 2013 October’s total.  The total back then was $127.  Earning $212 this month equates to an 67% increase!  I will rephrase that, this month of October 2014 I earned 67% more money from dividend income stocks than I did last year.  If I keep the same growth rate, I’ll be at $354 for this month next year… haha, but we all know those growth rates are near-impossible to maintain, but I’m known to be crazy… right?  What is funny, is from my calculations – I am projected over $261 already for this month next year, which is already a 23% growth rate… so wait – 67% again isn’t out of the ordinary, in fact – I may be able to CRUSH IT!

Dividend Income Increases

This month had a few dividend increase announcements.  (1) As we described in our October re-cap and expected November dividend income increases, Aflac (AFL) had a 5.4% increase to their shareholders, which will add more income to my portfolio going forward.  (2) Kinder Morgan (KMI) had a slight increase of 2.3% increase to the dividend income to their shareholders as well.  This marks the 3rd time this year that they’ve grown it!  The dividend has grown by 7.3% so far this year as well. (3) Visa (V) had an incredible 20% increase, though I expected 25% – I think I can live with a 20% raise, right?  How many received a 20% raise this year at their employer?  Not too many hands up on that one.   (4) Kraft (KRFT) also increased their dividend a solid 4.76% for some mac and cheese.  When I calculated all increases and dividend income before & after, these raises added $13.08 to my annual dividend income goal.  These are just raises alone and isn’t even included the $212 in dividend income being reinvested to own more shares, which ultimately… produces more dividend income.  Funny how that works, isn’t it?

Year-To-Date & Summary

My dividend income received now stands at $2,911.99, which is now reflected on the dividend income page.  When taking that over the 9 months, $291.20 per month!  I cannot believe it everyone.  I have on average almost an extra $300 rolling in from dividends alone.  Speechless.  That covers almost 1/3 of my living expenses for the month and I can taste a sense of accomplishment and freedom.  However, similar to how I described back in June’s post, I sadly have the split between retirement dividend income and portfolio/taxable dividend income.  From my retirement/Roth/Roth 401K accounts I totaled $26.86 for the month with the remaining coming from my taxable account.  Year to date this is looking much better for my taxable account, as June I had an alarmingly high retirement dividend income figure.

I do like having a large projected year for my retirement account, because as I’ve stated in our set it and forget it article – if you maximize your results for 10 years with modest/conservative assumptions, you will be at $1M by the time you retire.  If I can continue to fuel this account, I will ultimately stop and shift those funds into different investments, such as my taxable account, business ventures for the Diplomats, rental properties potentially, etc..

This month was up and down in regards to the market.  My Market value ended at $121,606.85, which is insane because it feels like it was yesterday when I first crossed the $100K mark and now I’m 21%+ over that!  I’ve been keeping track of my networth and set new record breaking grounds at $162,952.65… what?!  Even though that doesn’t do much for me, it’s interesting to track!  Enough but one of the diplomats, how did you all perform for October?  Did you meet expectations?  Did things happen within your stocks that translated into something better or worse this month for dividend income?  Thoughts about where we are standing?  Thanks everyone, best of luck and hope you all had a prosperous October!  Talk soon.

-Lanny

Bert’s October Dividend Income Summary

First off, Lanny, great month.  67% annual growth in income in October is awesome.  I’m pumped that you now have over $200 in a non-quarter end month.  Each month you are now receiving a sizable amount of dividends, congrats!  As Lanny mentioned, he wants to turn this monthly article into a competition, so be careful what you ask for Lanny!

October: I received a total of  $117.40 of dividends broken out by the following:

Comparison

Alright Lanny, you won this round by  a pretty large margin.  You do have the larger portfolio of the two of us, so I guess I was fighting an uphill battle on this one.  One day though, you’re toast!   Since my portfolio has grown like crazy this year, I will perform a quarter by quarter analysis instead of Lanny’s annual comparison.  Compared to the first month of the prior quarter, my dividend income has grown 27.6%, or $25.39!  What has been the major driver of this increase?  Two things come to mind.  First,  A few months ago I sold shares of SWM (a September Dividend Payer) and used the proceeds to purchase DEO (an October dividend payer).    Adding DEO to my portfolio added $38 to my portfolio.  What was also clutch about the timing of the investment was that DEO is a semi-annual dividend payer (April and October payment dates) that pays 2/3 of its annual dividend income in October.  The timing of my purchase allowed me to capture the larger of the dividend payments ($2.036/share in October vs. $1.3063/share in April).   The second factor for the increase in dividend income was due to re-investing dividends and company’s in my portfolio increasing their dividend.  As Lanny mentioned above, KRFT increased their dividend 4.76% during the month.  This added a $1.06 bump to my quarterly receipt from the company.   Outside of KRFT, the increases can be attributed to the power of dividend re-investing.  This power can be very easily demonstrated in the table attached above, which compares dividends I received from each company on a quarterly basis.  I love looking at this chart because it gets me excited for the future.  Each dividend we receive and re-invest grows our income for the future.  Once the snowball rolls, it just gets larger and larger.  When my portfolio grows to Lanny’s size, I can only imagine what the impact of dividend re-investment will be each month!

Dividend Income Increases

This month, four companies in my portfolio announced a dividend increase: KMI, AFL, KRFT, and BP.  Lanny already summarized three of the increases above, so I will just jump straight to the BP announcement!  At the very end of the month, I received a surprise  2.56% increase from BP. If I would have paid closer attention to the dividend history, I would have realized that BP has increased their dividend every 6 months recently and I should have been eagerly anticipating the announcement!  As a result of this second dividend increase announcement, BP has now increased their annual dividend by 6.8%.  Thanks BP!

Year-To-Date & Summary

October 31, 2014 produced another major  milestone in my investing career.  On this date, I logged the receipt of a $19.70 dividend from KRFT.  My excel formula for actual dividends received YTD pulled in this figure and I realize I had just crossed $1,000 in actual dividends received during the year!!  I was so pumped I shot Lanny a text about this right away.  I now have joined the four figure actual dividend club and there is not any looking back.   I have been past this point on a projected basis for several months now.  However, it is amazing to see my actual dividends received closing the gap on my projected dividend income.  For me at least, there was something different about this milestone. Receiving a$1,000 in a year has shown now provided me substantial, tangible results of all the hard work I have been putting into growing my portfolio.   I am no longer dealing with pocket change; these results WILL make a lasting impact.

-Bert

How did everyone else perform this month?  Did you accomplish any goals?  How has your dividend grown over the last year and quarter?  Do you like our new format or would you prefer Lanny and I write our own dividend summary article?  We look forward to your feedback!

-The Dividend Diplomats