Bert’s July Dividend Income Summary

Man, talk about tough acts to follow.  Lanny had one heck month hauling in a crazy $740 in dividend income during this “off” month.   Congrats on the great month Lanny!  With figures like that, I am setting myself up for yet another defeat in July, which makes perfect sense considering his portfolio is nearly triple the size of mine.  However, I have one glimmer of hope this month that can catapult me to fictitious victory over Lanny.  What is it?  I own more shares of Kraft than Lanny.   The question is, will this one-time special dividend be enough to push my dividend income for the month over $740.  Let’s find out!

dividend income

Dividend Income Summary

dividend income -july

Bad news everyone.  Unfortunately, despite the special dividend, I fell short of Lanny’s $740 mark but man was it close.  I guess I can’t really complain though, because it was one of my best months ever.   This July, I received $706.40 in dividend income, an increase of 667.74% from July 2014 and 483.5% from April 2015.  I know what you are thinking and yes, those numbers are skewed due to the special dividend.  So my dividend income less Kraft dividend (“adjusted dividend income”) was only $100.83, a 16.66% decrease from April 2015 and a 9.6% increase from July 2014.  Ugh, a decrease….what the heck!  Thank goodness I had the special dividend this month.   While it sucks that the adjusted income decreased, here are some of the events and transactions that impacted my dividend income this month.

  • I might as well discuss this one first.  Have I mentioned yet in this post that Kraft issued a special dividend in July?  I almost fell out of my seat when I found out that I was going to receive a cash dividend of $16.50/share earlier in the year and luckily for me, I owned ~36.5 shares of the food giant at the time.   Hence why I was so pumped!   When all was said and done, I received $605.57 as a result of the merger and quickly put this capital to work by increasing my position (and lowering my cost basis) in Norfolk Southern.   Dividend investing at its finest!
  • Strangely, I did not receive dividends from any new companies this month; which seems odd to me considering I have been deploying a decent amount of capital recently: investing in Norfolk Southern, IBM, Emerson Electric, and Johnson & Johnson during the quarter.  Unfortunately, for each investment, I either missed the ex-dividend date s or the company pays a dividend in the loaded third month of the quarter.   While this typically is not a big deal because heck, who cares what month the dividend is received?  All that matters is your annual dividend total is increasing!  The lack of new additions  just jumps out in a month that saw my adjusted dividend income decrease.  Man would it have helped to receive something from a new company in my portfolio so the change my adjusted dividend income could have been positive for the quarter!
  • Now, on the items that negatively impacted my adjusted dividend income for the month.  Lanny and I have been discussing this a lot recently behind the scenes and it has become a true pain to us.  This month, our dividend income was negatively impacted by fluctuating exchange rates and the pendulum was not swinging in our favor in July.  Due to a strengthening dollar, we saw our dividend income decline for GSK and CM, a British and Canadian company, respectively.  What sucks about this is that we have zero control of exchange rates, so all we can do is sit on the sidelines and watch our dividend income shrink.  In total, the exchange rate had a -$5.33 impact on my dividend income when compared to the same month in the last quarter.     This caught us off guard this month and we will definitely consider this in future investment decisions (if we are assessing an international company vs. domesting).
  • Lastly, I did not receive dividends from Diageo in July since DEO pays a semi-annual dividend in April and October.  There it is! We have identified the largest contributor to the decline in adjusted dividend income between April and July since  I received $14.30 from DEO in April.   Missing out on this income was huge this month but luckily, this was a known fact and I was not expecting to receive a dividend from DEO.

Dividend Increases

Lanny probably said it best in his dividend income article….this was not a great month for dividend increases.  Norfolk was supposed to increase their dividend at the end of the month, only to disappoint the two of us by maintaining their current dividend.   We had a self-induced let down with this announcement as we were hyping ourselves up behind the scenes anticipating a solid increase.  Just another reminder that a dividend, let along a dividend increase, is never guaranteed.    The only other increase I received during the period was KMI, who increase their dividend by $.01/share on their march towards a quarterly dividend of $.50/share by the end of the fiscal year.  The best news here…they are still not at the $.50/share mark, so hopefully that means there will be another dividend increase announced along the way!

Summary

While I may have sounded angry with a negative tone at some points of the article, I really have nothing to be upset about and it was all in good fun.  I am fortunate to be in the spot I am and couldn’t be happier that I received over $700 this month for doing absolutely nothing.   Plus, I made some moves outside of the investing world in July to improve my life by changing careers again after only four months.  The move was a much needed jolt of energy and should help snap me out of the funk I have been in recently!  If anything, this July is a motivator to keep pushing myself to continue investing in these strong dividend growth companies as soon as possible so I can maximize the power of dividend re-investing, share buyback programs, special dividends, or any other tool management uses to reward their shareholders.   This is what it is all about!

How did you perform this month?  Did you receive a special dividend from Kraft?  Were you able to top Lanny’s $740 dividend income mark?  Did you receive any dividend increases this month?

-Bert

16 thoughts on “Bert’s July Dividend Income Summary

  1. Fantastic job Bert! The little competition between you two makes your blog fun to read, I love it. We came in no where near your $700 mark but still had over an 80% increase from last year. Can’t complain about that. The KRFT dividend is really propelling some peoples dividends to new heights, awesome.

    Keep up the great work!

    ADD

    • Thank you very much ADD, I am glad to hear that you are enjoying our blog and you think it is fun to read. That’s very important to us and it is always great to hear from you and our fellow readers. Without you guys, we wouldn’t be here!

      That’s the fun of doing this with someone like Lanny. I have some direct competition and someone to look up to as I push myself to reach his investing level. He is miles ahead of me, but it is a game to me to find new ways to catch up with him and hopefully pass him one day. I am excited to sit down and start reading about everyone’s months considering the KRFT dividend paid out. I am sure people are setting all kinds of records for non December months. I love this stuff!

      Thank you for stopping by and the kind words. Have a great evening!

      Bert

  2. Thanks for sharing Bert. All in all, a wicked month! Keep at it as you’re doing fantastic bud. Keep hustling it up and most importantly, banking all those earnings. Sacrifice a few years for the greater good. Your future self will thank you and your life will change forever. I know mine has. This journey is awesome and glad to be a part of it with you 2 good guys. Thanks. Take care my friend.

    • HUSTLER! Thanks for stopping by and the kind words. This is the best kind of sacrifice in my opinion. I am starting to see results now, so I can only imagine what it’ll be like in 5, 10, 20 years. Man do I love dividend investing!

      We are glad to have you along as well. You are just killing it over there and building some ridiculous dividend income numbers. Congrats on all of your progress and hopefully I will be in your shoes sooner rather than later.

      Again, thanks for stopping by!

      Bert

  3. Bert

    Your KRFT dividend income was HUGE, I got it also but very very small.

    Now you can buy more shares of the new KHC and get a bigger dividend income.

    Keep the snowball rolling.

    • Thanks! The snowball is moving slowly but surely. Now that I am in year 2 of my hardcore dividend investing, the results are really starting to show and the impact is become larger and larger. Man do I love pushing this snowball down the hill.

      I was very fortunate to have invested in KRFT early on and increase my stake before the merger announcement. While I didn’t purchase more shares of KHC since it was an all cash dividend, I put my capital to work immediately and bought ~6 more shares of Norfolk Southern and used the opportunity to lower my cost basis.

      Thanks for stopping by and the kind words.

      Bert

    • Thanks Tawcan. Over $700 in a month…are you kidding me. I can’t complain one month and I cannot wait until my regular dividends hit this level. I still a while to go before I hit that level, but I would love to have this feeling each and every month!

      Hopefully KRFT can start announcing special dividends like that every month haha As always, thanks for stopping by.

      Bert

    • Henry,

      Thanks for stopping by and the kind words. I love dividend investing because the results are instant. If you invest in solid companies, you are taking a step forward with each dividend income check. I was very fortunate to have the special dividend this month and could luckily put it to use quickly.

      Have a great weekend.

      Bert

  4. Bert,
    I rode that KRFT/KHC bike all the way to town last month. The special dividend was a great bonus to get as an investor. I see we are both getting hit by the US currency spike too, both of us feeling it on CM – who despite an increase paid us less. Did you have an issue with CM paying out? It seemed to me like my broker was dragging their feet on getting that money in my account.
    Happy August,
    Gremlin

    • Gremlin,

      I love it. Take that bike and ride it across the freaking country if you have to! How huge was that special dividend for all of us. Don’t get the two of us started about CM, Lanny was going nuts about how long it took to receive the dividend. I think every day I received an email from him mentioning how pissed off he was that he had not received it yet. I hate international companies for that reason and I can’t figure out why it takes so long to process their freaking dividend payments!

      Oh well, all that matters is the money is ours now haha Thanks for stopping by and have a great weekend.

      Bert

  5. Solid month no matter how you look at it. Missing an ex-div might sound bad today but I doubt you’ll miss it much in ten or twenty years from now. Long term, you’ll have enough compounding time to create an awesome passive dividend income stream. Still holding on to your ARCP I see. Any plans to give that up?

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