How crazy is it to think that we are already 5 months in to 2014? We are nearly approaching the halfway mark and I still feel like I was just watching the ball drop. Anyways, as May closes it is time to review my month and to see assess my progress towards my 2014 portfolio goals. The month started out slow for me, but then things took an interesting turn as I made two purchases at the end of the month. With these purchases and some appreciation, I now see my portfolio sitting north of $37,750 with a yield of 4.03%. I am inching closer and closer to $40,000!
Purchases
As discussed in my article earlier in the week, I added about $2,700 of new capital to my portfolio. This consisted of a $600 additional investment in T and a $2,065 investment in HCP. The acquisition of DirectTV presented me (and Lanny) an opportunity to acquire additional shares at a discount from a few weeks ago and my desire to find a steady Healthcare REIT lead me to my investment in HCP. In total, both of these transactions added $139 to my projected annual dividend income.
Goal Updates
As the portfolio has been updated in our Dividend Portfolio section, we have come to update you on the following goals for Bert:
Forward Annual Dividend Projection: $1,522 or 86.9% towards the dividend goal of $1,750. There are two important items to note with this one. First, while I am short of my updated 2014 goal of $1,750, I officially crossed my initial goal of $1,500 that I set at the beginning of the year. What’s exciting about this is that I thought $1,500 was a stretch at the beginning of the year. Now, I find myself blowing by that amount only 5 months into the calendar year. It goes to show what you can accomplish by pushing yourself (And it also helps having Lanny barking at you every day to reach this goal). Second, I have caught up to Lanny on a percent complete basis. I am about 25 basis points behind him.
Market Value: $37,765 or 94.41% towards the $40,000 goal
Dividend Yield of Total Portfolio: 4.03%. This is greater than my goal of 4.00%, but this is subject to change.
Roth IRA Contributions: One of my goals is to maximize the utilization my Roth IRA by investing in high yielding stocks that have a dividend yield greater than my portfolio average. I made my first 2014 Roth IRA purchase this month, HCP, which has a yield of ~5%. So far, I am achieving this goal.
It has been a great month of May for my portfolio. I am getting closer to accomplishing my revised goals for 2014. June should be a very exciting month with the majority of my portfolio paying out dividends. There is also the mystery factor of what dividend will my ETFs pay. You can do your best to project the dividend, but you never know until the declaration date.
Hopefully everyone else had a great month. Just keep pushing, you will be surprised with the results if you continue to challenge yourself.
~Bert
Congrats on all the progress so far this year. It’s pretty amazing what dedication to a plan can do to create positive change. I need to look more into T after the DirecTV buyout to see how things will change. The relatively high yield is good although the growth has been paltry. Maybe the DTV addition can spur on some faster DG in the future.
Thanks JC. Thanks for the comment. This has been a great year so far in terms of contributing and growing my portfolio. I nfact, I am still kind of in disbelief that it has grown as much as it has. As you eluded to, it shows the importance of having a plan based on realitic goals and sticking to it (which is the hard part). I have always been a fan of T even though they crawl their dividend forward each year. Based on the moves their competitors made, the company had to do something to increase their market share. I also have liked the financial performance of DTV in the past, so hopefully the company can avoid the growing pains that usually come with an acquisition. If they can, I think T might have some extra FCF to return to its shareholders.
Thanks again for following and commenting. Keep up the great work and keep striving to hit your goals. You have 6 and a half months left and you are well on your way to hitting your net worth and dividend income targets.
~Bert