It’s the most wonderful time of the year!  The winter is upon us and the holiday season is right around the corner.  It is time to bust out the Christmas Trees, decorations, menorahs, and whatever else you and your families use to celebrate the holidays.   I know our house is ready to go!  On top of it, it is officially the most exciting dividend month of the year…December!  But before I jump ahead, now that it is a new month, it is time to summarize the results from the previous month.  Here is my November Dividend Income summary!

November Dividend income summary

This month, I received $406.69 in dividend income.  This represents a 47.90% year-over-year increase!  I was very excited to cross the $400 mark this month and hopefully I should be able to each successive second quarter of the month.  The following chart provides a detailed breakdown of the individual dividends received.  Please note that a “W” represents a dividend received in my wife’s account.  Here is a detailed listing of the individual dividends received:

Here are some of my quick thoughts and highlights:

• I received dividends from one new position this year compared to last year, Westrock Company.  Lanny and I initially purchased shares in the summer and added to our position throughout the remainder of the year.  Thank goodness for all of those free trades we had!  This wasn’t the first dividend I received from the company. But it reflected my full position after all my additional purchases in September and October.
• No, I did not initiate a new position in Starbucks this year.  Rather, the company’s fourth quarter dividend was paid on 12/1/17 last year, not on the final day of November.  So it is a timing difference.  Ill have the opposite impact in my December dividend income summary.
• This may sound like a weird comment, but throughout the year, I have discussed how I wanted to increase my positions rather than adding new positions.  Outside of this last month, I was pretty good about wanting to build up my positions and the fruits of that labor shows this month.  I received larger dividends from T, PG, SBUX, and O compared to last year due to additional purchases I made earlier in the year.
• Man that KMI dividend increase earlier in the year was SWEET!  I am loving the new dividend from the company.  But I’m not just loving the dollar amount received, I’m loving the safety of the company’s financial statements as well.

November portfolio news and updates

In this section, I’ll review two different ways that my forward dividend income increased during the month: dividend increases and investment activity.   In the first table I will review dividend increases.

Despite the fact that there were a lot of companies that increased their dividend in November,  I personally did not benefit from any significant dividend increases.  There was one surprise increase that I did not include in my article (for some reason), First Energy.  This is a local utility company that cut their dividend back at the beginning of 2014.  Recently, the company has focused on cleaning up their balance sheet and shedding assets that were draining their capital (First Energy Solutions subsidiary).  With additional cash flow and a lower payout ratio, the company finally announced a surprise dividend increase.  I was excited to tell Lanny the news about this one.  It is exciting enough to receive a dividend increase, let alone from the LAST company in your portfolio that you were expecting to receive the dividend increase from.   We also receive the Emerson dividend increase, but that amount was not significant.   In total, I received $7.73 in additional dividend income from dividend increases.    one other thing to note, my new purchase ABBV increased their dividend at the beginning of the month; however, I did not include it in the table above since I did not own ABBV at the time of the purchase.

This next table represents additional dividends received from our 401(k) contributions and stock purchases during the month.  I had to estimate my wife’s final 401(k) contribution, since it was not posted to her account until after I wrote this article.  My estimates are typically within a tenth of a share most months. So there won’t be too significant of an impact to my dividend income.

I recently published my November purchase article a couple of weeks ago.  So the LEG, XOM, and ABBV purchases shouldn’t be a surprise.  However, on the last day of the month, I made one small purchase with some leftover cash I had in my Roth IRA.  I added to my stake in Canadian Imperial Bank (CM) after their price fell post earnings release.  The five shares pushed my overall position to 26.253 shares. I could potentially add two more shares with my remaining cash in the account, since I fully maximized my Roth IRA already.  The purchase, along with our maximized 401(k) contributions, $189.10 in dividend income to my portfolio during the month.   In total, $196.83 in additional dividend income was added via dividend increases and purchase.  I’ll take it!

summary

This was another pretty exciting month and once again, I’m leaving the month with all smiles.  A strong YOY dividend increase and some nice new dividend income added via dividend increases and dividend re-investment.   There were some other exciting things that happened with my portfolio this month in terms of a milestone. So I’m excited to write about that in the coming weeks.  Man I cannot wait for the dividends and mutual fund distributions to start rolling in this month.  December is always the best month for dividend investors for this reason, and I cannot wait to see the final results.  We have all worked our tails off in 2018 and experienced great growth.  Let’s bring this year to a close and post some records here in the coming month!

How were your results in November?  Did you experience any records?  What was your year-over-year growth rate? Did you add any stocks to your portfolio in the month?  What stocks are on your watch list?

Bert