1/3 of the way finished with the year. Only 8 more months to go, NBA playoff basketball is going wild right now and I just returned from a vacation and am about to depart to be in one of my best friends wedding this afternoon. April was a wild month to push through, but something tells me – I haven’t seen anything yet. However, enough of hearing me talk about the past and what’s to come, let’s get into the real deal April dividend income summary!
Dividend income
This month, I received a total of $410.10, not too bad for an “off” month. When you look at the names below, nothing truly sticks out, a very “boring” month if you will, right? In total – 11 companies paid me this month, not too shabby, here are the stats:
Similarly, I have split out between the individual stock amounts and the retirement accounts, as the ” – R” indicates a Roth IRA dividend (or the furthest column to the right, I must have left the “R”‘s off this month). I separate these two, as I like to know what portion of my dividend income is coming from those retirement accounts that I cannot touch until 59.5 (barring any other usage rule I could use). Here, it shows that I received a total of $31.2 or 7.6% of my income from retirement accounts and the other 92.4% was from my individual taxable account portfolio. We all know my set it and forget it mentality to keep that retirement income going, but also pumped to see that I had 10 companies pay me in my taxable individual account. To see my portfolio – one can go to our portfolio summary page.
Comparison
Something that I like to do now is attach in prior year’s dividend income, which the image is copied in below, with 2015 first and 2016 to follow.
2015: 
2016:
To begin, I had exactly the SAME companies in April of 2015’s income summary. This has to be the first time this ever had occurred. Truly fun seeing this one, as it really propels you to look at the totals each has given you, to see if they increased AND if it was off purely dividend reinvestment and dividend growth (Outside of DOW Chemical). The $5.21 growth from Philip Morris (PM) was primarily reinvestment, as their dividend growth in 2015 was extremely low. Year over year (YOY), my income grew by 31% from dividends received – always a pleasure having that large of an increase, thank you all again. I honestly think a repeat of this increase is doable to slide into 2017. That would only represent a jump from $410 to $535.
Dividend income increases
Even though I recently wrote about this in my Notable April Dividend Increases article and Bert made a mention in his April dividend income post, these were the 3 big dividend increases experienced in April. Procter (PG) disappointed, as they need to have earnings on track to support a better increase, however Johnson & Johnson (JNJ) was extremely stable and, as expected, a smaller dividend increase from IBM. All good here and an additional $17.81 is happy as heck by me. To receive that sort of income going forward, one would have to invest at a 3.5% yield an amount of $509, thank you dividend growth : )
Conclusion & Summary
As I discussed back then with my normal monthly expenditures at the moment, this $410 would cover 44% of my average $942 monthly expense for my house, including utilities. This % is dramatically higher than last year (last year = 33%). All of the investing from last year and moves this year, show being frugal to save 60% of my income help me in achieving lofty goals that I set in place for my 2016 year. What do you guys think of my month of April? Seeing nice YOY growth or did you sell off a few companies that typically pay this month? See anything off or something I should be on the look out for? How did ya’ll do? Always an exciting post to read from others. Please share your insight and comments and thank YOU again for stopping by!
-Lanny