Happy New Year everyone! I hope everyone was able to ring in the turn of the calendar with their loved ones and are having a healthy & happy new years thus far. This was the time period when everyone made their final pushes to achieve their goals for the year and ultimately & hopefully have ended up in a better position than they were a year ago. This is also one of my favorite month’s worth of dividend income, due to it being a quarter-end and the last month of the year. With the weather being sunny and melting the snow into the new year, let’s see if my portfolio was able to heat up and produce heft dividends for December!
Dividend income
This was another record month in December, I received a total of $1,680.33. Very consistent names here, with a decent number of entities sending checks my way, see the table below.
With the 24 different entities paying me above, this is greater than the 20at this point last year. The big differences here are Kraft (KHC) paying in December this go around, T. Rowe Price (TROW) providing a nice chunk in there, as well as a massive Archer Daniels (ADM) stopping by with over $40. Lastly – VTSMX, my HSA mutual fund, came in with almost $21 this quarter! So damn lucky. Just… wow. A record month, the highest total I have ever received, just cannot believe the amount. I also had 13 taxable entities pay over $30 each!
Similarly, I have split out between the individual stock amounts and the retirement accounts, as the ” – R” indicates a retirement account dividend (or the furthest column to the right). 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 $1,007.53 (the highest total I’ve ever received for retirement accounts) or 60% of my income from retirement accounts and the other 40% was from my individual taxable account portfolio. This is almost double the income from last year’s retirement accounts and can be primarily associated with my new tax efficient strategy deployment. Additionally, this shows from retirement accounts that I’m all ready for my set it and forget it mentality to keep that income going. To see my portfolio – one can go to our portfolio summary page.
Dividend income year over year comparison
2015: 
2016: 
Overall, the growth stood at $602.29 or 56% from last year to this year. WOW. Talk about massive growth. Again, this is primarily attributable to me maximizing my 401(k) at work, hence the almost three-times-the-sized VINIX dividend this year versus 2015. Additionally, this year there was solid growth through most of the names that had paid me a dividend in December; in fact, they all have provided a higher dividend versus last year!!! Talk about a solid finish to the year, I can only think about what next December will actually bring if this keeps up, as I plan on maximizing the plans again, as well as the HSA mutual fund. Looking forward to 2017, that’s for sure and one can see my goals for 2017 here.
dividend increases
A month wouldn’t be a month without high quality companies increasing their dividend! See the small chart below for the details on the dividend increases announced this month that are holdings in my portfolio.
Alright, so what happened here? First, I love dividend growth. Second – one surprise in Norwood (NWFL), as they acquired a bank this year to almost double their size. Why was this a surprise? With the acquisition, I wasn’t sure on their capital/liquidity position to increase their dividend. Obviously, they are comfortable and a solid 3.22% increase was more than welcomed. Pfizer (PFE), is becoming almost like AT&T (T), except that PFE is at least going 2 cents each year on their dividend increase, which due to their lower dividend amount, calculates out to a great & consistent growth rate of between 6-8%. Will 2017 be there that PFE increases 3 cents instead of 2? Well, we will have to wait almost 12 months for that! All in all, $10.13 from dividend increases, which at 3.50%, is equivalent to a $289 stock purchase. I’ll take this any day.
dividend income conclusion & Summary
With a 56% increase, I am so lucky to be able to have the option & opportunity to do such a thing. If I am able to have a nice 10-15% growth for next year, I’ll be ecstatic. However, it could be way higher than that, at least I have 11 months to get the engine started!
As I discussed with my NEW updated – normal monthly expenditures at the moment, this $1,680 would cover 171% of my average $984 monthly expense for my house, including utilities; up from last year and covers all of my utilities and house insurance. Obviously there is quite a bit of retirement account income here, but that all can be changed, subject to employing additional strategies to shift the account type. In the end – all of the investing from last year and moves this year, show being frugal to save 60% of my income, that every dollar counts, has helped me in achieving lofty goals that I set in place for my 2016 year. However, we all know that I am VERY excited for 2017 to come!
How did your last month turn out? More/better than expected? Learn anything new about what to do going forward? Stepping closer & closer to financial freedom? Would love to hear how it all went! Any other comments or suggestions, since I have a full year to think about them now? Haha, I hope everyone had a very relaxed and enjoyable holiday season, 2017, here we come!
-Lanny