Quarter 1 of 2016 is officially in the books, which means a quarter end month of dividend income has occurred! The reason why I specifically mention the quarter-end, as this is typically a larger than normal month for dividend income, as there are substantially more payers in the U.S. that pay on those specific months as opposed to others. This also marks my fifth busy season as an auditor being completed and I can wake up on Saturday not feeling like I need to be working for the firm, feels nice. This is also one of the exciting time periods where we will read on individuals breaking their record for dividend income for the month! All great news here. Without any more introduction, let’s take a look at what Dividend Income was received for March 2016!
Dividend income
This month, I received a total of $884.85, which is a whopper once you dive into the analysis of the year. This is also with a heavily reduced BBL dividend, as they as well – cut their dividend by 3/4! The agony! However – the other hard working companies continued to pay resounding dividends and you also will see new names on the list below. In total – 25 companies paid me this month, not too shabby, here are the stats:
As you can see above, quite a few dividend aristocrats – Aflac (AFL), Johnson & Johnson (JNJ), Archer Daniels (ADM, whom are on my watch list), Target (TGT), Mcdondalds (MCD) and even T. Rowe Price (TROW; whom we made large investments into earlier); and some of these such as MCD & JNJ are a foundation stock for any dividend investors portfolio. Very, VERY lucky to have so many strong companies paying me this month, it’s quite amazing. If you see a number next to the ticker, that is the date of when the dividend was received, but I happen to accidentally leave the day in there. Apologies!
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 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 huge total of $263.12 or 30% of my income from retirement accounts and the other 70% 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 only 20 companies in March of 2015’s income summary and I had 25 total in this year’s post. Always a plus here and so damn thankful. What’s funny is that each company has paid me more except …. ding ding ding – you called it, BBL. I went from receiving $73.16 from them to receiving $20.21. The greatest calculation is seeing no new purchases, but seeing increases from each company year over year, for example Realty Income (O) experienced 10% growth, Target (TGT) had 10.77%, AFL had 7.83%, Pfizer (PFE) had 10.8%, Lockheed Martin (LMT) had 17%; all just amazing growth in income each period, Loving it. Year over year (YOY), my income grew by 10.9% from dividends received – always a pleasure having that large of an increase, thank you all again. It would have been better, but the combination of BBL and other dividend cuts throughout the investing platform has led to slight decreases in my retirement distributions amongst the ETFs & mutual funds. It’s okay though, 10.9% growth overall is fine by me!
Dividend income increases
We will say – nothing significant to report here. April, however, should be fun : )
Conclusion & Summary
As I discussed back then with my normal monthly expenditures at the moment, this $885 would cover 94% of my average $942 monthly expense for my house, including utilities. This % is dramatically higher than last year (last year = 85%). 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 March? Seeing nice YOY growth or did you also get heavily burned by BBL? 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