October is here!  World Series baseball is in full swing and we are counting down the months to the end of the year.  Holidays are amongst us with Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Years.  Now is the time we really start to make the final push towards our final goals, investing metrics and dividend goals.  Now… to the numbers!

Dividend Income

This month, I received a total of $339.81.  Not too shabby, eh?  I had 10 different payments come in from companies and I cannot be more happy with how this month “paid” out – no pun intended.  And Bert had an excellent dividend income month as well – big congrats to him, on crossing the 3 digit mark again!  

PM came in as the giant producer this month at $83.74, as you can see above.  I am sure you remember my cigarette problem with owning Lorillard and the merger with Reynolds American (RAI) and then ultimately me kicking the “habit” and making a big decision to move my funds into Philip Morris (PM).  However, as I described in my large companies increasing their dividends by a small amount – they only increased their dividend by 2% this year, far from where I hoped… thank you currency translation!

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 forgot the “R” on O).  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 small total of $29.63 or 8.7% of my income from retirement accounts and the other 91.3% was from my individual taxable account portfolio.  $29.63 from retirement accounts shows that I’m all ready for my set it and forget it mentality to keep that income going, but given the large amount of income, it’s nice to the bulk of my dividend income from individual stocks.  To see my portfolio – one can go to our portfolio summary page.

Comparison

Now, I look back at 2014 October’s total.  The total then was $211.73.  From a pure percentage stand point, a growth rate of 60.5%, which as crazy as this seems – I think I can keep that growth going, which computes to a next year amount of $545 for the month.  I think I can do it!  Possibly with new purchases, new dividend reinvestment and dividend growth – I can do this!  10 different companies paid me this month and I had 8 that paid me last year (due to new purchases).  These totals and increases make sense, as last month I recently CRUSHED my way over $6,000 in projected income.  Love seeing that amount go up, that’s for sure. 

Dividend Income Increases

So to re-cap, last month of September, the companies that announced an increase in their dividend, have increased my projected income by $26.80 going forward.  This month – was another great month, as you can see in the chart above.  Visa increased their dividend 16.67% (I don’t own many shares, but I will take it!), Aflac increased their dividend by 5.1%, KMI threw in another chunk which has led to an overall increase throughout the year of ~16%, then DOW also came in at a 9.5% dividend increase – AMAZING!  Total forward dividend income added from this – $28.32.  This is amazing.  From two months alone, I have added $55.12 in additional income, I seriously get excited about this.  Forward income that all I had to do was invest capital into it.  However, I need to note this – McDonalds (MCD) AGAIN has not announced their dividend for the 4th quarter yet, and I am not sure on the board schedule, but this potential of a McDonalds REIT is killing me.  Has that ship stopped?  Will we see an increase in November at all?  We’ll find out.  Definitely keeping my ear to the floor.

Conclusion & Summary

As I discussed back then with my normal monthly expenditures at the moment, this $340 would cover 36% of my average $942 monthly expense for my house, including utilities.  This covers my auto loan payment and essentially almost all of my auto insurance on a monthly basis – need this number higher, however!  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 2015 year.  I am looking forward to the final month of December (November, you’ll be great and all, but the DRIP from December will be phenomenal) – best time for dividend income during the year, as almost all of the hard work starts to show in these final months if your company is a quarterly payer and also – a challenge if I could beat my December 2014 dividend income!  Thankful and happy to reflect on this month from all of the hardwork.  How did your October month’s go?  Did you crush your goals?  Did you beat last year’s?  Anything unusual happen?  Please share!  Thanks everyone

-Lanny