By far the worst month in my history of investing or at least active investing wise. My portfolio dropped a staggering 9.3%, which equates to almost $8.5k in value. Am I worried? Not at all. Markets go up and markets go down all the time. As a long term dividend growth investor, I see these dips in the market as buying opportunities. Too bad the dip occurred in one of my most busy spending months of the year.

Oh well, I don’t plan on retiring just yet so I’m sure they’re will be more opportunities in the future. On to the update!

Summary

$431.52 in dividends

Added $1,400 to the portfolio

Added $89.52 to my annual income.

$20.19 in side hustle money

Account Deposits

Like usual, $200 comes out of my paycheck with automatic deposit and at the end of the month, I throw whatever is left into the account. Christmas and the holidays are always an expensive time and I was only able to add an additional $1,000 to the account. Every little bit helps though!

$200 +$200 +$1,000 = +$1,400

Dividend Payouts

Here are the companies that paid me dividends for the month of December:

PSX Philips 66 $12.80 V Visa $2.50 CLDT Chatham Lodging Trust $17.05 F Ford $44.10 PFE Pfizer $5.44 SO Southern $26.40 SDIV Global X SuperDividend ETF $13.66 XOM Exxon Mobile $17.22 CVX Chevron $6.72 TGT Target $28.80 JNJ Johnson & Johnson $22.50 MMM 3M $9.52 WBA Walgreens $4.40 O Realty Income $12.79 FLO Flowers Food $19.80 KO Coca Cola $24.18 MAIN Main Street Capital $3.51 DUK Duke Energy $28.75 IBM IBM $31.40 MAIN Main Street Capital $12.38 CLDT Chatham Lodging Trust $17.05 GILD Gilead Sciences $11.40 TROW T Rowe Price $18.20 ARCC Ares Capital $40.95 Total $431.52

Using Google Docs, I keep a running spreadsheet of how much dividend income I receive every month. I think it’s important to realize the growth of your passive income over time. In Dec 2017, I received $286.08 in dividend income. If we do the math, that means my December dividend income has increased a whopping +50.8% compared to the previous year.

Monthly Total: +$431.52

Stock Purchases

I purchased 1 share of AAPL @ $178.00 and an additional share @ $166.15

Apple has been getting hit hard lately and I don’t mind nibbling a few more shares in the future. It currently sits at a dividend yield of 2%. This adds +$5.84 to my annual income.

I purchased 2 shares of XOM @ $76.91.

Exxon has a current yield of over 4% and has a 5-yr DGR of 7%. This was done mostly to average down on my position This adds $6.56 to my annual income.

I purchased 10 shares of MAIN @ $35.40. I purchased an additional 3 shares @ $33.80

One of my favorite monthly payers. I regret selling them in the past so now I’m adding shares every month. This adds $30.42 to my annual income.

I purchased 10 shares of CAH @ $47.20.

Cardinal Health is sitting at a dividend yield of 4.3% with a 5 year DGR of 10%. This adds +$19.10 to my annual income.

I purchased 11 shares of T @ $28.65.

I continue to buy this Dividend Champion due to it’s enticing yield. It currently sits at a 6.9% yield with a 5-yr DGR of 2.2%. This adds +$22.44 to my annual income.

The following stocks are my Manual DRIP’s. To save everybody some time and effort in reading, I’ll just list their names and the total annual income increase. I added 1 share of the following stocks- ABBV and OZK. This adds $5.16 to my annual income.

Total : +$89.52 to my annual income.

Stock Sells



None.

Portfolio News

AT&T declared $0.51/share quarterly dividend, 2% increase from prior dividend of $0.50.

Johnson & Johnson OK’s $5B stock buyback program

Pfizer declared $0.36/share quarterly dividend, 5.9% increase from prior dividend of $0.34.

Realty Income declared $0.221/share monthly dividend, 0.2% increase from prior dividend of $0.2205.

AbbVie boosts stock buybacks by $5B

Side Hustle

I didn’t really get much time to work on the ebay flipping side hussle. But, I still managed to sell one of the items leftover from the previous months. After shipping and fees, I managed to get a profit of $20.19!

Total: +$20.19

Conclusion

In the month of December, I continued to grow my dividend portfolio with some good purchases of some great companies. This month marks my highest monthly dividend payout ever. It makes me pretty happy seeing the money that I made passively. Please feel free to check out my new portfolio.

Thanks again for reading my Dividend Portfolio Update for December 2018! I hope everybody had a great year and continued success into 2019! Until next time!