Thankfully, June is over! What a crazy month that was for me. What’s more is that 6 months of the year is now gone. Some dividend growth investing (DGI) bloggers did the smart thing and set mid-year goals. Looking at you Dividend Dynasty. Other bloggers, such as myself, are lazy and didn’t set mid-year goals. Still, I’m looking to finish the year strong and hopefully, the second half will be stronger than the first. As we look to celebrate independence day, I am steadily working towards my goal of achieving financial independence through dividend growth investing. But until then, I’ll continue to steadily contribute to my portfolio and track my progress on this blog. Let’s see how I ended the second quarter!

Dividend Income

In June, I received a total of $98.51 in dividends broken down as follows:

NO. STOCK NAME DIVIDENDS 1 EMR Emerson Electric $8.87 2 GWW W.W. Granger $7.87 3 JNJ Johnson & Johnson $16.97 4 MCD McDonalds $5.17 5 MMM 3M Company $10.13 6 O Realty Income $8.27 7 PFE Pfizer $11.08 8 XOM Exxon Mobile $30.15 $98.51

Are you kidding me? Just $1.49 shy of the elusive triple-digit figure in one month. Oh well, I guess I have to try again next month. In any case, I’m pretty happy. Nearly $100 in a month doesn’t make me rich. But, that figure will continue to rise. That’s the power of Dividend Growth Investing and compounding.

Also, this is the first month that I received dividends from McDonalds. That $5.17 is almost enough to buy me a Big Mac meal with fries and a drink. Maybe next time, I’ll be able to afford a large drink instead of a small drink. Haha. But not a bad start to my long-term hold of McDonalds.

Finally, the Dividend Tracker has been updated.

Annual Comparison

Below is a graphical representation of my dividends this year as compared to last year.

For clarity, here is the raw data:

MONTH 2017 2018 RATE APRIL $0.41 $31.47 7575.61% MAY $2.85 $79.33 2683.51% JUNE $16.89 $98.51 483.24%

As you can see, as compared to last year, my account grew over 483%. Not too shabby, but I’m sure that as the months go by, this huge growth will be much lower and more realistic. But, it’s still nice to see and provides a bit of motivation to keep going.

Forward Annual Dividends

At the time of this writing, my forward annual dividend is $1033.67. This is the first time that my forward annual dividend crossed the 4-digit threshold. I had to adjust my target of $1000 in dividends for the year and increased it to $2000.

The transition to M1 Finance is almost complete. However, I am able to make trades. The forward annual dividend reflects a recent deposit to the account. Updating my internal spreadsheet was a little bit scary because of the way M1 Finance operates their platform. I’ll talk more about this in my M1 Finance review that I’ll be posting later this week, but in a nutshell, M1 Finance invests your money based on the target allocation of stocks in your portfolio. So, to keep things balanced, it diverts cash to the stocks that are underweighted.

This was a bit nerve-racking for me at first because every month, each of my stocks increased in value because I contributed a set amount of money into that particular stock. With M1 Finance, you contribute to the overall portfolio and the portfolio divides the money according to your predetermined asset allocation. So, for my recent contribution, most of the stocks I own in M1 Finance did not receive a contribution because they were overweighted. I was only able to buy shares in the 5 most underweighted stocks.

It’s a different way to invest for sure. Part of me likes it, but part of me misses the old system where I can say how much money I want to be invested in a particular stock automatically. I could manually buy or sell from a position if I wanted to, but that automatic investment feature is not yet available in M1 Finance.







Conclusion

June has been a very important month for this blog. I transitioned from one broker to another, but during that process, I continued to earn dividends along the way. I am about to go on vacation, but my dividends will be working hard for me anyway. Dividend growth investing is a great and passive strategy for the average investor looking to make money in the stock market.

Now that the first half of the year is over, here’s hoping that the remainder of the year is a prosperous one for us all. I hope you have a happy 4th of July.

How was June for you? Did you break any records or reached any milestone. Let me know your thoughts by commenting below.