It’s nice to have a relaxing day for a change. Currently sitting at Starbucks and I don’t have to stress about life. At least, not until next week. Haha. There is so much to catch you up on during this Labor Day weekend. I am both excited and cautiously optimistic about the future. But, I will have to write about that in later posts. Today, I will write about the dividend income I received in August. But, definitely stay tuned. I will be providing updates as to other areas of my financial life soon. Now, without further adieu, lets dive in.

Dividend Income

In August, I received a total of $108.44 in dividends broken down as follows:

NO. STOCK NAME DIVIDENDS 1 ABBV Abbvie $23.16 2 APPL Apple $7.36 3 GIS General Mills $13.73 4 HRL Hormel Foods $8.33 5 O Realty Income $8.43 6 PG Proctor & Gamble $13.78 7 SBUX Starbucks $10.86 8 T AT&T $22.79 $108.44

I am very encouraged by these results. First of all, this is the first time I’ve crossed over the $100 mark in a single month! I had to double check to make sure the numbers were right. As a reminder, last quarter, my monthly dividend income for May was $79.33. So, getting $108.44 in dividends in a single month is great.

There is one thing I’m trying to figure out. In May, the dividends I received from Apple was $7.56. Now, it’s $7.36. So what gives? After all, I didn’t sell any stocks! Here is my best guess.

When I moved from Capital One Investing to M1 Financing, only whole shares were transferred as shares. The fractional shares were liquidated and transferred as cash. Because of the way M1 Finance operates, when that cash was redeployed to my portfolio, it didn’t replace the fractional shares that I had with Apple. It still feels weird though that the dividends I received from Apple were less than I did last quarter.

Annual Comparison

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

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% July $5.99 $42.32 606.51% August $21.95 $108.44 394.03% My portfolio increased a respectable $394.03% from last year. I continue to look forward to decent growth rates in the months to come. Although the growth rate will be significantly smaller as I work with larger numbers, I do plan on increasing the minimum contributions to my portfolio annually. That, combined with dividend income, will help my dividend portfolio snowball faster. Finally, the Dividend Tracker has been updated.



Forward Annual Dividends At the time of this writing, my forward annual dividend is $1,105.65. A month ago, my forward annual dividend projection was $1,069.33. This represents an increase of $36.22 or 3.28% in my forward annual dividend income. This is a slightly smaller increase than the previous month. I did temporarily decrease the amount I was contributing to my portfolio. I have since resumed those minimum contributions.

Conclusion

I had quite the expensive month in August. I rented a place, bought a car, obtained two new credit cards (say what???), increased my debt, failed to pay my website host bill, which caused Dividend Portfolio to be inoperative for days, and more! Indeed, I even neglected to post the inspirational quote for August. Scandalous! Despite all that, my dividend portfolio was working hard for me behind the scenes.

August still managed to produce the highest monthly dividends I have ever received and it did so in spectacular fashion by helping me cross the 3-digit mark milestone for the first time. I couldn’t be happier.

How did your portfolio perform in August? Let me know your thoughts by commenting below.