Dividend Income Report :: March 2019

To borrow from the slogan “better late than never”, I wanted to be sure to get my March dividend income report published before the calendar flips to May when I will be sharing the April update.

While things have been hectic away from the blog, I am seeing light at the end of the tunnel. Fortunately all of the activities that have consumed the time I had been dedicating to writing have been fruitful activities, but I am looking forward to getting back into the swing of more regular updates.

Alright, on to the juicy details!

March 2019 Dividend Income Summary

With the close of the first quarter of 2019, we have seen the market continuing to trend upwards and that has continued to result in fewer appealing buying opportunities.

However, it does bring the excitement of quarter ending results that include the dividend payments from some of the index funds held in my retirement accounts. The March / April combo is particularly appealing as I have a few funds in my new 401(k) that have their distributions in April and therefore I get two consecutive months of that extra boost.

The month of March brought in a strong $1,730.00 in dividend income that was broken down as follows:

• Brokerage: $558.67
• IRA: $49.45
• Retirement: $1,121.88

The star of the show on quarter-ending months is clearly my retirement account (designated separately from the Rollover IRA that was funded from an old pension and is invested in dividend stocks) but the brokerage account continues to grow as well.

Let’s look at all of the individual dividends received:

Ticker	March 2018	March 2019
AFL	0.00	12.29
BAC	12.12	15.15
BLK	0.00	33.14
CMI	0.00	34.74
EAT	0.00	17.52
HD	0.00	20.66
JNJ	0.00	14.64
K	0.00	17.01
MDP	0.00	23.72
MMM	0.00	28.99
MSFT	0.00	9.27
NEE	0.00	6.37
PEP	0.00	28.30
PRU	0.00	45.72
SBSI	0.00	18.33
SNA	0.00	23.92
TGT	0.00	30.15
VTSAX	20.21	0.00
VYM	0.00	133.31
XOM	0.00	45.44
Total	32.33	558.67
YoY Growth		1628.02%

The month of March has a couple of oddities with KO and PEP–in the case of KO, their first payout of the calendar year is not until April while PEP pays in January and March for two payouts in the first quarter. The one payout that has been eliminated is VTSAX, as I had previously liquidated that holding. There is one additional oddity that I will describe in more detail shortly, and that is regarding Bank of America.

Here are the numbers from the holdings in my Rollover IRA:

Ticker	March 2018	March 2019
EPR (IRA)	0.00	17.22
MAIN (IRA)	0.00	10.04
O (IRA)	0.00	16.13
STAG (IRA)	0.00	6.06
Total	0.00	49.45
YoY Growth		AMAZING

The quarter-ending month is the weakest month for my Rollover IRA, but all dividends continue to be reinvested here as well to keep that total growing.

Overall, the reinvestment of dividends across my brokerage account and Rollover IRA have added an additional $20.07 in projected annual dividend income!

March 2019 Purchases

For the first time since starting my dividend portfolio last May, I did not make a single addition to the portfolio–at least not directly.

Part of the reason for this is because I made my first foray into the land of options by selling a cash-secured put, and that tied up a chunk of capital. I’ll write more about my first experience with options soon and will highlight what I consider to be a pretty big rookie mistake.

You’ll note that I mentioned there were no direct additions to the portfolio, and that I had an oddity related to Bank of America.

Well, one of the background activities that I have been working on is simplifying and consolidating some of my accounts. During that process I realized that an old account that I had with E*Trade was still active and within that account was a position in Bank of America. I’ve since transferred that over to my Fidelity account, and as noted below have 101 shares (plus the most recent dividend) at a very nice cost-basis of $6.61 per share.

Unfortunately, I had purchased that position in BAC well before I was paying attention to dividends and had not setup the dividends to be reinvested. That has since been corrected, but definitely missed an opportunity there.

For the month, I did not deploy any new capital via purchases but did have $6,000.00 in capital reserved as a result of the cash-secured put that I sold. Due to the lack of new purchases, there was no increase in PADI.

While the market has still not presented a wealth of buying opportunities in April, I have made a few small purchases and continue to work on building up that PADI. At this rate it is definitely going to be difficult to reach my annual goals, but I will still be making every effort to be successful.

March 2019 Dividend Raises

The volume of raises certainly tapered off in March as only three of my holdings announced an increase. The first two months of the year brought 7 and then 9 raises respectively and unfortunately I believe the low single-digits will be more the norm moving forward.

Two of the three raises were quite minuscule as well, with Realty Income announcing a 0.22% raise while W.P.Carey was even more lean with their 0.19% increase. The top performer was Williams-Sonoma with their healthy 11.63% dividend raise.

Here you can see the impact of these raises:

These three raises combined resulted in an increase of $10.42 in projected annual dividend income.

As I mentioned, I expect most months here on out to pretty quiet when it comes to raises and April is inline with that thinking. There have only been two raises in April and I don’t believe there will be any more on the last trading day of the month.

Summary

Despite the fact that there were no new purchases made in March, I cannot be anything but pleased with the chart below that continues to show a positive trend in dividend growth.

You will also notice that the combination of my brokerage account and Rollover IRA has set a new record as I crossed over the $600.00 threshold for the first time. It is also the first occurrence of consecutive months in excess of $500.00 in dividends.

That number will dip back down in April as my quarter-opening month continues to be my lowest month of the quarter. However, through the first three months of the year I have already received more than 50% of what I earned in all of 2018 and nearly 120% of what I earned in all of 2017.

While I am disappointed in the fact that the chart above shows a goose-egg for investment of new capital, the power of dividend investing is evident in the fact that the other two legs of the dividend tripod continued to do their work. The increase of $30.49 in total PADI is definitely my lowest yet, but it still means my money is busy working for me.

There is no question that the lack of activity will make it difficult to reach my goals, however I need to remain true to my buying guidelines and not make purchases simply to make purchases.

All across the DGI community I saw that there were some extremely impressive numbers being put up in March, and I am looking forward to seeing what April holds for everyone as well.