There is no question that the blog has taken a backseat to life over the last few months. While I know that is to be expected, I do miss the interactions with all of you on a regular basis.
Away from the blog I have been busy traveling for work and doing some side consulting with an old colleague that reached out to me. On the personal side, my wife and I have also visited a warmer climate where we are looking to purchase a home as we begin to plan the 2nd phase of our life now that both of our kids are out of high school.
In an effort to catch-up, I will be sharing both the May and June results this week in back-to-back posts.
Let’s take a look at how things went for May!
May 2019 Dividend Income Summary
The month of May was a milestone for me as it marks the 1-year anniversary of beginning a focus on dividend stocks as well as the launch of this blog chronicling my journey when I wrote about fueling the FIRE furnace with dividends.
If you look back at my dividend income report from May of 2018, you will see all of the purchases that I made to begin this wild ride as well.
The month of May brought in a solid $560.52 in dividend income that was broken down as follows:
- Brokerage: $464.40
- IRA: $96.12
- Retirement: $0.00
Definitely a leap down from April but that is because the retirement accounts made up nearly $3,000.00 in dividends alone. Looking purely at the dividend stocks that I’ve added since last May, it was a very solid month.
Let’s look at all of the individual dividends received:
| Ticker | May 2018 | May 2019 |
|---|---|---|
| AAPL | 76.65 | 81.62 |
| ABBV | 113.69 | 132.28 |
| ABT | 31.12 | 36.18 |
| CBRL | -- | 28.36 |
| CLX | -- | 7.83 |
| CMS | -- | 17.19 |
| GIS | -- | 33.70 |
| PG | -- | 19.09 |
| SBUX | -- | 14.65 |
| T | -- | 53.57 |
| VZ | -- | 15.56 |
| WSM | -- | 24.37 |
| Total | 221.46 | 464.40 |
| YoY Growth | 109.70% | |
Here are the numbers from the holdings in my Rollover IRA:
| Ticker | May 2018 | May 2019 |
|---|---|---|
| EPR | -- | 17.39 |
| MAIN | -- | 10.40 |
| O | -- | 16.27 |
| SBRA | -- | 24.99 |
| SPG | -- | 20.96 |
| STAG | -- | 6.11 |
| Total | 0.00 | 96.12 |
| YoY Growth | Amazing! | |
While I was busy with things away from the stock market, reinvestment of dividends in my brokerage account and Rollover IRA added an additional $24.20 in projected annual dividend income.
May 2019 Purchases
There were only two purchases made in May as I have become a bit more value-focused recently and looking for some steeper discounts to add to my positions.
While nowhere near the amount of capital that I deployed in April, I was able to deploy $3,379.60 of new capital.
Here is a recap of my May purchases:
The purchases break down as follows, including the amount of additional PADI generated:
- MMM :: 10 shares @ $181.75/share that added $57.60 in PADI
- SNA :: 10 shares @ $156.21/share that added $38.00 in PADI
Unfortunately I pulled the trigger on MMM a little too early as it proceeded to drop over $20.00/share over the next few weeks. However, I considered the price to be an attractive valuation at the time and therefore I cannot be too disappointed.
Overall, these purchases raised my projected annual dividend income by $95.60–which unfortunately is well off the pace that I need in order to reach my goal.
May 2019 Dividend Raises
The summer months have seen a slowing in both the volume and impact of dividend raises. There were three holdings that announced raises for the month and unfortunately two of them were quite small.
The gold medal winner for the month was Clorox with a 10.42% increase, while Southside Bancshares and Main Street Capital took silver and bronze with their small 3.33% and 2.50% raises respectively.
Here you can see the impact of these raises:
These three raises combined resulted in an increase of $7.59 in projected annual dividend income.
This represents the smallest increase of the year based solely on dividend raises, although I expect the months to come will challenge that for the low spot.
Summary
As I am playing catch-up with my updates, I will keep the summary brief and say that it is extremely encouraging to see over $550.00 in dividends come in while my attention has been focused elsewhere.
Taking a look at the dividend tripod, as I like to call it, each leg made a nice contribution to the overall results. With the combination of reinvested dividends, dividend raises, and new capital, the portfolio achieved an increase of $127.39 in total PADI.
I will be sharing my June results in the next couple of days, and until then I hope you’re enjoying your summer!
We’ll, it’s about time, DivvyDad.
Just kidding, of course! Life takes precedence over dividend updates.
Over $500 is a nice haul for the portfolio… It’s always working in the background.
Good to see contributions from all the legs of the tripod, too. That’s the way to fuel that FIRE.
Regarding CLX, doesn’t it seem like the biggest dividend raises come from the companies delivering the smallest portion of our dividend income? We’ll, you did have those ABBV raises last year, so maybe it’s just me.
I’ll keep my eyes peeled for the June update.
Haha, I know that I’ve been slacking (particularly on reading everyone else’s blog updates) and I definitely miss it.
I do get what you’re saying about the bigger dividend raises, although I just had a nice raise come through for Cummins and that is a decent sized holding for me right now. I’m looking forward to catching up on my reading to check out how you’ve been doing as well!
Nice update!
I myself is really looking forward to 2020 to make a similar update. The snowball have started to roll 🙂
Thanks for the support and for stopping by EDB!
It is amazing to see how that snowball begins to grow as time goes by. Time and consistency to your plan are key!