August dividend update

Last month I saw a 22% bump in my dividend income and I’m hoping that can continue with this month’s dividend update.

Both July and August are slow months for me and my dividend employee Steve but we’re into September now which is one of the four big months four me due to my mutual fund and ETF exposure.

I’ve added more money into my bond funds that pay monthly recently due to the strong stock market performance leading to bonds becoming under weighted in my portfolio and that has helped spur growth in these off months a little bit.

Last year’s August income came in at $81.26 so that’s the base I’m working with when setting my expectations for the month. Let’s take a look at the August income.

August’s dividend income comes in at $101.60. It’s not a huge month compared to the quarter ending months but it is nice to see continued growth each month. The total represents a 25% increase over last year and speaks to the power of continued investing.

My bonds are the only things I own that pay monthly so adding more money to those funds if the stock market continues performing as it has will help spur growth in these months. The exciting thing about this month is that it’s the first $100+ month of the year when you don’t consider the four high performing months. It’ll be good when I get to a point where all these months are over $100!

The bond fund was the main payer this month but my Apple holdings were also included in this total.

The great thing is that even these small months help my future income as this money was reinvested and will generated about $2.24 in forward annual dividend income or an extra $0.19 per month. It may seem like small fry but every little bit helps in the long run!

My dividend employee Steve took it easy this month in preparation for next month. Steve’s hourly wage was $0.61/hr and his annual wage drops down to $2.56/hr but is sure to spike up in September as the busy season starts for him again!

This month brings the annual total to $3412.73 which is still a far cry from my annual goal of 8k+ but I still have September and more importantly December which are two of my biggest months coming up.

Here’s another look at the data since I started tracking this. As a side note, for proper tracking purposes, I went back and updated the December 2015 data to remove the long term capital gain that was tracked as a dividend within that data.

You can see that September and December will serve to spike up my annual total. I’m not sure I can expect as much growth in September as I saw in June but I’m still hoping for a decent bump there.

That’s it for this month. I’m glad to see another month of 20%+ growth especially after the insane 46% growth I saw in June and I’m super excited to see what September has in store for me.

How was August for you if you’re tracking dividends?

August Total : $101.60
2017 Total : $3412.73
Portfolio monthly hourly wage : $0.61/hr
Portfolio annual hourly wage : $2.56/hr