Q4 2022 Dividends

Welcome to the last review of 2022 dividends; covering all of Q4! That’s right I’ve been slacking and missed the last 3 dividend reviews so now I’m shoving them all into one post.

I wanted to get it out before February starts so I can get back to monthly updates.

2022 was pretty mediocre year for investors in general but dividends and income continued to flow in even if prices sagged. For some, that’s enough and why many become dividend investors in the first place. In fact, rising rates sent income up for those invested in bond funds even if those bond funds lost a bunch of value for the same reason. Those holding cash in money market accounts did well as those rates climbed to 4% with some brokers.

For me, 2022 dividends weren’t impacted too much as there weren’t too many cuts despite market volatility. That led to solid growth across the board and I expect these last 3 months to be a continuation of that. December should be an interesting month as well given that I own a variety of index funds and one that pays out mostly in December which makes it my biggest month by far.

With that backdrop, let’s get started. We’ll start with October which sat at $319.26 last year. Last year’s November payouts were $396.64 and December had a very solid $5,409.31!

October 2022 Dividends

October came in at $491.90, a 54.1% bump over the prior year.

That’s a pretty hefty growth rate and it’s great to see a month that was at $50 in 2016 near $500 now. 2018 does look a bit odd in that graph as that was a year where a few of my ETFs that normally pay out in September were a few days late for some reason so it’s more of an aberration than anything.

The big growth this year in some of these off months is really driven by rising rates which help drive higher payouts in bond funds and money market funds. Those aren’t technically dividends but it’s all income so I count it.

Steve, my dividend employee, saw his hourly rate jump to $2.95/hr. this month, still a far cry form a livable wage but a decent bump over last year. These smaller months do have lower hourly wages but it’s the annual wage that matters, something we’ll cover once we get to December.

On top of that, all this money was reinvested into dividend paying securities which will boost forward annual income by $16.23, not a huge boost but every little bit helps. Even these smaller months are starting to contribute more than I contributed monthly when I first started investing which is awesome to see. That’s the beauty of compound growth when it comes to long term investing.

I won’t complain about 50%+ growth rates in any month and am looking forward to see what 2023 brings. I’m sure growth will slow down but I’m still glad to see these smaller months jump so much this year. In 2022, I hit $200 in every month and it’s likely I’ll hit $300 or even higher in every month next year given this growth from the start of the year.

November Dividends

November comes in at $641.67, a 61.8% boost over the prior year.

It’s great to see these smaller months grow so much consistently. I’m sure December won’t be anywhere close to that but I’ll take big growth where I can get it.

Steve’s hourly wage hear jumps up to $3.85/hr., and re-investing these dollars will bring my forward annual income up by $21.18.

Overall, not a bad November at all and continued growth here is exciting on a go forward basis. It’ll be interesting to see when some of these non-quarter ending months will hit $1,000 and November might be a good month for that since I own some individual stocks that pay within that period and it usually captures the most growth and contributions within those stocks.

December Dividends

December’s dividends come in at $5,827.54 or a 7.7% boost over last year. That’s not quite a 50%+ jump but it’s always harder to have these big months grow at a rapid clip. Even with the lower growth rate, I certainly won’t complain about a month that almost hits $6,000.

December is a huge month for me and makes up about 31% of my overall dividends(although that number is dropping every year as the smaller months grow) and a big driver of my overall results for the year so any growth here is big.

Steve’s hourly wage for the month is $34.97/hr. so if I can get every month to that, I think I’d be ready to retire but I’m still at least a few years away from that.

Since I own some mutual funds here, there were also a few long-term and short-term capital gain payouts that I don’t count as dividends since they don’t re-occur. These totaled up to $2503.18 which is a pretty nice total. Luckily all of these are in tax-advantaged accounts or I’d be annoyed by these unexpected payouts.

Re-investing just the dividends means a $192.31 boost to overall income. If you consider the extra shares bought with the capital gains, that’s another $82 added to the pot.

Now that the year is wrapped up, we can total everything up to $18,312.91, or a 15.4% boost over the prior year. That’s certainly a decent bump and it’s nice to see it exceed the inflationary pressures we’ve seen. It also makes me feel a bit better about stock prices being a lot lower than at the start of the year especially since I can buy and re-invest at lower prices.

Steve’s hourly wage might look low in some of the smaller months but all that matters is his annual wage which ends up at $9.15/hr. Again, not quite enough to live on but the growth is what matters.

Speaking of growth, re-investing all those dollars for the entire year, pushes future annual income up by $604.32 which is almost 10% of the entire dividend haul for 2016. That’s great to see from just re-invested dollars and that forward income due to re-invested dollars will grow as dividends grow.

Add that to all the new money flowing in and I’m sure to get past $20,000 in 2023 which has been a goal for a while. That’s pretty exciting and I can’t wait to get started in January which is almost done!