Welcome to 2016! Let's set some goals

Dear readers,

Thank you for an amazing 2015. Back in 2014 I would not have believed I could have received 24.000 pageviews in just 1,5 year.

More suprising is the amount of dividend income I collected.

Last year I received over $400 in dividends, with my small investing portfolio. An amazing result, if you'd ask me. Especially if you compare this result to what my local bank would have provided in interest, during this very same period of time.

Thank you for being here.
Let's continue this success story in 2016!

Update on the goals

2015 was an easy year, as I had only 1 goal to reach. This year I'd like to challenge myself a little bit more!

#1 Post at least twice a month
Despite my hesitation to create longer posts, because of my minor knowledge of the English language, I would love to post at least twice a month in 2016. I consider this the least amount necessary to keep people interested.

#2 Reach at least 50 followers at Twitter
In order to inspire more people to start working on their financial future - even if they don't have a large stream of active income - I've started an account on Twitter.
Because to this, I met a lot of new interesting blogs and people, which is a very interesting side effect!

In 2016 I'd like to find at least 50 followers at Twitter.

#3 Gain some basic understanding of Wordpress
Last year, several bloggers switched from Blogger.com to a Wordpress website, hosted on an own domain. Even I experience some limitations concerning Blogger.com, but I do not have enough knowledge to switch yet. In 2016 I'd like to aqcuire some basic understanding of Wordpress to eventually make the switch as well.

#4 Hit the $100 dividend income per month mark
Although this goal is more fun oriented, it would feel good to hit this mark. After 2,5 years of consistent investing, I do think this should be possible to reach. I will be prepared for those triple digit dividends, that's for sure!

#5 Reach $850 in dividends
In total I'd like to set the goal to $850. A thousand seems too much, but according to my Dividend Meter (as part of my portfolio sheet), I'm currently at $676.57 for a complete year. At an average yield of 3.67% yield I have to add $4726 capital as soon as possible to reach this goal. Unfortunately, that's not possible, as I usually invest about $600~$700 per month.
Despite this fact, I do think this goal should be within reach, because of the growing nature of the dividends, as well as some bonusses I should receive in January and May.

Last, but not least, I hope you all will keep following me in this interesting and life changing journey!

Dividend income - December 2015

I love to write about dividend income.

December was a great month for me. Another alltime high! It's unbelievable, but reaching the first $100+ month of dividend income seems only months away! This is not a goal by itself, but after this point, the income seems to be substantial.

Dividend income

KO $13.86
JNJ $12.00
TGT $15.68
AFL $7.41
MCD $9.35
CVX $10.70
TROW $6.24
QCOM $6.72
WFC $4.50

Total December: $87.28 (pre tax)

Comparison with last year (gross)
December 2014: $0.58
December 2015: $87.28

This is a 15048% increase..
Of course there is a reason for this, as I did not invest that much in 2015.
My (Dutch) broker used to pay the dividends at the ex-dividend date. This means I received the December dividends in November, last year. After they switched to another clearing partner for US stocks, this changed. Unfortunately I am now paid, at the same time everybody else gets paid.

My goal was to receive $300 net dividends in 2015. This goal is totally crushed! Total net dividends received in 2015: $424.36. I am very happy about this. Let's set a more challenging goal for 2016.

How was your December?
Thanks for reading!

Recent sell - KMI

Unfortunately KMI cut their dividend by 75%, earlier this week.
This was a reason for me to sell all my shares, yesterday.

Let's see what happened during my time as a shareholder of KMI.

07/24/15 - bought 19 shares at $34.79 for $661.01
08/14/15 - Received $7.91 in dividends
11/13/15 - Received $8.24 in dividends
12/09/15 - Sold 19 shares at $15.91 for $302.29
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Net loss: $342.57

This transaction is my first loss since I started this DGI strategy, almost 1,5 year ago.

To learn a lesson..
To me, it is important to learn something from this loss.
However, I'm having troubles determining what I could have done differently, in order to prevent this loss. The easy answer: you shouldn't have bought KMI. With today's knowledge, that's absolutely right, but I didn't have today's knowledge back in July.

Was it the company's high debt ratio that should have raised the alarm? Was it bad to buy stocks in KMI, when all oil related companies suffered major losses in stock prices? Are commodities in common bad for a long term growth portfolio?

Anyone with thoughts on this?

One thing remains very clear: a long dividend streak does not provide any guarrantees!

Thanks for reading!

Dividend income & dividend raise November 2015

November was an amazing month. For the 5th (!) time this year, the dividend income has risen to an all time high. Loving the power of compounding over here!

T - $23.03
PG - $8.62
OHI - $18.48
KMI - $9.69
CAT - $9.24
WFC - $4.50

Total November (gross): $73.56

Total dividends received in 2015: $350.17 (net)

My 2015 goal for dividends is to receive a net total of $300 of them.
This obviously means the goal is reached! I have to set a more ambitious goal for next year.
I'm very excited with this progress to be honest.

Comparison with last year
November 2014: $55.02
November 2015: $73.56

This is a 33.70% YoY increase. Where can I sign up for more of those please?!

Dividend raises

On November 10th, MCD increased their quarterly dividend from $0.85 to $0.89.
This is a 4.71% increase. Due to this change, my YOC is now at 3.76%.

How was your november?

Thanks for reading.

Recent buys - November 2015

Due to me buying my first appartment, I don't have as much time to blog as I would like.
However, I do want to update you guys about a few recent buys I did a couple weeks ago, without going in depth.

Of course I'm very excited about this appartment and I can't wait to tell you much more, but it still is not finalized. So I have to be a little bit more patient for now.

Let's get back to business!

Wal-mart & Co. (WMT)
Buy 13 shares @ $58.29 at 10/26/2015

Can't go wrong with this, right?

Qualcomm Inc. (QCOM)
Buy 1 share @ $56.73 at 11/05/2015

I had some money left in my account and I wanted it to work for me, that's why I bought another share of QCOM. It turned out it was going to drop a bit more, but that doesn't really matter if you're expecting it to hold for at least another 25 years right?

My portfolio page has been updated to reflect these changes.

What do you think of these?

Thanks for reading!

Dividend Income & dividend raises - October 2015

Dividend income
October was not a very exciting month, in terms of dividend income.
2 of the 16 companies I am currently invested in, paid me their dividends.

KO - $13.86
GE - $9.20
Total October (gross): $23.06
Total dividends received in 2015: $287.65 (net)

My 2015 goal for dividends is to receive a net total of $300 of them.
With only $13 to go, I think it it safe to say I will be reaching this goal.
That makes me a happy person, especially if you compare this to what my local bank would have paid me.

If we compare this months result to last years, we were able to create a small increase.

October 2014: $22.08
October 2015: $23.06

This is a 4.44% increase.
It's not amazing, but with the power of compounding behind me, I'm still happy with this result!

Dividend increases
While it was a calm month on the dividend income, we cannot say this about dividend raises.

On October 14th, OHI increased their dividend from $0.55 to $0.56.
This is a 1.8% increase. Due to this change, my YOC is now at a very nice 6.31%.

On October 21st, KMI increased their dividend from $0.49 to $0.51.
This is a 4.1% increase. Due to this change, my YOC is now at a nice 5.86%.

On October 27th, AFL increased their dividend from $0.39 to $0.41.
This is a 5.1% increase. Due to this change, my YOC is now at 2.6%.

How was your October?

Thanks for reading.

Recent buy - October 2015

A few weeks ago, I put some fresh capital to work!

Unfortunately the amount of this fresh capital was not as large as it should have been, but that's because we spent some time in the city of London. It's a great place to be, although it's not very cheap.

We did the usual sightseeing and went to one of the most succesful musicals ever: Les Miserable.
A very exciting experience! We had a great time.

In the midst of all this, I'm in the process of buying my first apartment!
More about that soon, as it is not yet finalized.

Let's get back to business!

Wells Fargo & co (WFC)
Buy 12 shares @ $51.32 at 9/30/2015

Wells Fargo is one of the biggest banks in the US. Their total assets have a value of $1.69 trillion dollars. They offer a wide variety of financial services like personal banking, insurances, mortgages, wealth management and investing services.

During the Great Recession the entire financial sector took a big hit and WFC was no exception. The stock went from $39 to $8 in a matter of months.

WFC stock price during the Great Recession (source: Google Finance)

As we know now, they have managed to recover pretty well from that.

WFC stock price after 2008 (source: Google Finance)

The impact of the recession is also shown in the graph below, which shows the dividend payouts of WFC from 2002 until now.

This graph leads to the following DGR numbers.

DGR-1, 17.4%
DGR-3, 41.2%
DGR-5, 22.5%
DGR-10, 3.8%

With an earnings per share of $4.11 and a very small payout ratio of 36.54%, there should be more than enough room for WFC to grow their business and their dividends to the $0.52 per quarter they once paid. The low forward P/E of 12.49 is just another metric of showing this potential.

I can definitely see why Warren Buffet has so many of shares of this great company.

What do you think of this purchase?

Thanks for reading!