Thursday, March 31, 2016

Dividend income & raise - March 2016

March was a nice month for me, in terms of dividends received.

Dividend income

JNJ $12.00
TGT $15.68
AFL $7.79
MCD $9.79
CVX $10.70
QCOM $6.72
WFC $4.50
ADM $6.90

Total March: $74.08 (pre tax)
Net received: $62.67



Comparison with last year (gross)
March 2015: $53.22
March 2016: $74.08

This is a 39% YoY increase. Great progress once again!

Dividend raises

On March 8th, QCOM increaseed their quarterly dividend from $0.48 to $0.53.
This is a 10.42% increase. Due to this change, my YOC is now at 3.40%.

Update on goals
My goal is to receive $750 net dividends in 2016.
With the first quarter in the books, we are way behind on schedule.
Net dividends received so far: $127.36, while it should have been $187.50.

I have to invest consistantly in order to fix this issue in time!

How was your March?
Thanks for reading!

Monday, February 29, 2016

Dividend income & raises February 2016

February was a great month. Several dividend raises, multiple stocks paid dividends and best of all: it was a much bigger paycheck than last years February!

T - $23.52
PG - $8.62
OHI - $18.81
CAT - $9.24

Total February (gross): $60.19



Comparison with last year
February 2016: $60.19
February 2015: $22.56

This is a 267% YoY increase. Nothing to complain about, I would say.

Dividend raises

This section of the monthly dividend update is my favorite.
What's not to like about receiving these increasing paychecks, right?

On February 17th, TROW increaseed their quarterly dividend from $0.52 to $0.54.
This is a 3.85% increase. Due to this change, my YOC is now at 2.83%.

On February 18th, KO increased their quarterly dividend from $0.33 to $0.35.
This is a 6.06% increase. Due to this change, my YOC is now at 3.39%.

On February 18th, WMT increased their quarterly dividend from $0.49 to $0.50.
This is a 2.04% increase. Due to this change, my YOC is now at 3.43%.

How was your February?

Thanks for reading.

Thursday, February 11, 2016

Recent buy - February 2016

Archer Daniels Midland (ADM)
Buy 23 shares @ $36.60 at 12/31/2015

My last purchase of last year was ADM.
This large agricultural processor has shown a substantial decline last year.
With their 52-week high at $53.31, the discount I got was 31%.

As this is a Dividend Champion, the potential discount that presented itself, was reason for me to dig deeper into this company. Their business is pretty straightforward. They manufacture seeds for many different agricultural products like corn, grain and oilseeds. They have been doing this for over a century.

The decline in the stock price is a result of declining commodity prices, strong dollar and a weak Q3 earning report. However, is this still a quality company, worth investing in?

My answer would be yes. As we have seen in recent weeks, many DGI bloggers agree.

Crunch some numbers
ADM has increased their dividends for 40 years in a row. At $36.60 the yield is 3.01%, which is a little under my portfolio average of 3.9%. However, this minor flaw is compensated by the amazing growth numbers of ADM.

DGR-1: 16.7%
DGR-3: 17%
DGR-5: 13.3%
DGR-10: 12.7%

All double digits! This is not very common amongst Dividend Aristocrats.
As a matter of fact, only 17 of the 108 Champions show growth numbers of over 10% in all 4 categories.

From a valuation point of view, ADM has an EPS of 39% with a P/E of 12.3, which should leave more than enough room for future growth.

This looked like an offer I could not resist!

Omega Healthcare Investors Inc. (OHI)
Buy 12 shares @ $27.87 at 2/10/2016

This REIT was on sale, yesterday and earlier today! It traded at a 9% discount, so I added some shares right away.
This purchase reduced my average purchase price from $35.49 to $33.46, increasing the YOC from 6.31% to 6.69%.

Abbott Laboratories (ABT)
Buy 15 shares @ $37.28 at 2/10/2016

Abbott develops and produces healthcare products. It is one of the largest healthcare companies in the US.

At $37.28 ABT is trading at a 28% discount rate, compared to their 52-week high.
The dividend payout is $1.04 annually, which puts their yield at a smaller than average of 2.79%. They have been raisng their dividends for more than 42 consecutive years.

David Fish decided to remove them from his CCC list, after they split the company into ABT and ABBV, back in 2012, but ABT's dividend strategy did not change one bit.

This is a new position.

Wells Fargo & Co. (WFC)
Buy 5 shares @ $46.95 at 2/10/2016

I liked WFC a lot at $51.32, what's not to like at $46.95? Their business did not change.
This is an addition to a current position.

Due to this purchase I averaged down on WFC.
My average purchase price is now at $50.03 with an YOC of 3%.

My portfolio has been updated to reflect these changes.
What do you think of these purchases?

Thanks for reading!

Thursday, February 4, 2016

Dividend income - January 2016

April was not the most lucrative month of all times, but every penny helps.

Dividend income

GE $9.20
WMT $6.37
Total $15.57 (net $13.23)

Despite the small amount of dividends received, it's still a 100% increase, as I did not receive any dividends in January last year.




Dividend raise

Over the last couple of weeks, I received several dividend raises! That's one of the best parts of this strategy, as we all know. All I did was waking up in the morning to receive these raises. They are small, but steady.

T raised their annual dividend from $1.88 to $1.92. +2.13%
OHI raised their annual dividend from $2.24 to $2.28. +1.79%

Thanks for reading!

Thursday, January 7, 2016

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!

Thursday, December 31, 2015

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!

Thursday, December 10, 2015

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!