August 2018 Summary

Beginning of a new month always brings some happiness to us, dividend growth investors. It definitely does to me, when I look behind and see what happened in my bank account in terms of dividend income. I especially like the second month of each quarter, as it’s where my biggest payers deliver. Let’s see what August brought!

Dividend Income

During August, 4 companies paid me a dividend:

Almost $20 – that’s not too bad for my portfolio. It’s actually one of the highest months for me so far (excluding May when my individual payers kick in). I can see a new face here – SBUX paid their first dividend and I only purchased them at the beginning of this month (Purchase details here). The rest of the companies are foundation stocks of my portfolio – I am holding them for at least two years now and am not willing to get rid of them in the nearest future.

I always like to imagine what I could purchase with the dividends received from each individual company that would be related to what that company does:

• $6.65 from AT&T would cover ~48% of my internet bill;
• $4.52 from Procter & Gamble would cover ~59% of a 200ml Gillette shaving gel I am using;
• $6.05 from Starbucks would buy me two large cappuccinos in a local coffee shop;
• $2.46 from Realty Income would cover ~0,4% of our monthly rent.

Of course, I am not going to use those dividends to purchase anything just yet – they will keep compounding in my investment account and will be part of my next investment.

Year on Year Comparison

Let’s see how this year’s dividends compare to last August:

I love seeing that the dividend growth rate is almost 50% when comparing it to last year. That recent purchase of SBUX made most of the increase but we cannot exclude the other 3 companies. All 3 of them raised their dividend throughout the year and contributed to the YoY growth.

This is how my dividend income progress looks like since the beginning of 2016 when I started recording it:

Purchases and Portfolio Contributions

I contributed €400 to my investment account this month. I used this amount and previous savings to initiate a position in Starbucks (24 shares @$51.90 for a total of @$1255.55). You can read more about this purchase here.

During July, I added €30 to my P2P lending account.

Dividend Increases

One more month when none of my companies declared any dividend increases. Most of the companies in my portfolio tend to increase their dividends at the beginning of the year, so I’ll need to wait. Maybe next month…

Income from P2P Lending

During August, I received €6.63 in interest from P2P lending. Income from P2P lending is back on the growing track. Some of the loans are late but it’s looking good in general. After adding a small amount during August, my P2P lending portfolio now consists of 50 loans with total value of €618.75.

Summary

In total (after converting to EUR) I received €23.55 from passive income during August. This puts my total for 2018 to €178.16. My goal for the year is to receive €240 during 2018 so now I have 74% of the goal completed. It is going to be a close call but I think I should be able to hit the target if nothing unexpected happen. Nevertheless, I am happy that I already surpassed the passive income of last year when I received €105.

 

How was your month? Are you happy with August results? Feel free to leave any comments below and thanks for reading! 🙂