February 2018 summary

The shortest month of the year is in the books and officially the winter is over! Looking over the window, it actually doesn’t seem so, as we have ~-14°C at the moment. Oh well, it should only get better from here and I am sure that the coldest days are behind us until next year. Let’s see what my investments managed to do in the last 28 days.

Dividend Income

Second month of the quarter is still my best month when I have 3 companies paying me dividends:

In total, I received $13.45 from companies that should be well known to dividend growth investors community. I like the companies because it is clear what they are doing and I can relate to them.

E.g. with the dividend from AT&T (€5.46), I could cover 78% my mobile phone bill of €7. I managed to reduce my bill recently by a chance when I helped my wife to visit my service provider. She was shopping for a cheaper mobile phone service bill and was offered a great deal for €7/month. Since I was paying €10.99 myself, I asked if it applied to me as well. Just like that, the plan was applied to me and I will now be saving ~€48 a year and even get more mobile data than with my previous plan.

Year on Year Comparison

Let’s see how it compares with February of last year:

The increase from last year is minimum but I am happy that it is going to the right direction. Also, all 3 of the companies managed to raise their dividend, compared to last year, so I will take that.

Dividend Increases

During February, one of my companies declared a dividend increase. Cisco (CSCO) announced that they are increasing their quarterly dividend from $0.29 to $0.33 per share. This represents a respectful increase of 14%. That’s what I’m talking about! Since I hold 31 shares of CSCO, it will increase my annual dividend income by $3.47 (31 * $0.04 * 4 – 30%tax). Investment in CSCO is looking very good in general as well so far. Since I purchased it in September 2017, the price of the stock managed to climb by whopping 37%! I hope this trend can continue going forward.

This is the third month in a row when some company from my portfolio increases their dividend! I would love to continue the streak but March may be the end of it.

Purchases and portfolio contributions

This month I didn’t purchase any stocks but I invested in a different kind of asset. I invested €544 to buy a set of coins that were released by Lithuanian Bank to celebrate 100 years of restored Lithuania’s independence. You may read more about this purchase in this post.

I also added additional €30 to my P2P lending account.

I managed to put aside €330 for investments this month. I see this as a good result due to the fact that I had a week-long vacation in Tenerife and still managed to put aside some money for investments. The amount was used for above mentioned purchase and the rest will stay in cash until I have a big amount to invest again.

Other passive income

During February, I received €4.96 (compared to €4.78 last month) in interest from P2P lending. As it became usual recently, some loans are late. This month, I have 1 loan being late for 15-40 days and one loan is late for more than 40 days so it was transmitted to a debt collection company. I guess, this one might be the first one to default in my experience. However, those loans are insured, so I will start receiving the money back in case they are late for 90 days. In February, I also invested a small amount (€15) to a commercial loan. It’s a new thing, so I will see how it goes. Currently, my loans portfolio stands at €416.17 and is distributed among 31 loans.

Summary

In total, after converting to EUR, I received €15 during January. This puts the total for this year to €26.74. This is only 11% of my goal of €240 for 2018. I guess the goal is too optimistic but I will do my best to come as close to it as possible during the year 🙂

 

How was your February? Are you happy with the results? Thanks for reading and feel free to leave a comment below!

17 thoughts on “February 2018 summary

  1. Interesting way to look at dividends. I do the same with my dividends. When I get XOM dividends I think of it as paying for my gas. Similarly, for AT&T it covers my phone bill. Nice dividends. I think your 2018 goal is achievable. You are of to a solid start.

    1. Good to know that I am not the only one. In one of my previous articles I mentioned that you can make it into a game and try to only drive as much as you get dividends from XOM to pay for gas (or diesel in my case). If I were to follow this rule, I could only drive ~50km in a quarter 😀
      Thanks for the comment!

  2. Good job. You will hit your goal especially if you keep getting increases like Cisco. 2.7 percent increase is awesome a few years like that and you will be doing good.i had a good month just posted mine yesterday

    1. Thanks, Doug! I still need a lot of work to do to reach the goal and I am behind at the moment but we’ll see how it goes. Heading over to your blog to see how your February went 🙂

  3. Great stuff BI and a 2.7% increase is also nice to see. Keep up the grind and buys and your 2018 should be attainable.

    Let’s keep going strong!

    1. Hi Mr. Robot,
      Thanks for encouragement! I will do my best and I will be in a better place than I am now anyway.

  4. Wow 300 eur in a single.month is big. Im going for 200/mo + 1/2 of my annual bonus 🙂 keep it up. CSCO is wonderful investment. I was chosing between INTC anf CSCO and went for INTC and that was a good investment as well. Would love to own both 🙂

    1. Hi P2035,
      Yes, I am actually trying to contribute €500/month but it rarely happens. It looks like there are always some unexpected expenses and I don’t add anything in some months. Hopefully, I will also receive some bonus and it will help with the monthly contributions.
      I agree, CSCO looks great, INTC also performing very well so we should both be happy with our decisions 🙂

  5. Your dividend income is moving in the right direction BI. All 3 companies paid me dividends as well and they are solid companies. Quick question, can you tell me how you get the excel data into your blog post. I like how you did it and I’m trying to figure it out.

    1. Hi DP,
      Like Mr. Robot said, it’s pretty simple and I guess there are a few ways to do it. What I do is:
      1) Copy the table I want to use
      2) Paste it as a picture (there are several options of pasting) in a Word document
      3) Take a snapshot of the picture in desired size using Windows built-in tool “Snipping tool”. Somehow, when I try to simply save it as a picture from Excel/Word, it saves it with black background so I use Snipping tool as a workaround.
      Hope it helps 😉

  6. Heck Yea BI! 3 awesome companies paying you this month. O with a mini raise today! Any extra money they wanna throw my way is fine by me. Keep up the great work!

    1. That’s great news, I didn’t notice the raise! The company just keeps on giving!
      Thanks for visiting!

  7. Three solid companies paying you a dividend! I really like the CSCO dividend increase as well. I’m actually thinking about adding even more to my CSCO position. It’s by far my favorite stock and the valuation still seems to be really attractive, even after the run-up of the last few months.

    Did you had a good vacation in Tenerife? 🙂

    1. Hi SD,
      Thanks, the vacation was great and exactly what I needed 🙂
      I also really like CSCO, as it is the best performing position in my portfolio. But since I only have a few names, I would rather diversify the portfolio and add to some new position 🙂
      -BI

  8. Hi BI, nice report. I loved all the information you provided and the different income streams. You’ve got 3 nice companies paying you dividends. I own O and PG, but not T.
    Congrats on the CSCO purchase last year, and the subsequent gains and dividend increase. I was looking at CSCO around $31 last year, but was holding out for it to get below $30, and of course that didn’t happen. I have since missed out…. Oh well.
    Dividend increases have been awesome thus far in 2018. Here’s hoping your streak continues in March.

    1. Hi ED,
      I’m glad you liked it!
      I am sure that you picked something else instead of CSCO – you cannot grab them all, unfortunately 🙂
      -BI

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