June 2018 Summary

The first month of summer is behind us! It was a great month in general – we had a week-long vacation, I was consistently training for triathlon, the weather was good most of the time. I wish I could say the same for my dividend income. After a stellar May, June was quite slow, as usual with the third month of the quarter with my stocks portfolio. Nevertheless, I still received some dividends, so let’s see what companies paid during the last month!

Dividend Income

Only two companies of my portfolio paid dividends in June:

After great month of May, we are back in the zone of under $10 in a month from dividend income. However, this should be the last time when I receive so little during the third month of the quarter, as I recently purchased some shares of PFE which will improve my portfolio performance starting from September!

Year on Year Comparison

As always, I like to compare my dividend income with previous year:

I am actually happy with increase of more than 5%. I received more than last year simply because both of the companies increased their dividend throughout the year, so I didn’t need to lift a finger or invest any additional capital! 5.54% is also bigger than annual inflation in Lithuania which reached 3.72% in 2017 and is predicted to reach 2.22% in 2018. If I intend to live off dividends one day, I will need the dividend increases to keep up with inflation.

I can’t wait to see how the year on year comparison will look like in September when my purchase of Pfizer kicks in with their dividend!

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

Purchases and Portfolio Contributions

This month I didn’t make any purchases but managed to put aside €400 to my investment account.

I also added €30 to my P2P portfolio.

Dividend Increases

I received one dividend increase during June!

Realty Income (O) increased their monthly dividend from $0.2195 to $0.22 per share which represents a very tiny increase of 0.2%. Since I own 16 shares of O, it will increase my net annual income from Realty Income by ~$0.07 ($0.0005*16*12-30%). It’s a very tiny increase but it’s already the third time this year when Realty Income raises their dividend so I won’t complain!

Income from P2P Lending

During June, I received €6.50 in interest from P2P lending. It is again slightly more than the amount received in previous month (€6.27), even though I didn’t add any additional funds into the platform in the last couple of months. I like the fact that the income is constantly growing, albeit rather slowly. I still consider it as a riskier investment, so I will keep my P2P account up to ~10% of my overall portfolio. Currently, my loans portfolio consists of 43 active loans with total value of €555.21.

Summary

In total (after converting to EUR) I received €12.09 from passive income during June. This puts my total for 2018 to €140.88. I am still ahead of schedule to reach my goal to receive €240 throughout 2018 due to unusually big payout in May. I think I will be able to pull this through if my P2P income stays consistent and I manage to add at least one more dividend payer to my portfolio. This didn’t look likely at the beginning of the year but now I have some hope! 🙂

 

How was your month? Are you happy with your results after first half of the year? Feel free to leave a comment below and thanks for reading!

14 thoughts on “June 2018 Summary

  1. All in all you have increased your dividends and that’s not bad news. After all we are just starting rolling our dividend snowball. We need to be patient and time to get closer to our colleagues from Europe and USA investors.
    Besides, in what platform/brokerage do you invest here in Lithuania?

    1. Yes, it’s quite hard to get the snowball rolling, but I am hopeful that it is possible even in Lithuania 🙂
      I am using a simple investment account of a bank (SEB) but it’s not ideal – you need to pay 30% taxes on dividends from US, minimum fee for US purchases is $10, available instruments are limited, it is no longer possible to invest to ETFs or REITs since the beginning of this year. I am planning to move to “Myriad Trading” but haven’t done that yet. With my little portfolio it is not worth it yet to sell and re-buy everything in a different platform but it’s in my future plans.

      1. Personally I am in Swedbank platform. It’s perfect regarding usability but to expensive for small investments. For one purchase you have to gather 2000-3000 Eur to get a logical tax ratio as I am trying to stay away from larger than 0,5% taxes.
        I am eagerly waiting for Revolut solutions for share markets. According to their statements taxes for investment may become so low that even buying only one Apple, Google or other share becomes logical.

        1. I also use Revolut but I am not sure if their solution will be valid. It will be interesting to see if you will “really” own the stocks and receive dividends etc. I have a suspicion that it will work more like trading where you don’t actually own the stocks but we will see. I hope that it will work as a regular investment account 🙂

  2. Keep that snowball rolling 🙂 Im a bit unmotivated by the speed that its growing also there are these need for home repair kicking in ect. but its important to stay on track and keep the cash flow flowing 😉

    1. Hi P2035,
      I think this happens to most of us. Let’s do our best to stay consistent with building our futures!

  3. Rooting for you from across the Atlantic BI. Keep that momentum going. Your portfolio is moving in the right direction and given time, all these additions will add up and continue to rise.

    Regarding P2P, I actually was going to go with Lending Club and even went as far as creating an account. However, I never funded it. Good luck with that program and I hope it continues to work out for you.

    1. Hi DP,
      Thanks for the support! 🙂 What stopped you from funding your Lending Club account? As I mentioned, I still consider this as a riskier investment than dividend stocks but I like to play around with it using part of my portfolio 🙂

      1. I think what stopped me was all the negative feedback I was getting when I was looking at people’s experiences. It seems like the rate of return was good in the beginning but towards the middle/end, things just kept getting worse with a lot of defaults. It was kind of a turn-off. Plus, I felt it was more important to have a it of focus in my wealth accumulation strategy by increasing the minimum contributions to my dividend portfolio. In addition to Lending Club, I was also considering cryptocurrencies (which I dabbled in), stock options, and a myriad of other things online. In the end, I settled on my dividend portfolio and reducing my debt. So far, so good.

        Nothing against Lending Club, or Prosper and I might one day go back, but it wasn’t right for me at the time. I was just following the crowd and I didn’t like that.

        1. Hi DP,
          Thanks for a detailed explanation – fair enough that you didn’t pull the trigger 🙂
          I also saw some negative feedback but most of them was from the people who were too greedy in my opinion – investing in high-risk loans that usually return stellar results at the beginning but degrade after some time.
          So far, it is looking good for me (I’ve been investing tiny amounts for more than a year now) but I think it’s too small period to make any conclusions as we haven’t hit some recession yet 🙂
          -BI

  4. Hi BI. Good to see your dividend income increasing organically, and glad to hear that you will receive a jolt from your PFE purchase next quarter. Keep making those purchases, no matter how small they may seem, as these will fuel the majority of your growth in the early years until your portfolio can get to a size that allows for significant internal growth.

    1. Hi ED,
      Thanks for the encouragement! I already felt some power of internal growth when dividend income covered ~8% of my May’s purchase. I hope this will be felt even more in the future 🙂

  5. No worries BI, things pick up steam slowly but when it gets rollin’ there is no stopping it! Great to see your income increase even though you made no buys. That’s the power of DGI!

    Looking forward to seeing PFE paying you out, fellow shareholder here! 🙂

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