Another month has flown by – and it was a fantastic one. We had a week-long family vacation. One of the highlights was spending a few days at an aquapark, which our daughter absolutely loved. We even tried one of the bigger slides, which was a no-go for her just a year ago. Later, my wife and I took a short trip to London. One of the big highlights there was seeing Hamilton in the West End. It was AMAZING – truly a memorable experience. We’re already thinking about going to some musical again sometime in the future.
While we were having fun, our portfolio was working in the background and generated some passive income. Let’s see how it did during the first month of Spring.
Dividend Income
Starting with dividend income, I had 5 companies paying this month:
This is a record number of companies paying in a single month since we restarted investing. I received my first dividend from Prologis (PLD), which was my latest portfolio addition.
As always, let’s compare received dividends with our actual expenses:
- $6.54 from Discover Financial Services (DFS) would cover 39.7% of our Banking expenses for the last 3 months;
- $8.36 from United Parcel Service (UPS) would cover 1.5% of our Car & Transportation expenses during the last quarter;
- $4.76 from Target (TGT) could cover 0.3% of our Food expenses for the last 3 months;
- $2.12 from Microsoft (MSFT) could pay 0.5% of Subscriptions and Personal Development category for the last 3 months.
- $7.73 from Prologis (PLD) would cover 0.3% of our Mortgage payments for the last 2 months.
Dividend Year-on-year Comparison
Let’s see how dividend compares to March of last year:
I love to see that dividend payments more than doubled and were almost 125% higher compared to last year. That’s mainly due to 2 new payers. However, dividend increases from Target and Microsoft also contributed to the growth.
Other Passive Income
Other sources also added some passive income during March:
- €6.60 in interest from P2P lending
- €3.01 from Money Market Funds
- €0.40 from Rental Income Crowdfunding
Passive Income Summary
After adding it up, our portfolio generated €37.46 during the month:
Here’s a comparison to last year:
I love to see the yellow lines getting higher and higher. Hopefully, the growth will continue as the year goes by.
Investments and Portfolio Contributions
All the fun activities added some additional expenses. Therefore, I only managed to contribute €320 to my investment accounts during the month. It went to 3 different places.
Firstly, I invested €100 to two Rental Properties in Mintos platform (€50 each). Expected interest from these properties is 6.2% and 6.7% respectively. This should generate ~€5.5 of passive income annually after taxes.
Next, I invested €100 to a real estate crowdfunding project in Rontgen platform. It was an investment for 12 months with 6.5% interest. Therefore, it should generate €6.5 in interest if everything goes according to plan.
Finally, I added €120 to my investment account in Interactive Brokers where it’s waiting for a bigger purchase.
Portfolio Overview
This is how my portfolio looked like on the 1st of April:
It’s actually ~€800 smaller compared to previous month due to market movement in the US. It’s looking even worse after the “Liberation” day in the US at the moment. However, I am not worried, as we are still at the beginning of our investing journey. This just presents some opportunities to purchase some investments with cheaper prices.
This is how the sector/category allocation is looking:
As you can see from the above, my next investment should go to some company from Materials sector. Actually, I have just added a company to my portfolio, as I am writing this. Can you guess what this company could be? I will unveil it in a future post.
Summary
March was a great month, even though our investment portfolio decreased in size. This is still a start and I don’t worry about turbulence in the market. My investment philosophy is simple – Just Keep Buying!
During 2025, I have a goal to earn €500 from passive income. So far in 2025, we received €96.17 in passive income, which is 19% of the goal. With 25% of the year done, I am still behind schedule. However, I believe that I can catch up if I continue investing.
Thanks for reading! 🙂