August 2017 Dividends

Hello everyone,

I'm a little tardy on my August update, as things have been kind of crazy to start the month with respect to normal life stuff. I normally write these in the first week of the month, but in the first week of September we were away for a week, visiting friends and family in the DC/Alexandria VA area.

Part of this time though, I was fortunate to be able to attend an awesome sushi gathering with a bunch of awesome PF bloggers based in the DC area. They have much better blogs than this one, and were pretty cool to hang out with. Feel free to check out their blogs below:

Reaching for FI
Feminist Financier
Military Dollar
Zero Day Finance
Hungry Being
Woman Vs. Loans
ZJ Thorne

and also give a Twitter follow to:
@NotMade2Break

When I made mention of sushi, this is the magnitude of what we were dealing with:

All gone in a matter of minutes. Clearly, these were not amateurs...

Also while in the area, we were able to enjoy visiting some of my fiancee's family, participate in my annual 14-team fantasy football live draft, attend a Sting concert, and visit some amazing museums. This has become an annual trip for me, and I hope there are future networking opportunities with the PF crowd there as well.

Actually, since I am based in MA, it would be cool if we had similar events in our area throughout the area. Something to investigate...

Besides this trip, things have been hectic as well, as the wedding venue search is in full swing, and that has taken up a lot of my time. And oh the prices just to hold a 5 hout party...

But enough of my excuses, you're here for the dividend income update for August! At least I'm making that assumption. So let's get to it:

Taxable Accounts

Verizon (VZ): 8/1/17 - $2.31
AT&T (T): 8/2/17 - $13.73
CVS Health (CVS): 8/3/17 - $17.00
Abbott Labs (ABT): 8/15/17 - $9.28
Apple (AAPL): 8/17/17 - $4.41
Amerigas (APU): 8/17/17 - $25.74
Lazard (LAZ): 8/21/17 - $4.51
Prospect Capital (PSEC): 8/24/17 - $20.52
Williams-Sonoma (WSM): 8/25/17 - $23.01

Taxable Accounts Total: $120.51


Roth IRA Account
Toronto - Dominion Bank: 8/2/17 - $10.85
Abbott Labs (ABT): 8/15/17 - $6.75
Omega Health (OHI): 8/17/17 - $18.35

Roth IRA Account Total: $35.95

Overall Dividend Income Total: $156.46

Forward 12-month Projected Dividend Income: $1,780.31


My August Transactions
Bought:
-Lazard (LAZ): 5 shares
-Grainger (GWW): 1 share
-AT&T (T): 39 shares

Sold:
-Prospect Capital (PSEC): 246.221 shares

August was quite a slow month with regards to me adding to the portfolio, as I am devoting more funds to replenishing the emergency fund and saving for the 2018 wedding. The vast majority of my buys for August came from a reallocation of funds from the sale of my entire position of PSEC.

Why did I sell? I usually never sell, but made the decision based on a few factors:

1. This is one of the few holdovers from my early yield-chasing days. I basically kept solely because of the high yield, which is not a good reason to own/keep a stock. This was one of the companies I was least confident in because I didn't really understand the BDC business model
2. The dividend was cut. Yes, the dividend was high in relation to the stock price, but the dividend has not grown in years. I was ok holding in this instance, but once it was cut, I cut my stake. I would rather reallocate that money into better investments that grow the dividend over time.
3. The latest quarter results were not good, and their outlook does not look very promising for the future

So the short term consequence is that I reduced my 12-month forward projected dividend income from $1,935.78 in July to $1.780.31 in August (8% decrease), but I feel like I am better off in the long run, beyond the 12 months with that money invested in companies that are much healthier and providing payments that are growing on a yearly basis.

So let's take a look at my monthly dividend payment history:

Month	2014	2015	2016	2017
January		$14.38	$14.42	$70.45
February		$49.07	$50.38	$112.01
March		$50.22	$52.16	$182.28
April		$10.83	$27.91	$64.56
May		$46.52	$59.42	$132.14
June	$6.69	$47.51	$90.97	$198.86
July	0	$18.99	$51.37	$168.64
August	$33.96	$50.11	$86.07	$156.46
September	$54.75	$55.61	$101.70
October	$10.94	$14.42	$72.53
November	$48.79	$50.11	$103.31
December	$63.55	$49.89	$168.03

...and in graphical form


Y/Y:
Looking back a year ago, I pulled in $86.07 in dividend income for August 2016. So in a year that increased to $156.46, an 81.8% increase. Yeah, I'll take it!

Q/Q:
In the previous quarter, for May 2017, I was paid $132.14 in dividends. This amounts to an 18.4% increase, which is still quite nice.

These increases illustrate in a way a nice benefit of dividend growth investing, in that in a month where I did not add much to the portfolio other than reallocating proceeds from a sale, I still had nice income increases, with existing positions doing the heavy lifting with consistent payouts, and having many of those payouts increasing over the last year. Sign me up every day of the week for that.

In Conclusion:
Although I wasn't able to add a whole lot of fresh capital to the portfolio in August, my dividend train keeps chugging along with increasing income. Although there are short term needs for my day job income, it's good to know I have a growing safety net underneath and something building on top of that which will help me achieve my quest for time freedom.

Next month, I intend to eclipse a great milestone of $200 income within a month, which I almost hit in June. Pretty exciting.

Thanks for stopping by once again, it feels good to see all the encouraging feedback I get from readers. I look forward to more of it going forward as I push to hit more goals.

Also, please check out the other blogs listed above. Cool people, great content, and great at eating sushi! What more could you want?

That will put a wrap on my August 2017 Dividend Income Update.

How was your August? Let me know in the comments!