March 2019 Dividends

Hello everyone,

Welcome back for another month's update. This is coming in tardy, and I apologize. Things are quite hectic, but I am glad to carve out some time now to generate the update.

Let's get to it:


Taxable Accounts
CompanySymbolDateAmount
Lazard Ltd.LAZ3/1/2019$20.68
Intel Corp.INTC3/1/2019$3.47
W.W. Grainger Inc.GWW3/1/2019$20.40
The Kroger Co.KR3/1/2019$0.98
Cummins Inc.CMI3/7/2019$9.12
Emerson Electric Co.EMR3/11/2019$4.90
Target CorporationTGT3./11/19$39.68
International Business MachinesIBM3/11/2019$3.14
Walgreens Boots Alliance Inc.WBA3/12/2019$2.20
Hanesbrands Inc.HBI3/12/2019$1.95
Compass Minerals International, Inc.CMP3/15/2019$11.52
Flowers Foods, Inc.FLO3/15/2019$21.24
VF CorpVFC3/18/2019$10.71
Qualcomm, Inc.QCOM3/28/2019$37.78
Vanguard High Yield Dividend ETFVYM3/29/2019$2.28
Taxable Accounts Total$190.05
Roth IRA Account
CompanySymbolDateAmount
iShares S&P 500 Index ETFIVV3/27/19$13.01
iShares S&P SmallCap 600 Index ETFIJR3/27/19$3.76
Vanguard High Yield Dividend ETFVYM3/29/19$24.99
Roth IRA Account Total$41.76
Overall Dividend Income Total$231.81
Forward 12-month Projected Dividend Income Total
$1,841.48


My March 2019 Thoughts

So March is a month with more activity than in other recent months, as I decided to bite the bullet and sell a bunch to come up with the total money needed for our house down payment.

We have not actually found our house yet, but wanted to have the money ready to go in case we do find it and need to move things along quickly.

It actually was tough to part with some of the portfolio, and think of the future dividends sacrificed, but I understand that this is for building equity, as well as diversifying to a degree beyond the stock market.

Part of this decision also was to get back to the enjoyment of adding capital again to my portfolio, albeit after some subtraction of funds. There is something satisfying actually about adding to the portfolio regularly as opposed to just putting all the money into savings and hoping just for dividend increases.

Take a look at all these transactions for March, I don't remember a month with so many!


March 2019 Transactions
BuysQtySellsQty
LAZ17INTC11
WBA9NRZ39
EMR4
AAPL3
CSCO10
FLO49
WSM26
VFC19
WMT3
ABT17
TGT30
GWW4
VYM10
VNQ6.357


March on with Changes

It started off early in the month when I made my decision to bite the bullet. I liquidated my positions in Intel (INTC), New Residential (NRZ), Walmart (WMT), and Vanguard Real Estate ETF (VNQ), pocketing some nice gains. The rest of the holdings shown above, I sold off a portion of my positions to come up with the money needed for my part of the upcoming mortgage down payment.

So the band-aid was ripped off, I smarted, and then I was able to start down the road to build back up the portfolio.

For March I made it a priority to add to Lazard (LAZ) and Walgreens Boots Alliance (WBA), as I saw these two as the best value, of my existing positions to add to. I also kept an eye on my watchlist of potential new positions to start, but I did not see enough value there to start any new positions.

Let take a look at March 2019 as it relates to my dividend income history:


Month201420152016201720182019
January$14.38$14.42$70.45$72.34$97.11
February$49.07$50.38$112.01$190.55$178.07
March$50.22$52.16$182.28$232.83$231.81
April$10.83$27.91$64.56$78.40
May$46.52$59.42$132.14$162.41
June$6.69$47.51$90.97$198.86$259.18
July0$18.99$51.37$168.64$102.00
August$33.96$50.11$86.07$156.46$183.50
September$54.75$55.61$101.70$226.17$192.40
October$10.94$14.42$72.53$79.06$133.64
November$48.79$50.11$103.31$158.18$184.42
December$63.55$49.89$168.03$234.71$255.99

...and of course in graphical form:


Quarterly and Yearly Comparisons

With the stock selling, I'm not expecting much in the way of positive quarterly and yearly comparisons for a while, but I'll still include them:


%Chg Qtr%Chg Year
March 2019-9.45%-0.44%

Some of my later March payouts appear to have been impacted by some of the trimmed and liquidated positions, which leads to the lower amount in comparison to the last quarter. Oddly enough, the yearly comparison came out to about the same as March 2018.

This is likely due to the last quarter (December 2018) hitting an all time high in monthly dividend income, so some of that was lost by the reduction in the portfolio. Granted, most of my positions that were sold or trimmed, will not show an impact until months down the road, but the few (with ex-dividend and dividend payment dates later in March) did show impact.

In Conclusion

To sum it all up, I am a little disappointed that I was not able to come up with down payment money without touching the portfolio, but I had to come to a realization that with the home buying timeframe (and price range in our area), that some of the portfolio would have to be sacrificed. On the other hand, once that did take place, I am glad to get back to adding to the portfolio, and getting it back to where it was, incorporating what I have learned up to this point to make better decisions.

So, there you have it for a March 2019 dividend summary.

How was your March 2019? Let me know in the comments below!


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