Dividend Income

Building Dividend Income & Net Worth Report – January 2017

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As I’m sure you’ve noticed, building dividend income monthly is a very important event for dividend growth investors. That’s why you see us all post our dividend income reports habitually. This month was a success with regards to building dividend income but disappointing as I’ve done a poor job winding in expenses and the Falcons didn’t win the Super Bowl.  🙁

Building Dividend Income

In my January 2016 dividend income report I posted a spreadsheet that showed a projection of what my January dividend income would look like in 8 years if I continued building dividend income at that month’s percentage increase.  (To save you a click, the percent increase was 55%)  Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to build my dividend income to $177 this month, but I was able to come pretty close!  And I’m certainly happy with the growth.

Let’s get to it.

This month I received $148.71 in dividend income.  On average, I was paid $10.62 from 15 different companies (more accurately, 14 companies and 1 fund)!!  This is some respectable growth compared to last January!  This month I was able to increase my dividend income a decent 34% over January 2016.  Thank you sir, may I have another!

Building Dividend Income - January 2017

Here is a chart of my passive dividend income progress over the last 2 years.

The dividend portfolio has been updated.

Net Worth

My net worth squeaked out a small gain this month, however cash levels continue to dwindle as I work to gain better control of my spending.

Let’s do the numbers…

Cash

So, I actually did some searching around on the internet this month for “is it possible to retire early with pets”.   I love my dogs.  They provide my family with a lot of joy, heck, my dogs are my family.  However, pets are also shockingly expensive.  Who knew?

This month we spent $2,300 on pets!  Ugh.  Unfortunately, our oldest dog (13 years old) got sick and needed some surgery.  She is much better now, but these vet bills sure do take their toll on finance.  To make it worse, over the last three months we spent over $4,500 on just pets (granted, we bought a super dog for the little piglet for Christmas). Before this month, I didn’t have pets as line item in my early retirement budget… I do now.

Real Estate

Zillow continues to inflate the values of my primary residence and rental property #1 beyond reason.  That’s why there is no change in those home prices this month – I’ve elected to use my own “real” values.  Rental property #2 is still rolling along well.  I’m happy to report there were no issues with any of the rentals this month!  YAY!!  December’s problem only ended up costing me a little over $100 and a few hours.

Cars

Car values declined a bit more than expected this month.  That tick up from 2016 to 2017 is really expensive.  Our vehicles should average roughly a 1 – 2% decline each month.

Wrap-up

This month was pretty nice even with the extreme expenses that popped-up.  I’m building dividend income consistently and net worth is on the rise (reaching a new high).  I also received some great news that there will be some changes in our 401k that could be HUGE!  I’ll have to wait until they go into effect, but I may have a little over 200k to manage myself! Oh, this could be fun!

I'm a dividend growth investor who is aiming to retire early in 4 years at the age of 45. My goal is to live off the income my dividend portfolio and rental property produce exclusively and leave the corporate rat race. I hope you will join me in this journey!

14 Comments

  1. Almost crossing the $1M NW magic number. I don’t like to include properties in my NW calculation as they are not “really” liquid. Good growth on YoY. Good luck for rest of 2017

    • Blake

      Hi D4F,

      Hitting 1M will be fun on paper. You’re right regarding the real estate. It does take some time and costs to turn those properties into money I could spend. However, I would be remiss if I included the property mortgages but didn’t include the assets.

      Thank you for coming by and commenting!

  2. Congratulations on the nice year-over-year increase. You’re doing a great job! And you’re almost at the $1m mark for net worth, which is a nice level to reach. Looks like you’re really close! All the best for 2017.

    Cheers

    • Blake

      Hi HerdiS!

      Thank you! Adding another 200k of money that I’m able to invest myself will really get future dividend income numbers up quickly. I’m excited 🙂

      Thank you for stopping by and commenting.

  3. Awesome while you didn’t get a bigger raise any raise is good and you are closing in on 1 million wich is awesome accomplishment.

    • Blake

      Thanks Doug!

      This is going to be a heck of a year with some massive YOY growth once I’m able to invest my 401k.

      Thank you for dropping in!

  4. Respectable growth indeed. Any time you can put up solid double digit year over year growth you know you are doing the right thing. Just a few companies in common paying us last month. That’s cool. I always like to see the differnt companies that are paying out cash to our fellow investing peers. Nice job to start the year!

  5. Congrats on the 34% increase. That is still very good growth. Good luck with getting even more great month over month comparisons.

    • Blake

      Hi DM,

      Animals make the best dividend investing blog mascots right? It’s great to meet you and I look forward to following along with your progress!

      Thank you for dropping by and commenting!

  6. Our two dogs cost us an arm and a leg also… I’m thinking of switching to fish but I don’t think my wife will be on board for that…

    • Blake

      HA, also a NO go with my wife! I’d be sleeping with the fishes if I tried to move our dogs out (not that I would do that anyway).

      (We have a couple of fish too)

      Nice to meet you and thank you for commenting!

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