Oh May, what a month! We saw a decent decline in the stock market pinned to the back of additional China penalty tariffs. However, for the dividend growth investor, we don’t see or focus on market value decline – we see opportunities. We also see our dividends stay consistent and come in just as planned, even while the market is dropping. May’s dividend income returned back to the typical monthly increase. And yeah, net worth cratered.
May Dividend Income
After April’s dividend income decline, I’m happy to report a reversion to the mean in my YOY dividend income increases.
This month I received $1,379.88 in dividend income! On average, I was paid $36.31 from 38 different companies!! This month’s dividend income is a respectable 44.16% increase over May 2108.
To put things in dollar figures, that’s $422.72 more dividend income than last May!
Dividend Income - May 2019
| Date | Company | Ticker | Dividend Income |
|---|---|---|---|
| 01/05/19 | AT&T Inc. | T | 268.99 |
| 01/05/19 | General Mills, Inc. | GIS | 123.38 |
| 03/05/19 | CVS Health Corp | CVS | 93.39 |
| 6/5/19 | Cracker Barrel Old Country Store, Inc. | CBRL | 12.50 |
| 8/5/19 | Lowe's Companies, Inc. | LOW | 70.08 |
| 9/5/19 | Mastercard Inc | MA | 3.30 |
| 10/5/19 | American Express Company | AXP | 12.96 |
| 15/05/19 | Colgate-Palmolive Company | CL | 24.36 |
| 13/05/19 | British American Tobacco PLC | BTI | 59.37 |
| 15/05/19 | Realty Income Corp | O | 63.69 |
| 15/05/19 | Stag Industrial Inc | STAG | 14.30 |
| 15/05/19 | Main Street Capital Corporation | MAIN | 11.00 |
| 5/15/19 | Genie Energy Ltd. PFD | GNE.A | 7.97 |
| 15/05/19 | Hormel Foods Corp | HRL | 26.25 |
| 15/05/19 | Procter & Gamble Co | PG | 50.77 |
| 15/05/19 | A. O. Smith Corp | AOS | 1.54 |
| 16/05/19 | Apple Inc. | AAPL | 28.49 |
| 20/05/19 | Texas Instruments Incorporated | TXN | 37.73 |
| 15/05/19 | National Retail Properties, Inc. | NNN | 64.50 |
| 22/05/19 | Fastenal Company | FAST | 34.40 |
| 23/05/19 | Delta Air Lines, Inc. | DAL | 35.00 |
| 24/05/19 | Costco Wholesale Corporation | COST | 25.35 |
| 24/05/19 | Starbucks Corporation | SBUX | 47.88 |
| 24/05/19 | NESTLE S A/S ADR | NSRGY | 15.75 |
| 28/05/19 | DOW | DWDP | 2.94 |
| 30/05/19 | Paychex, Inc. | PAYX | 18.60 |
| 1/5/2019 | Deere & Company | DE | 6.84 |
| 10/5/2019 | Bank of New York Mellon Corp | BK | 5.32 |
| 15/05/19 | AbbVie Inc | ABBV | 23.54 |
| 15/05/19 | Kinder Morgan Inc | KMI | 2.50 |
| 15/05/19 | Omega Healthcare Investors Inc | OHI | 95.79 |
| 20/05/19 | BASF SE | BASFY | 38.51 |
| 24/05/19 | Royal Bank of Canada | RY | 12.88 |
| 24/05/19 | Constellation Brands, Inc. Class A | STZ | 9.75 |
| 28/05/19 | Bank of Montreal | BMO | 3.71 |
| 29/05/19 | Charles Schwab Corporation Common Stock | SCHW | 1.19 |
| 20/05/19 | Caterpillar Inc. | CAT | 22.41 |
| 31/05/19 | PowerShares Preferred Portfolio | PGX | 2.95 |
| ∑ = 1,379.88 |
Here is a chart of my passive dividend income progress over the last 4 years.
Here are the dividend stock purchases I’ve made between May 2018 and 2019 to fuel that dividend income growth.
The dividend portfolio has been updated.
May’s dividend income covers groceries, cell phone, utilities and insurance for the month.
May Dividend Growth (Dividend Increases)
These are the realized dividend increases I received this month.
This month I received 7 increases. 4 of the dividend increases were greater than 10%. $COST had the largest impact on the portfolio with their 14% dividend increase!
Dividend Increases - May 2019
Name Ticker New Div Old Div % Increase Shares Addl Income
Colgate-Palmolive Company
CL
0.43
0.42
0.02380952381
12
0.48
Procter & Gamble Co
PG
0.75
0.72
0.04001673173
61
7.00
Apple Inc.
AAPL
0.77
0.73
0.05479452055
37
5.92
Costco Wholesale Corporation
COST
0.65
0.57
0.1403508772
39
12.48
Paychex, Inc.
PAYX
0.62
0.56
0.1071428571
30
7.20
Kinder Morgan Inc
KMI
0.25
0.20
0.25
10
2.00
Constellation Brands, Inc. Class A
STZ
0.75
0.74
0.01351351351
13
0.52
∑ = 35.60
March’s dividend increase adds $35.60 in annual dividend income. This dividend growth seems to be roughly the average since I began tracking this 10 months ago. May’s dividend increase are the equivalent of investing $1,017.14 of new money at 3.5%. That’s some serious free money!
Net Worth
It’s real life and not everything goes up every month. This month net worth got hammered.
Cash
Even though I knew it was coming, this cash decline of almost 6% still hurts! We are in the process of selling our home and wanted to make our house as compelling as possible. What turned into almost 13k was invested into painting the inside of our home and fixing up blemishes. We lived in this house for almost 10 years with a paint color that was just terrible and we didn’t want to leave it for the next owners of this house. Hopefully that helps!
We had some additional home expenses, but everything else has been relatively minor.
Collections
This won’t be a section again after this month, but the 16% decline warrants an explanation. I had a collection of older weapons that have now been sold. I estimated they were worth roughly 2k but ended up selling them for nearly $1,500.
Estimating the value of stuff isn’t necessarily as easy as determining what something should be worth. True value really is what someone is willing pay you for your stuff at that moment. I probably could have sold the firearms one by one for top dollar but I choose to go with a dealer who bought them all at one time and in one quick transaction.
Real Estate
Finally some real progress – our home is now officially for sale!
It’s been a heck of a process de-cluttering and pairing down all furniture, clothes, collections, toys and decorations. But, we have finally done it and have our home on the market.
We are pricing our home a bit over what other homes have sold for in our area. We are doing this for two reasons:
- Our house is bigger and has more features than many of the other homes in the area
- We still have 3 months before our new home will be built and have time to try and get top dollar
While we hope for a quick sale, we’d prefer to only move once if possible. So a slightly slower sale is okay too.
Also, you may have noticed that rental property value spiked this month. Since I have a monthly record of all this stuff now, I can tell you this isn’t uncommon. While Zillow typically estimates the value raises 2 – 3% in May (they have done that for the last 4 years) – this year they think the May rise should be 17%! Sweet! This Zestimate is more inline with what I believe is the true value of the rental property.
Also, our tenant has paid their rent on time again this month and we had no problems… all is well!
Wrap-up
Dividend income is back to growing again and I’m very pleased. The dividend investing strategy is continuing to prove itself. The combination of organic dividend growth combined with new cash (2 -4k a month) in the best dividend values I can find is clearly paying off.
I hope a deal can be struck with China (and now Mexico). If we see 25% penalty tariffs go into effect on list 4 goods, I suspect we’ll be in for some extremely rocky conditions.
While I’ve put as much money I could to work in my May purchases I’m now going to temper my buying (but I will pickup extreme values as they arise) until we get some solid good news on trade deals. I didn’t think tariffs would go this far! So the following week is the new (extended) red line date with China. But, just to be clear, a lot of this volatility will reverse really quickly if/when a tariff deal is struck. Here we go!
10 Comments
Nice dividend income. Killing it for a middle month. Nice dividend increases also. Way to go.
Thanks Doug!
Wow. That is an incredible month. It sounds like you have been very busy lately. With the way the housing market is now I don’t think you will have too many problems trying to sell your house. You also received some nice dividend income and had several good raises. I look forward to seeing how well you do during the month of June!
Thanks Jason! The past couple months have indeed been very busy, I look forward to some downtime soon. I’m keeping my fingers crossed about the house selling. No luck just yet. June is going to be awesome… for all of us!
DP –
It works, that’s all I have to say, it works incredibly. In addition, 44%+ growth is crazy insane, especially with the figures you’re working with, aka over $400 more. Which means… you’re going to have to jack it up over $550 next year, this time, you got it?
Also – DISGUSTING dividend from Realty Income, so awesome. Jealous, haha.
-Lanny
HA, thanks Lanny! Yeah, +$550 would be awesome! I’ll do my best… but I won’t be holding my breath 😉
Impressive monthly Dividend Income!
Also a fantastic YOY dividend increase
Keep up the good work 🙂
Thanks Ehlers!
Just curious why you don’t pay off the second mortgage since you have ample cash? I know you’re a Dave Ramsey fan so might as well eliminate that debt. Also, have you ever made a post about the tax implications of dividend investing? I would love to get your take on that. Thanks again for the great site and motivation !
Hi Brad! The rental property mortgage is paying for itself right now. I don’t need to invest any more cash then I already have into real estate until I get my primary home sold. I’m making a major shift right now. However, I will pay it off early, just not for another year or two 🙂 Regarding the tax implications of dividend investing, I haven’t written an article about that… but that’s a great idea. I’ll get working on that and let you know once its done! Thank you for the message!