Before I get started – if you’re interested in how I generate my dashboard DGI views, check out my last post. I recently replicated my Google Sheet with Python/Plotly, and this is my first time using them! The code is there for anyone to try.
I received $105.46 in taxable April 2020 dividend income. I still haven’t been hit by any dividend cuts besides BA, but am expecting a couple going forward. We will see! I feel pretty good about most of this month’s payers, especially KO, MDT, RSG, and CINF. CINF has had a rougher few months than most of my portfolio, but they have weathered rough times in the past.
As expected, I held off on new taxable purchases besides reinvestments. I’m ecstatic to be maxing out my 401k again, so I’m happy with the trade-off. I’m also aggressively saving up for some upcoming home improvements. Working from home is great – until the summer heat arrives. I’ll replace the furnace/AC in the coming weeks, and would like to pay cash for it.
Dividend Growth
Good news. I think my dividend increases are keeping up with inflation.
Bad news. I think my dividend increases are not beating inflation by much.
I can’t really complain. KMB and KO are mature companies and getting ~3% increase isn’t bad in the current atmosphere. I’d have to invest $228 at my current portfolio yield of 2.4% to generate this much income.
I was happy with CINF’s 7% increase. It’s actually their largest increase since the financial crisis. And, historic yield is really low. When yield is under the historic average, I hope for larger upcoming increases to lift yield back to where it typically was.
Coke’s $0.01 raise isn’t a total surprise based on recent history. I like them for their steadiness, and they’ve defined steady.
Cisco is a bit more of a surprise. They’re still somewhat new to growing dividends, but they’ve tapped the brakes since their earlier DGI years. I’m a little less excited to add a share here and there as I used to be. I think they have a great moat when it comes to hardware. Even though cloud computing is taking over, the cloud is still just “someone else’s computer.”
Forward Dividend Income
No real news to report here. With no major contributions, my dividend growth and reinvestment is doing most of the driving.
Purchases – ACN, MDT, and RTN/RTX
Purchased 0.19 shares of Accenture (ACN) @ $159.19/share
I’ve sort of neglected ACN since first buying it, and it’s time to start adding some pieces. Just a fraction, but I like fractional shares. The switch to quarterly payouts skews my CAGR calculation, but ~10% over 10 years, along with 17% share price CAGR, is incredible.
Purchased 0.62 shares of Medtronic (MDT) @ $100.21/share
Another fractional share paid for by reinvestments. Can’t complain! MDT will hopefully announce their 43rd consecutive dividend increase in June.
Honorable Mention: Traded 9 shares of RTN for 21 shares of RTX
United Technologies and Raytheon merged, so I now have shares of RTX in my portfolio. I hadn’t had any UTX previously, but I’m still excited about this holding. They just announced a dividend of $0.475, so my dividend income is virtually unchanged as a result of the merger.
Head on over to my portfolio page if you’d like to see what companies pay me in other months!
Dozer –
Nice job and congrats on all of those increases. Solid and steady wins.
-Lanny
The charts look sharp, Dozer. Nice work.
Your 11 dividend payments in April are fairly well distributed among the payers. Is that the way you tend to work it, or just the way it panned out? I only shared 3 payers with you this month (CSCO, EMN & MO).
Happy to you see you hit the $100 mark. Hopefully that’s an every month occurrence very soon.
Thanks ED! I didn’t plan it out that way, but it’s a nice observation. KO, CINF, KMB, and MDT have some of the longest increase streaks in my portfolio and I’ve maybe hit a middle ground with how I’ve built those up.
Loving the graphs and thre fact that you generate them yourself with the code you wrote. Awesome! We share 5 companies and I think our results are somewhat the same this monh. Nice 🙂