I received $466.56 in taxable June 2020 dividend income. June was my second-best ever monthly income! This was also an excellent month for dividend increases (more on that later).
I replaced my air conditioning and managed to pay cash for it, and had a few bucks left over to contribute to my portfolio. The air conditioning set me back a good chunk, but working from home and life in general is a lot easier with this luxury.
Dividend Growth
It’s a long list this month! I’ll chart out all except for FLO because FLO makes up so little of my portfolio and is a leftover from my first days of investing.
Altogether, I would have to contribute about $1,300 at my current portfolio yield of 2.42% to generate this much additional income. This is an excellent month for increases and reinvestments.
This might be the most consistent increaser in my whole portfolio. Increases have stayed in the mid-3% range for the last ten years. Definitely not flashy, but the share price appreciation is nice for a utility, and the dividend growth slightly above inflation is about what I expect.
Another all-time great dividend growth stock. JNJ doesn’t make up much of my taxable portfolio, but it is actually my largest individual holding when my Roth IRA is taken into account. Similar to SO, JNJ is dependable and consistent, and I’ll gladly take another year of a 6% increase.
Competing against Microsoft, Oracle, and Amazon is tough. I am glad I haven’t added to IBM since my initial purchase. The increases have really slowed down in the last few years, and the share price is below where I got in.
I keep meaning to add more to NOC. They’ve been on a tear with dividend increases, although the stock price has been a bit bumpy the last two years. Almost 10% of an increase is one of my best increases this year.
This is a busy chart and it might be hard to read, but VTI is my biggest holding. I like to think it keeps me disciplined and grounded. The nice thing is that the 10-year compound annual growth is 8.95% for the dividend, and 13.72% for the share price. It also gives me healthy exposure to non-DGI stocks like Amazon and Facebook. The 3-year rolling dividend average increased 1.57% this quarter.
My best increase this month, and glad to have this in the top four of my individual holdings. My data source is a month behind, so this chart should show a latest dividend payment of $1.25 (15.7% increase). UNH seems to be tempering down their dividend growth a bit after a meteoric increase streak over the last 10 years, but 15.7% is still incredible.
I chose TRV as my insurance representation in my portfolio. I have been happy with it, but the price is sitting at the same level it was three years ago. I think I need more insurance in my portfolio, and keep toying with the idea of adding to TRV or starting a new holding in something like AFL.
Forward Dividend Income
No cuts this month, although it seems that I can now expect one from WFC in September. I bought WFC a few years ago thinking their bad news would be priced in and they would turn a corner, but that hasn’t happened.
WFC shouldn’t be too much of a downer because this was my second-best month for reinvestments and dividend increases! Tracking the 3-year rolling average of VTI has smoothed out the quarterly variations quite a bit, and UNH/NOC came through strong. Reinvestments have also been adding up. I added $11 in annual income this month thanks to reinvestments alone.
Until now, I’ve been tracking all my numbers in a custom Google sheet. I think I’m going to take a crack at coding my Monthly Forward Dividend Income chart with Python. Depending on how it goes, there may be a new chart format next month. If I get it working, I’ll detail the code in a post.
Purchases – AWR and VTI
Purchased 4.81 shares of American States Water Co (AWR) @ $81.38/share
I put most of my reinvested individual dividends into AWR this month. AWR is now in my top 15 individual holdings. I’m expecting a dividend increase announcement in late July/early August. For being a mature utility, AWR offers both growth and an increasing dividend.
Purchased 2.92 shares of Vanguard Total Stock Market Index Fund (VTI) @ $155.61/share
I bought one share out of my own pocket this month, and almost another two shares entirely thanks to DRIP reinvesting. I always love when the third month of the quarter comes around.
Head on over to my portfolio page if you’d like to see what companies pay me in other months!