October 2017 Dividend Income Results – $105.22

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How We Earned $105.22 in Dividend Income in November 2017We are now only 2 months away from the end of 2017 … and our dividend portfolio of stocks continues to grow and earn our family more income!

It seems like each and every month we are setting some new dividend income record. This past month (October) our dividend income was actually down compared to a year ago. But there is a very good reason for that and we are completely cool with it (see below).

So … you may be wondering how in the world do we increase our income month after month? Well, it isn’t anything complicated and anyone can do it.

There are actually three different factors that can help you increase your dividend income.

First … once you start earning dividend income, make sure to reinvest those funds. You can either setup a dividend reinvestment plan or use a collection of dividends to purchase individual shares through a low fee broker like Robinhood.

The second way to grow dividends is by company dividend increases. So far in 2017, we have received over 30 dividend increases!

Finally, when you first start out … the majority of your dividend growth will be driven by new investments. You need to build up a solid foundation of 10 to 20 dividend stocks that can help grow your income stream.

Now on to our dividend income portfolio results for October 2017 –

2017 October Dividend Income Summary

We earned an awesome $105.22 in dividends from stocks that we own during October.

That is down by about $6 from the same time last year (October 2016). Now … almost every dividend income report we publish … you will see a year to year increase. But this month we saw a decline.

Well that decline was a result of transferring a stock from Computershare to our Fidelity account. A few months ago, we transferred all our shares of Lockheed Martin (LMT) to avoid reinvestment fee’s. For whatever reason, we used to get our LMT dividends paid in October through Computershare. Now it is September in our Fidelity account.

Month by month, year by year … we continue to slowly grow this sustainable income stream.

Just take a look at the growth we have seen over the past 8 years based on October dividend income results –

October 2017 Dividend Income – $105.22

We saw a drop of (5.9%) last month compared to October 2016.

October 2017 Dividend Breakdown by Company

Overall, we had 8 stocks pay out a dividend in October. Solid dividend paying companies like Coca-Cola, Altria, and Sysco gave our family a paycheck for not really doing much at all. That is what I love so much about investing in dividend stocks.

Here is the breakdown of dividend income (by stock) in October –

  • Best Buy Corp (BBY) – $3.42
  • Cincinnati Financial Corp (CINF) – $42.27
  • Cisco Systems Inc. (CSCO) – $24.65
  • Genuine Parts Company (GPC) – $3.38
  • The Coca-Cola Company (KO) – $5.60
  • Altria (MO) – $1.98
  • Realty Income Corp (O) – $13.36
  • Sysco Corp (SYY) – $10.56

Note – All of the dividends we currently receive are reinvested into new shares of the same stock using DRiP – except those purchased through our Robinhood account.

New Capital Invested in October

Over the past 12 months, we have been focused on growing our forward annual dividend income to $3,000 by the end of 2017. We set this goal last November (2016) and have been busy investing new money into dividend stocks ever since then.

The goal requires that we invest 20% to 25% of our income … which can be difficult during certain times of the year. That comes out to around $1,400+ per month.

As you can tell below, we have been up and down with these new investments. We had several good months in a row (April to June), but fell flat in July and have been trending down ever since.

Here are the new investments we made in October –

  • $50.00 investment in Cincinnati Financial Corp (CINF) – .67 shares
  • $152.56 investment in Hormel (HRL) – 5 shares
  • $20.77 investment in Kroger (KR) – 1 shares
  • $50.00 investment in Exxon Mobil (XOM) – .61 shares

Note – All of these investments were made through our Robinhood and transfer agent (CINF, XOM) accounts … which means we did not pay any commissions or fees on these trades.

The total amount of new capital invested in October was – $273.33

Here are the new investment totals since the start of 2017 –

  • October 2017 Investments – $273.33
  • September 2017 Investments – $428.22
  • August 2017 Investments – $350.76
  • July 2017 Investments – $694.02
  • June 2017 Investments – $1,448.59
  • May 2017 Investments – $1,232.63
  • April 2017 Investments – $4,862.18
  • March 2017 Investments – $988.23
  • February 2017 Investments – $647.76
  • January 2017 Investments – $600.42

New 2017 Investments – $11,526.14

Growing Our Dividend Income

The dividend income earned in October ($105.22) was down by about 6% from the same time last year. Why the drop? Simply because our dividends for Lockheed Martin (LMT) now show up in September instead of October. That pushed our September income way up … and October with a slight drop. If we were to take out our LMT dividends from last October, we grew our dividends by 63% since last year!

So despite having a lower dividend income month on paper … we grew our year to year income by a bunch. And our yearly dividend income totals will show it at the end of December.

All of the income increases we have seen over the past 10 months were from a combination of new investments made, dividend reinvestment’s, and company dividend increases.

Speaking of company dividend increases – we got 3 this past month – Lockheed Martin (LMT) 9.9%, Omega Healthcare (OHI) 1.6%, and Aflac (AFL) 4.7%.

Overall, that increase will boost our annual dividend income by $29.75! That is one of our biggest monthly increases we have seen since reporting these numbers.

Our goal for 2017 is to earn $2,400 in dividend income.

We have earned a total of $2,034.64 in dividends for 2017 … which means we need to earn around $365 the remainder of the year. That is an average of $183 per month.

Unlike 2016, we will have no problem hitting our goal. Last year, we set an unrealistic goal and didn’t come close to reaching it.

It appears now that we will have a good chance of actually hitting $2,500 in dividend income this year … which is awesome!

How was your dividend income in October?

Full Disclosure – At the time of this writing, we owned shares in the following stocks noted in this post – BBY, CINF, CSCO, GPC, HRL, KO, KR, LMT, MO, O, OHI, SYY, and XOM. The material above is not a recommendation to buy. Please do your own research on a company before deciding to invest.

2 Replies to “October 2017 Dividend Income Results – $105.22”

  1. Great month. Anytime you can break the triple digit mark in a single month is really good. You have also added a lot of capital into your portfolio this year. That will help make some big gains and increase forward dividends. Thanks for sharing.

    1. Thanks! It has been a great year so far and I expect all that capital we invested to really start compounding in the future.

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