I’m back!

Hey guys! It has been quite awhile since my last post. I got busy with a wedding and beginning a new life as a married man. I would not have asked for it to be any different and it has been going great! While I may have taken a break from updating the site, the cool thing about investments (and dividends) is that they kept working for me this entire time.

Since my last income report from May 2018 (wow that has been a long time!), I am pleased to report a number of successful months of dividends:

  • June 2018: $1389.52 (41% YOY increase)
  • July 2018: $314.30 (1% YOY increase)
  • August 2018: $671.52 (50% YOY increase)
  • September 2018: $1638.04 (35% YOY increase)
  • October 2018: $381.21 (23% YOY decrease)
  • November 2018: $548.32 (11% YOY increase)
  • December 2018: $1520.70 (19% YOY increase)
  • January 2019: $508.37 (45% YOY increase)
  • February 2019: $204.41 (66% YOY decrease)

Most of the months were year-over-year (YOY) increases, though October 2018 and February 2019 were decreases. To pay for wedding costs, honeymoon, etc, I did have to sell some stock. Much of the loss of dividend income came from selling AT&T. That had been one of my largest single positions at around $30,000. Given AT&T’s 6+% dividend yield, selling AT&T took away nearly $2000/year in dividends. The sale wasn’t all that bad because I was able to lock in a capital loss. I have also begun buying back AT&T, beginning with $3000 in the brokerage and $6000 in the Roth. While still short of the $30k I used to own, this is a good start.

I also sold some of my Apple shares and moved that money into non-dividend paying opportunities. I’ll do a post soon discussing why I decided to do that and detail some of those investments.

June through December 2018 brought in a total of $6,463.61 in dividends! This is getting up to substantial money! While it is not enough to live on at this point, I did bring in $10,408 in dividends for 2018. This is all getting reinvested back into the stocks that it came from in order to take best advantage of compounding.

Moving into 2019, my 12-month forward dividends are, at the moment, $8,699.75. This is unfortunately slightly decreased from the 2018 high. While I’m not backing down from dividend investing, I am diversifying into more non-dividend paying growth stocks, security token equity, and ownership in my company.

I’ve begun investing in the partnership for my company, real estate that my company owns, and other unique business opportunities. This all obviously costs money and we have had to take out some loans to pay for this. Our debt has gone up substantially, which I am not thrilled about but we’ll be able to use distributions and W-2 income to pay it off within the next couple years. Overall, this is good debt that we’ll be paying off quickly.

I’ll write a separate detailed post about these more unique investments.

And, I’ll be releasing some updates to the dividend spreadsheet as well.

I look forward to updating this site more frequently going forward! Thanks for reading.

15 Responses

  1. Michael says:

    Congratulations and best of luck in your marriage. Health and happiness to you and your new bride.

    I look forward to reading your posts.

    • scott says:

      Thanks, Michael! We are loving married life together. We are also similar in our thoughts about saving money. I’m glad that she doesn’t max out the credit cards each month! 🙂 I’ll have some posts soon about how budgeting as changed for me.

  2. John B says:

    Congratulations and I glad you are still able to update this site with your progress.

    • scott says:

      Thanks, John M. I have some good ideas for blog posts in the back of my mind. I’m going to try and update at least a few times per month here on out.

  3. Wow awesome. Congrats on the wedding. I actually created a post asking why you and others were gone.
    Really good to see you back. Let’s hope you can boost that income this year.
    Buy, Hold Long recently posted…Is the online FIRE and Dividend Investing Community Dying?My Profile

    • scott says:

      Thanks, Buy, Hold Long,

      Yep, everyone was right. It was the wedding and new responsibilities that took time away from updating the blog. I’m back now and will keep the site going. I have a TON of comments about the dividend investing spreadsheet to reply to.

      • It’s good to see that what you were doing before the break is still relative to today’s investing. I know it’s not that long ago but should be a good feeling for you knowing that you were helping lots of people. Cheers.
        Buy, Hold Long recently posted…4 Day Work WeekMy Profile

  4. FerdiS says:

    Welcome back!

  5. Good to see your posts again, Scott. Congrats on the wedding and exciting times ahead.
    Your portfolio did some good work for you in the last 10 months. I’m looking forward to seeing where you take it.
    Engineering Dividends recently posted…Monthly Dividend Income (Feb. 2019)My Profile

  6. Brent @ AAI says:

    Congrats on the marriage. I did some tax loss harvesting myself, I think T is still attractive and would add more but already have a little bit overweight position. I look forward to seeing the posts about your other business ventures.
    Brent @ AAI recently posted…Options Update – March 2019My Profile

  7. John says:

    Welcome back! Can I ask a quick question about the spreadsheet? It seems like every time I try to use it, I hit a snag after adding a certain number of companies on the main page. For example, the data from the Transactions page stops populating in the main page beginning with row 64. Is there a cap on how many companies I can have (i.e. rows on Portfolio page)? Thanks!

  8. Nice you’re back. I traced your divdend and option income and suddenly the website seemed dead. With marriage you have a good excuse, though. 🙂

    Great that you gave us your dividend income. Is it possible to do the same for your option income? You can find your-self here:

    https://dividendstocks.cash/blog/income-heroes/

    Wish you a happy marriage and investments!

  9. Congrats! Sounds like you have a lot going on. I know how you feel. Always sucks selling off stock and seeing any decreases from it, but sounds like the money went to good use. And you can build positions back up again. You have a lot of write about by the looks of it. Welcome back!
    Dividend Daze recently posted…Dividend Update – March 2019My Profile

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