Six months are in the books for 2016, and I’m making my second monthly update for tracking the progress of my dividend income.  My goal is to purchase shares of dividend paying stocks every single month and to re-invest the monthly dividends I receive from the shares I already own so that the new reinvested shares will also pay me more dividends next time around.  Ideally, my dividends should trend upwards similar to my dividend forecaster.  To be honest, I’m a little upset with my savings rate this month because of a major side project that I’ve been working on that I plan to share very soon.  If all goes as planned, I should be able to substantially reduce my monthly liabilities and allocate a much larger surplus towards buying more dividend income every month.          

Because I primarily max out my 401k and roth IRA before I add any significant money to my taxable accounts, you’ll see most of my progress being made in these two categories for the first part of the year and my taxable account will receive my attention towards the later half of the year.  For this reason, I’ve decided to separate my monthly dividends in these two buckets (taxable accounts and retirement accounts) sub-totaled and then totaled in the same table.   

This means my dividend income for June 2016 will look out of whack, simply because I’ve captured dividends received from my 401k.  I actually think this will be appropriate since I’ve reconfigured my 401k towards dividend paying funds, so if you’re interested in the funds I use for dividend growth investing in my 401k, please check out my portfolio page.  This new structure has also made me realize that I need to allocate more dollars to my taxable accounts so that I can utilize these dividends for my monthly expenses well before the average retirement age.  I really, need to kick it up a notch!  Hopefully, I’ll complete my side project very soon, and I’m already licking my chops to be able to invest more.

Below is a list of every dividend I collected for the prior month.   

NOTE: I’ve been playing with the google docs feature so you may have to click on the tab for “06_2016” to see June’s Dividends.

I’m definitely satisfied for the monthly total, but I’m very upset about the small amount for my taxable account.  In the past, I combined my Merrill Edge accounts (taxable/roth) and by doing so I wasn’t noticing how idle my taxable account seems.  I may be being too hard on myself, because I’ve also gifted a sizable amount of shares this year and satisfied the last little bit this month when I parted ways with 25 shares of  Realty Income and 24 share of Coca-Cola.  I desperately want to replace these gifted shares, but will have to be patient for a pull back in their stock price.

I’d love to hear feedback from you regarding the change I’ve made in reporting my dividends.  Do other’s track 401k dividends?

 

I’ll update my Dividend Income page to reflect June 2016 dividends.