… And just like that we put a wrap on 2019.  It was a great year in the stock market without a doubt.  My Portfolio saw a tremendous percentage gain, which I plan to detail in a coming post.

Even better though was that I continued to push my dividend totals higher.  While December dividend totals did not set a monthly record, it brought in enough for me to reach a big milestone… $10K in dividends collected for the entire year!

I’ve been talking about this milestone in my posts for most of the last few months, and I’m happy to say that it has now been reached.  As it turned out, I didn’t attain the $10K level until that last day of the year, but that didn’t reduce any of my excitement.

With $10K now under my belt I look forward to putting a new milestone in my sights and working towards it.  As of now, getting to $12K in dividend income, or a nice $1K/mo., seems like the most logical choice.

However, before I get working towards the future, let’s take a look at those dividend totals from December and find out what propelled me to new heights as we closed out 2019.

 

Dividend Income

December saw me tally $1,151.12 in dividends.  Love seeing those 4-digit months!  This was a healthy 15.06% YoY growth when compared to the $1,000.41 from December 2018.

A total of 19 companies paid me a dividend this month.  No less than 13 of those companies delivered at least $50 this month, with one even surpassing $100 for me.

Qualcomm (QCOM) was that one dividend payer to exceed triple-digit dividend income for me in December.   It was $125.50… well past that $100 mark.  QCOM is the top dividend payer in my Portfolio.  That’s despite no dividend increase in 2019.  I’m hoping QCOM can rectify this “no dividend growth” situation in March by offering up a raise.

Speaking of triple-digit payments, I’m hoping Exxon Mobil (XOM) reaches that level for me by year’s end.  A small dividend raise on top of my reinvested dividends should get me there.

My lowest payer for the month was Kontoor Brands (KTB), paying $6.16.  The KTB shares I own came as part of the VF Corp (VFC) spinoff last May.  I imagine 2020 will be the year I either eliminate my KTB position or add to it.  At its current size in my Portfolio, KTB just isn’t big enough to have a meaningful impact.  Thus, it must grow or go.

The increased dividend amount from Target (TGT) was boosted by an additional purchase over the past year.  Increased amounts for the other companies were a result of dividend increases and reinvested dividends over the past year.

One stock recorded a reduced payout for me compared to last year.  That stock was VFC, and it was due to the aforementioned KTB spinoff, as opposed to a partial sale or dividend cut.

One special note… this month’s Main Street Capital (MAIN) payout included a special dividend, in addition to the regular one.  $26.06 was the regular dividend, and $30.66 was the special dividend, totaling the $56.72 I show in the table.  MAIN is supposed to be phasing out the bi-annual special dividends over time, eventually rolling them into the regular dividend.  This process has started, but it appears to be moving rather slowly.

This December I notched 4 new dividend payers compared to last year.  These 4 stocks are all from different sectors.  TCF Financial (TCF) debuted with the largest new dividend, followed by 3M Co. (MMM).  Showing up at the bottom of my dividends payer list this December were relative newcomers UnitedHealth Group (UNH) and KTB.

Disappearing from my dividend payer table compared to last year were two stocks, HanesBrands (HBI) and D.R. Horton (DHI).  HBI will be rolling off this list next quarter.  I sold HBI about 1 year ago, as I was disappointed with the company performance as well as their dividend freeze.  The freeze is still in place.  Home builder DHI was sold more recently as my covered call reached its expiration date in the money.

As usual, I reinvested all dividends into the stocks that paid them, resulting in an additional forward dividend income boost of $34.28.  This was the lowest amount that I saw for the quarter-ending months in 2019, as rising stock prices during the year resulted in fewer shares being purchased, and thus a little less forward dividend income.

At the beginning of the year, I introduced another column in the dividend income table to show the actual number of “New Shares” that were purchased with my reinvested dividends.  In December, my reinvested dividends resulted in the purchase of over 12.5 new shares of stock.  For the entire year, I was able to buy 136.396 new shares of stock for my Portfolio.  Nice!  The plan is to keep sharing this reinvested dividend information in 2020 as well.  Hopefully, you’ve found it worthy of being in these reports.

 

Dividend Raises

When I read other December dividend reports, it appears December is a big month for dividend raises.  This would seem to make sense, as companies announce their dividend plans for the new year.  Strangely though, December is not one of my better months for receiving dividend raises.  In fact, if it wasn’t for one of my recent Portfolio additions, I would have been left with only a couple of tiny raises producing around $1 of new forward dividend income.

What I miss out on in December must be getting rolled into January and February, as those are my best months of the year for dividend raises.  I hope that’s the case again.

However, before I focus too much on what lies ahead, let’s check out what transpired in December.  In December, I had 3 companies announce a dividend raise.  This matches my lowest amount for any month during 2019.

The month started with my first raise from Eastman Chemical (EMN) since becoming a shareholder earlier in the year.  The 6.45% raise was acceptable to me, despite it coming up short of historical norms for EMN over fairly recent reporting periods.  Besides, compared to what followed the rest of the month, this looked stellar.

The rest of the month saw two tiny dividend raises from REITs Realty Income (O) and W.P. Carey (WPC). These are the typical, small quarterly raises that these REITs offer up.  Sadly, these two raise percentages are even lower than what O and WPC offered up last year.

 

All totaled, these dividend raises contributed $10.92 to my additional forward dividend income.  This was my 2nd lowest total of 2019, only better than the March total of $8.68.  Nothing to write home about, but an increase nonetheless.  I was happy that the EMN raise was big enough to get me over the $10 mark for additional forward dividend income this month.

I’d have to invest $433.33 at my Portfolio’s current average yield of 2.52% in order to equal the same boost to my annual forward dividend income that these dividend raises provided.

Looking forward, I’m expecting good things on the dividend raise front as we turn the calendar to 2020.  In January, I expect to hear raise announcements from O, Blackrock (BLK), Fastenal (FAST), Comcast (CMCSA), Air Products & Chemicals (APD), Nexstar Media Group (NXST) and Aflac (AFL).  I suspect dividend raises will be more along the lines of what we saw in 2019, as opposed to the tremendous ones from 2018.

 

Dividends Due To New Investment

While the market heated up in December, I stayed on the sidelines when it came to new investments… for the most part.  You see, I did manage to sneak in one purchase on the day after Christmas.  I added to one of my newer positions in an attempt to have it move up the ranks in my Portfolio.  I added some shares of General Dynamics (GD).

You can find all the details in this recent post: Recent Buy – GD.

With the purchase, my forward dividend income increased by $40.80.

 

Tallying Up The Additional Forward Dividend Income

This year I continued with tracking the additional forward dividend income generated each month from the trifecta of sources: reinvested dividends, dividend raises, and new capital investment.

I’ve been showing 2018’s totals, too, so that we can compare as the year goes along.

As noted at the start of the year, I anticipated that my Reinvested Dividends total would move higher in 2019, but that I’d see a reduction in the total from the Dividend Raises and the Investment of Capital.  Well, those predictions came true.  Check out the final tallies for the year.

 

The additional forward dividend income generated in December was $86.00.  Not one of my better months, but I was happy to see contributions from all the sources.

For the 2nd straight year, ‘Dividend Raises’ managed to generate the most additional forward dividend income for me, besting ‘Investment of Capital’ once again, despite those reductions in the annual totals that I expected.  However, the total from ‘Reinvested Dividends’ grew nicely compared to 2018.  I expect the contribution from Reinvested Dividends will pass any totals I generate from Investment of Capital one day as well.  At that point, one could say the Portfolio is growing on its own.

While I was hoping to achieve $1,600 in additional forward dividend income for the year, I came up short.  This was not a goal I had at the outset of 2019, but I put it in my crosshairs later in the year.

For 2019, my average monthly amount of additional forward dividend income being generated finished at $127.30/mo.  That’s a nice chunk, but I’ll be pushing to do better than that in 2020.

 

Progress Charts

The following are progress charts, also available on my Dividends page.  All of my quarter-ending months exceeded the $1000 mark in 2019, and every month was higher than $600.  I’m hoping every month next year is north of $700.

 

 

On an annual basis, here’s what the dividend totals look like.

On the last day of December, my final dividend payout of the year pushed me past the $10K mark.  Woohoo!  I adjusted the Y-axis scale below to accommodate the milestone.  If I’m lucky, I’ll have to make another adjustment by the end of 2020, but that may be too aggressive.  🙂

 

Annual Growth

With the close of 2019, let’s take a look at the YoY growth of my actual dividend income, as well as my forward dividend income.

Actual Dividend Income

The annual numbers for actual dividend income can be seen in the chart just above.  I finished 2018 with $8,460.35 in dividends, while I finished 2019 with $10,049.68 in dividends.  This was growth of 18.79%.  This growth percentage was down from previous years, but this is to be expected as the dividend numbers continue to grow.

Forward Dividend Income

As for the annual numbers for forward dividend income, here they are.  I finished 2018 with $9,276.42 in forward dividends, while I finished 2019 with $10,804.29 in forward dividends.  This was growth of 16.47%.  I should be able to surpass $12K in forward dividend income by the end of 2020.  Growth over 11% in 2020 would allow me to obtain that $12K level.

 

Summary

This December, I was able to collect over $1,151 in dividends, on over 15% growth.  It was a good way to close out 2019.

Dividend raises were light for me in December, with only 3 raises and about $10 in new forward dividend income from them, but I expect the raises to pick up significantly as we kick off 2020.

I made only 1 purchase in December, but with stocks becoming more expensive as the days/weeks/months go by, having more cash on hand for the inevitable downturn will be good, too.

After registering more forward dividend income from the trifecta of dividend income sources, my forward dividend income finished out the year at just over $10.8K – a beautiful $900/mo.  Next stop… $1K/mo. average… probably in late 2020.

All in all, it was an impressive year in the markets, and in my Portfolio.  Thanks to the markets, my Portfolio value increased over 30% (final percentage coming soon).  However, when it comes to things I have more control over, which is my dividend income, I logged some greats results as well, the biggest of which was $10K in actual dividend income.

I hope you all had a terrific year of dividends and dividend growth in 2019.  Here’s hoping for more of the same in 2020!

 

How did you finish out the year?  Were you able to surpass any milestones in the final days of the year like I did?  Did you reach the last of your annual goals in December?  Please share in the Comments!

I have updated the Portfolio & Dividends pages in conjunction with this monthly update.