Just like that, I’ve already got dividend income to report for the first month of 2022!  Let’s get another year of dividend income rolling.

I’m excited to kick off the new year.  It will be tough to improve upon all I accomplished in 2021, but I’ll give it a go.

As my Portfolio enters 2022, I expect $1K or more in dividend income each month for the first time ever.  Hopefully, nothing changes to disrupt that from coming to fruition.

I’m reasonably confident that we’ll see decent dividend raises continue in 2022 as well.  If that happens, then 2022 should shape up nicely for my Portfolio.

In case you haven’t seen them yet, I laid out my 2022 Portfolio Goals just a couple of weeks ago.  You can see my goals with regard to dividend income, additional forward dividend income and sector weightings within my Portfolio.  I hope to be as successful in 2022 as I was last year.

What about January you ask?  Well, here’s a preview of what you can look forward to in this monthly income report…

I did top $1K in dividend income this month… getting the year off to a terrific start.  By how much did I exceed that threshold?… keep reading to find out.

Year-over-Year (YoY) growth was stellar, too.  I blew past my 15% benchmark… but again, by how much?  The answer is not far away.

I secured less than a handful of dividend raises in January, but that didn’t stop me from recording some huge additional forward dividend income totals.  I can’t wait to share that!

New capital investment was measured in January as I waited to see which direction the market was going to lean in the new year.  I think I have my answer… down!  This pullback brought better stock prices than I’ve seen in months, but I didn’t get too carried away with Portfolio transactions.  I’ll outline the moves I made in just a bit.

Let’s check out how I started 2022 when it comes to all things dividends… beginning with January’s dividend income.

 

Dividend Income

 

In January, my coffers were filled with $1,037.34 in dividends.  What a wonderful way to start 2022… 4-digit dividend income!

I’m thrilled about the YoY growth as well, as that was well past my 15% monthly target and finished at 21.2% for January.

A total of 18 companies paid me a dividend in January, including two that topped $100, a half dozen that eclipsed $50, and yet another half dozen that exceeded $40.

Pepsico (PEP) led my dividend payers with a healthy $120.30 dividend.  Altria Group (MO) was also a 3-digit dividend payer for me in January, paying $112.68.  RPM International (RPM) paid $99.33 and should join my triple-digit payer club by July as a result of reinvested dividends.

My smallest dividend payment came from newcomer Amdocs Ltd. (DOX) which delivered $14.40.  If I can build out my DOX position as I’m hoping, it won’t be at the bottom of my list for very long.

The increased dividend amounts from Merck & Co. (MRK), JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM) and Realty Income (O) were helped by additional purchases over the past year.

Increased YoY amounts for the other companies were a result of dividend increases and reinvested dividends over the past year.  I notched over $12 in YoY dividend gains from MO, over $9 from PEP, and better than $6 each from RPM, Illinois Tool Works (ITW) and Automatic Data Processing (ADP).  It’s great seeing so many holdings contributing meaningfully to the Portfolio growth.

A couple of stocks recorded payout reductions compared to last January – W.P. Carey (WPC) and Gentex (GNTX).  Both of these were due to me trimming the positions last spring.  In the case of WPC, I wanted to reduce my REIT sector weighting and its anemic dividend growth put WPC on the chopping block.  As for GNTX, I thought the stock was a bit overvalued at the time, and coming off a dividend freeze I didn’t mind selling a handful of shares.

Four new dividend payers graced my Portfolio this January.  The list was led by Omnicom Group (OMC) which delivered a penny shy of $60.  This was followed by nice dividend chunks from Utility OGE Energy (OGE) and REIT Medical Properties Trust (MPW).  DOX was last as far as dividend payments for January… bringing up the rear with the previously mentioned $14.40.

There was no dividend income to be found from 3 payers from last January.  I no longer have dividend income from Air Lease (AL), Iron Mountain (IRM) and Sysco (SYY).

Nearly all my dividends got automatically reinvested into the stocks that paid them.  The lone exception was the dividend from DOX.  Apparently, my broker doesn’t offer dividend reinvestment for DOX.  The additional forward dividend income boost that resulted from the reinvestment was $34.54.  That’s a nice way to start the year.  I hope to eclipse $30 in additional forward dividend income from reinvested dividends each month this year.

Thanks to all of January’s reinvested dividends, I purchased over 14 new shares of stock.  This included over 2 shares of MO, and over 1 share each of RPM, OGE, GNTX & MPW.

 

Dividend Raises

After a tremendous year of dividend raises in 2021 that helped me add over $1,200 in forward dividend income, I was wondering if it could get any better.

Well, it turns out that it can!  While I only had 4 dividend raises in January, they all packed a punch.  Each raise was 8% or better, with 3 of the 4 topping 10%.

It could have been even better in January, but a couple of stocks that I thought might announce a raise in January are apparently going to slip them into February.  These were potential raises from Air Products & Chemicals (APD) and Quest Diagnostics (DGX).

Anyway, things were just fine in January despite having fewer raises than expected.

Raise announcements were non-existent in my Portfolio for nearly two weeks to begin the year.  However, BlackRock (BLK) ended the drought and kicked off the year with a bang by announcing an impressive 18.16% boost.  This easily bested their 13.77% raise from last year.  Since BLK is one of my largest dividend payers, this raise had an outsized effect on my forward dividend income, adding $75.62!

A 10.71% raise from Fastenal (FAST) followed a few days later.  While this percentage showed a decline from last year’s 12% increase, I was more than happy with another double-digit raise, especially one that provided a $38.25 increase to my forward dividend income.

Next up was Comcast (CMCSA).  The company delivered the 8% raise I mentioned above.  This raise didn’t quite keep up with the 8.7% boost CMCSA provided last year, but it’s hard to knock an 8% raise.  Add in another $13.71 to my forward dividend income.

Last, but certainly not least, came my best raise of the month.  Nexstar Media Group (NXST) came through with a massive 28.57% raise.  This surpassed the 25% boost from last year.  Even better, the additional forward dividend income I obtained from this dividend raise was $85.84.  For my other Portfolio stocks that will raise their dividend this year, that will be a hard number to beat.

I love being the beneficiary of such awesome dividend growth.

 

 

Adding up all the dividend raises from January, my forward dividend income increased by $213.42.  This was my 2nd best month ever!  It only trailed the $239.74 I recorded in February, 2018.

The amount was $32.65 better than the total from last January, despite having one less dividend raise this year.

I’d have to invest $8,855.60 at my Portfolio’s current average yield of 2.41% in order to receive the same boost to my forward dividend income as this month’s raises.  Oh the power of the dividend raise!

Looking ahead to February, I’ve got expectations for up to 10 dividend raises!  Raise announcements are possible from: DGX and APD (as noted earlier), but also DOX, Gilead Sciences (GILD), 3M Co. (MMM), T. Rowe Price Group (TROW), Cisco Systems (CSCO), NextEra Energy (NEE), OMC and MPW.  There’s a chance PEP makes a raise announcement in February, too, but I think that will come later.  Update – four of these companies have already announced a dividend raise in the first week of February, but I’ll save the details for next month’s report.

I doubt I’ll top $200 in additional forward dividend income from raises in February (like I did this month), but I’ll most likely set a record for the most dividend raises I’ve ever had in a month… any number higher than 8 will do the trick.

 

Dividends Due To New Investment

I pretty much laid low in January while the market action unfolded.  I wanted to see which direction the market went before making any investments.

However, about 3 weeks into the month I decided to dip my toes in the market waters, and I made 3 transactions in my Portfolio.

As I’ve been wanting to do, I trimmed my Omega Healthcare Investors (OHI) position.  OHI provides the least safe dividend in my Portfolio, so I reduced its dividend weighting.  I anticipate I’ll eventually exit this position over time, but doing so all at once makes replacing the dividend income difficult since it sports such a high yield.

I took the OHI sale proceeds and some cash and boosted my position in National Retail Properties (NNN).  This replaced the dividend income I lost with the OHI trim.  Even with the addition, NNN remained a bottom 5 stock in my Portfolio in terms of value.  Thus, I’ve got more work to do to make it a more significant component in my Portfolio.

Lastly, I used some cash to add a single share of JPM.  Many Financials took it on the chin in early January, so I added a little to a position that I want to grow.

The details for these 3 transactions, including share counts and dollar amounts, can be found in the following post…

 

Recent Transactions – OHI, NNN, JPM

 

The transactions resulted in a net investment of $409.12.  My forward dividend income increased by $4.76.

In summary, that was 3 transactions, comprised of 1 trim and 2 purchases of existing holdings.  Thus, the number of stocks in my Portfolio remained at 55.

 

Tallying Up The Additional Forward Dividend Income

In 2022, I’ll continue tracking my additional forward dividend income generated each month from the trifecta of sources: reinvested dividends, dividend raises, and new capital investment.

I’ll show 2021 totals as well, so that we can compare as the year progresses.  The totals from 2021 have set a high bar, but I hope to clear them nonetheless.  In 2021, I was able to surpass $100 in additional forward dividend income each month.  That’s a feat I hope to repeat in 2022.

 

 

My additional forward dividend income for January totaled $252.72.  While this came up short of the $297.75 posted last year, it was still a nice way to begin 2022.

Dividend Raises provided $213.42 of that total, easily outpacing any contributions from the other two categories… mainly due to those dividend raises from BLK and NXST.

Reinvested Dividends came through with a nice total of $34.54 for January.  This showed nice growth compared to the $31.67 from 2021.

Investment of Capital only managed a small positive total since I essentially stayed on the market sidelines in January.  We’ll see if I can boost the contribution from this category in February.

 

Progress Charts

The following are progress charts, also available on my Dividends page.  Some tremendous YoY growth has me off to a wonderful start in 2022.

 

 

 

On an annual basis, here’s what the dividend totals look like.  After just one month of 2022, It looks like such a long way to go to reach last year’s annual dividend total.  However, starting the year with over $1K in dividend income has me motivated to make sure that happens.

 

 

Summary

In January, I collected more than $1,037 in dividends.  YoY growth was an outstanding 21.2%.  I’ll take those numbers any month.

Reinvesting my dividends (as I usually do) had me approach $35 of additional forward dividend income.

I received 4 dividend raises in January (half as many as each of the last 2 months).  Three of the four raises topped 10% and that led to an increase of over $213 to my forward dividend income.  This was my 2nd best total in this category ever.

Portfolio activity didn’t amount to much in January.  I made 3 small transactions (one trim and two purchases).  My total cash investment was a bit over $409.  This increased my forward dividend income by close to $5 – not a needle mover, but still headed in the right direction.

Tallying the contributions from all sources, I recorded more than $253 in additional forward dividend income for my Portfolio in January.  My Portfolio’s annual forward dividend income total sits at $14,514.42 at month’s end.

 

How did your dividend totals start out the new year?  Were your dividend raises as generous as the ones I received?  Please share in the Comments!

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