Thankfully, all the shifting, Year-over-Year (YoY) dividend payments that I experienced the past two months came to a stop in July.  Dividends showed up in the month I expect them.  Thus, my YoY growth numbers actually looked normal in July.

One thing that always seems to remain normal though is dividends piling up in my account.  July was a solid month on the income front.  Throw in an advancing stock market that drove my Portfolio value higher, and the sun has definitely come out.  Summer has brought the heat with regard to the weather, and with regard to my Portfolio!

Let’s get a quick preview of what’s to come in this month’s dividend income report before we go much further…

For dividend income I came in around $1.6K, but did I finish higher or lower than that?  You’ll know soon enough.  And what about my YoY growth target of 15%?  Did I hit that?  That answer is coming, too.

My reinvested dividends were less than normal in July thanks to that investment account transition I started last month (from a regular brokerage account to a trust brokerage account).  Stick around to find out how many company’s dividends I couldn’t reinvest, and how it affected my additional forward dividend income for this source.

It was 4 dividend raises in July.  That makes it 4 months in a row for 4 dividend raises.  I’m stuck in a rut.  Did I receive any double-digit percentage raises?  Did I reach triple-digit additional forward dividend income from the raises?  Find out shortly.

One Portfolio element that heated up in July was my transaction activity.  I made 11 trades involving 9 different stocks.  Were there more buys than sells?  Was there a net investment into my Portfolio, and if so, how big was it?

My monthly additional forward dividend income from my 3 sources (reinvested dividends, dividend raises, and investment of capital) was less than a third of the huge amount from last month.  But did I still reach a triple-digit amount?  Which source led the way in terms of adding forward dividend income?

As always, I’ve got some updated progress charts to share, too.  We’ll take a peek at the monthly income change as well as the annual income change.

Let’s get to it.  Here are the dividend details for my Portfolio in July 2025, starting with my dividend income…

 

Dividend Income

 

I’m feeling good about the dividend income collected in July.  I almost got to $1.6K.  Instead, I came up a bit short, collecting a solid $1,597.93 in dividends.

YoY dividend growth sadly fell shy of my 15% target.  It came in at 13.35%.  It’s hard to complain about that though.

After locking down a record 26 dividend payers in June, I went back-to-back in July.  Say hello to another 26 companies paying me a dividend this month.  I didn’t have nearly as many triple-digit dividend payers in July, but there were 5 of them, and that’s a good number.  There were another 11 companies that provided at least $50, too.  So, there were plenty of impressive contributors.

Legacy holding RPM International (RPM) delivered my largest dividend in July, coming through with a payment of $134.78.  JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM) wasn’t too far behind at $123.47.  Recent Portfolio addition Salesforce (CRM) provided just $6.25, which was my smallest dividend of the month.

The increased dividend amounts from Nike (NKE), FedEx (FDX) and The Walt Disney Co. (DIS) were each helped by one or more purchases over the past year.

Increased YoY amounts for all other companies were a result of dividend increases and reinvested dividends over the past year.  I added more than $24 in YoY dividend gains from JPM, and north of $15 from RPM.  I also notched in excess of $9 from both Automatic Data Processing (ADP) and Illinois Tool Works (ITW).  There was also more than $8 from Merck & Co. (MRK).  These numbers are good, but seem to reflect lower dividend raises in the past year from this group.

Of the July stocks that paid me both last year and this year, two of them had a payout reduction.  The reduction from Altria Group (MO) was the result of the trim of my shares last November when I wanted to pare down my position while securing a small gain.  Of course, MO has climbed more than 10% higher since then.  The drop from American Tower (AMT) stemmed from my initial trim of the stock back in April.  However, I exited the position in July, so that dividend will be $0 in future quarters.

As for new dividend payers in July, I had five of them.  The three ones debuting with the largest income amounts are all closed-end funds:  DNP Select Income Fund (DNP) provided $67.48, BlackRock Health Sciences Trust (BME) delivered $58.81, and PIMCO Corporate and Income Strategy Fund (PCN) brought $45.00.  The other two new payers are stocks with lower yields.  Intuit (INTU) arrived with a $12.50 dividend, while CRM brought up the rear, sending just $6.25 my way.

Two stocks no longer paid me a dividend this July.  I said goodbye to the $60.79 dividend from OGE Energy (OGE) when I replaced it with shares of NextEra Energy (NEE) and DNP last January.  McCormick & Co., (MKC) was swapped out for Flowers Foods (FLO) in February, although I parted with a smaller dividend of $19.84.  Unfortunately, my investment in FLO was short-lived and it is no longer in my Portfolio either.

 

Normally, most of my dividends get automatically reinvested into the stocks that paid them.  However, that wasn’t the case in July.  The main reason for this was that I was in the middle of transferring my brokerage account into a trust account, and dividend reinvestment stopped during the transition.  You’ll see 11 different holdings that didn’t have their dividends reinvested due to this transition. The transition is over now and things will be back to normal in August, but my Portfolio suffered with regard to reinvested dividends in July.

There were two additional exceptions as well.  It was only a partial dividend reinvestment of Medtronic (MDT) due to a portion of the dividend being withheld for foreign tax purposes.  Additionally, my MO dividend wasn’t reinvested either, since I currently have the drip turned off for MO, as I don’t wish to see that position grow further at this time.

The result of the dividend reinvestment that did take place was an additional $29.34 of forward dividend income.  This was my smallest amount of the year by a wide margin, but I expect a return to larger numbers starting next month.

The reinvestment of my DNP and BME distributions each accounted for more than $5 of the forward income total.  Five stocks, including Comcast (CMCSA), Main Street Capital (MAIN), ITW, RPM and JPM each added better than $2 to the forward dividend income total.

As a result of July’s dividends that did get reinvested, I dripped more than 16 new shares.  DNP accounted for nearly 7 shares all by itself.  CMCSA dripped better than 2 shares while BME and RPM were my only other holdings to exceed 1 share.

 

Dividend Raises

It was another month with 4 dividend raises.  This is certainly not the worst outcome, but would I like to have had another one or two raises and break out a bit?… yes!

For the 2nd straight month, all the dividend raises were basically announced in the first half of the month.  This made for a little lull in the back half of July.

On a bright note though, 3 of my 4 raises delivered a larger percentage increase than the company provided last year.  That’s amazing given that the majority of my raise percentages the past couple of years have come in lower than the year prior.

Unfortunately, none of my raises reached a double-digit percentage, although one came very close.

As for the bump to my forward dividend income, one company provided half of the boost I managed for the month.  Any guesses?

My first raise of July arrived on day 1 from JPM.  JPM came through with its 2nd raise of 2025 with a decent 7.14% boost shortly after the results of the Federal Reserve’s bank stress test were revealed.  This raised followed the 12% hike that JPM provided in March.  The two raises bring the total raise percentage for JPM in 2025 to 20%.  This tops the 19.05% JPM provided last year.  The forward dividend income added from this JPM raise was $35.45.

A couple weeks went by before I received the next two raises… on the same day.

First came a 3.45% raise announced by NNN REIT (NNN).  This increase bested its 2.65% raise from last year.  It also led to a minor $7.23 forward dividend income increase, mainly because NNN is one of my smallest holdings.

Second was a 9.89% hike from Cummins (CMI).  This was my largest raise of the month in percentage terms… so close to double-digits!  CMI exceeded the 8.33% raise from the previous year.  This raise also translated into a $13.05 boost to my forward dividend income.

My raises for July finished up with a modest 2.99% boost from Union Pacific (UNP).  This raise fell short of the 3.08% increase that UNP provided last year, and it was my only raise in July that wasn’t better than its one from the previous year.  However, since UNP is one of my larger holdings, it resulted in a decent forward dividend income boost of $14.79.

Hershey Co. (HSY) didn’t announce a raise in July, so given their history, I’ll look for something in early February.  Skyworks Solutions (SWKS) didn’t offer up a raise in July either, so perhaps it’ll be early August.

 

 

After accounting for all my July dividend raises, my forward dividend income increased by $70.52.  JPM provided just over half of this amount by itself, however, the raises from UNP and CMI provided double-digit dollar amounts, too.  This month’s total forward dividend income from raises was nearly double the total from last month…. progress!

I’d have to invest $2,573.72 at my Portfolio’s current yield of 2.74% in order to receive the same boost to my forward dividend income as this month’s raises.

Looking ahead to August, I think I may be looking at 4 dividend raises yet again… for the 5th month in a row.  Let’s assume I get the SWKS raise that I mentioned earlier, I then expect to hear from Illinois Tool Works (ITW), Intuit (INTU), and Altria Group (MO).  Two companies in my Portfolio already announced a dividend raise this month, but I’ll save those for next month’s report.

 

Dividends Due To New Investment

With just 3 Portfolio transactions over the course of May and June, the activity I posted in July was a big departure.

In July, I executed 11 trades, involving 9 different companies.  There were 6 sales and 5 buys.  The sales included 3 trims, and 2 stocks that were eliminated from my Portfolio (AMT & FLO).  The buys were all comprised of existing Portfolio holdings.

A good chunk of my sales proceeds were invested into one of my closed-end funds, PCN, which helped me recoup all the lost income, and then some.

The details for all my July transactions can be found in this trio of posts…

 

Recent Transactions – CRM, MAIN, NNN, ACN, PCN

Recent Sells – AMT & FLO

Recent Transactions – HSY, PCN, UNH

 

My transactions resulted a net withdrawal of $4,840.18 from my Portfolio.  Yet, I was able to actually increase my forward income by $91.81 due to the high ‘yield’ of PCN.

With two stocks being eliminated from my Portfolio, and no new ones arriving, the number of stocks/funds in my Portfolio dropped by a couple to 58.

 

Tallying Up The Additional Forward Dividend Income

In 2025, I continue tracking my additional forward dividend income generated each month from the trifecta of sources: reinvested dividends, dividend raises, and new capital investment.

I show 2024 totals as well, so that we can compare as the year progresses.

 

 

July brought a solid addition to my forward dividend income.  Sure it didn’t live up to the total from last month, but I wasn’t expecting that.  None of the individual sources delivered triple-digit forward dividend income by themselves, but they did as a group.

Accounting for all the sources, I added $191.67 of additional forward dividend income in July.  This more than doubled the $75.37 from July of last year.

The primary source for a 2nd consecutive month was Investment of Capital.  The $91.81 it added in July was a far cry from the $500+ from last month, but it did easily top the negative number I posted last July.

Dividend Raises had a good month bringing $70.52… nearly double what it did last month.  This easily outpaced its $41.50 from last July, too.

Reinvested Dividends was the laggard in July, through no fault of its own.  The account transition (standard to trust) that began in June crept into the 1st half of July and put a dent in this month’s totals.  The $29.34 posted was a little better than half the amount from last month.  It came up short of the $38.84 from last July as well.

For the year so far, I’m well on my way to eclipsing the record $2,441.98 additional forward dividend income total that I booked last year.  Already in 2025, I’ve added $2,052.46 of additional forward dividend income, with most of it coming courtesy of Investment of Capital.  I can’t say I’ve invested more than I usually do on an annual basis, but the investment in the closed-end funds has done wonders for boosting my income.  I’m hoping to top last year’s record total by the end of this September.  We’ll see what happens.

I’m still ahead of last year’s pace in the Reinvested Dividend category, despite the slowdown in July.  However, I’m still behind pace when it comes to Dividend Raises.

 

Progress Charts

The following are progress charts, also available on my Dividends page.

It was a good start to the 2nd half of 2025 on the dividend income front.  I topped $1.5K handily, nearly touching $1.6K.

 

 

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

Almost $13K in dividend income in 7 months!  In 2025, I’ve already collected more dividend income than I did in all of 2020… Wow!

 

 

Summary

July brought a solid dividend total of nearly $1.6K… $1,597.93 to be exact.  This spelled YoY growth of 13.35%, which is a good percentage, but it came up short of my 15% target.

There were another 26 dividend payments for my Portfolio in July after I recorded the same amount in June.  Only 5 of my dividend payments this month reached triple-digits, and RPM was my best payer, providing $134.78.

In July, I made 11 Portfolio transactions after a couple of quiet months.  For the 2nd straight month, Investment of Capital led all my sources in terms of delivering additional forward dividend income – nearly $92.  My reinvestment of sales proceeds into PCN helped me accomplish this.

I collected another 4 Dividend Raises in July and this translated into better than $70 of additional forward dividend income.  CMI provided my largest raise, but JPM provided the most forward dividend income.

Reinvested Dividends were slowed by an account transition that didn’t allow me to drip most of my dividends (as is usually the case).  So, I only ended up with a bit over $29 of additional forward dividend income due to Reinvested Dividends.

Tallying the contributions from all sources, nearly $192 of forward dividend income was added to my Portfolio in July.  I remain on track to post record additional forward dividend income in 2025.  Hopefully, I can surpass last year’s total ($2,441.98) by the end of September, then it’s all gravy from then until the end of the year.

 

What aspect of your dividends stood out in July?  Was it the income, the YoY growth, the number of dividend raises, or perhaps a large number of portfolio transactions?  Please share in the Comments!

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