Hello everyone.  I’m excited to be posting about my dividend income for the first month of 2026!

One reason for the excitement… this was the first month of my new reality.  I’m no longer investing in my Portfolio or reinvesting my dividends.  Instead, I’m using the dividends to cover a portion of my living expenses.

Additional forward dividend income received by my Portfolio will be almost exclusively from Dividend Raises.  Thus, it’ll primarily be just one leg of the three-legged stool that is supporting my additional forward dividend income.

There will still be times where I sell one Portfolio holding to invest in another, so there will be small Investment of Capital amounts from time to time.  Also, it’s possible that in the future I return to having Reinvested Dividends again for all or a portion of my Portfolio, but for now Dividend Raises will have to power my Portfolio alone.

 

Here’s a preview of what’s to come in this month’s dividend income report…

Dividend income was better than $1.8K, with YoY growth coming in right around my 15% target.  Any guesses on whether I fell short of the target or managed to get above it?

No dividends were reinvested, so I didn’t produce any additional forward dividend income from this source.

Dividend raises got off to a decent start in the new year.  I received 5 raises, with one arriving unexpectedly, and another potential raise being unexpectedly absent.  I’ll share the surprises shortly.

Portfolio transactions were non-existent in January, as they probably will be most of the months moving forward.  Thus, here was another source that failed to produce any additional forward dividend income.

The additional forward dividend income from my 3 sources (reinvested dividends, dividend raises, and investment of capital) was limited to coming from just a single source.  However, the good news is that the lone source still generated a triple-digit boost to my additional forward dividend income.

I’ve got updated progress charts for you to see as well, with new bars in the charts for 2026.

Here we go…  let’s see the dividend details for January 2026, starting with my dividend income…

 

Dividend Income

 

I certainly can’t complain about my January dividend total.  My Portfolio collected a total of $1,839.96 in dividends.  That’s a strong start to the year!

YoY dividend growth fell a little short of my 15% target, finishing at 14.21%.  Still, I’m usually pretty happy if this number reaches a double-digit percentage.

I had 25 companies pay me a dividend this month.  That’s a quality result usually reserved for a quarter-ending month.  There were 7 triple-digit dividend payers in January, and another just falling shy of that mark.  All but two dividends paid this month were north of $27… impressive!

Pepsico (PEP) delivered my largest dividend of the month, which was a wonderful $178.03.  That was followed by $144.04 from RPM International (RPM).  As for my smallest dividend, that was $8.34 which came from Salesforce (CRM).  Just a bit larger than that was the $14.47 dividend from Intuit (INTU).

The increased dividend amounts from DNP Select Income Fund (DNP), VICI Properties (VICI), The Walt Disney Co. (DIS) and FedEx (FDX) were 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 in excess of $24 in YoY dividend gains from JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM), north of $13 from PEP, and nearly $13 from Omnicom Group (OMC).  Then add in just more than $10 each from RPM, Illinois Tool Works (ITW), and Automatic Data Processing (ADP), and the contributions seemingly came from everywhere.

Of the January dividend payers that paid me both last year and this year, just a single one had a payout reduction – Main Street Capital (MAIN).  I trimmed MAIN last July due to the stock looking overvalued to me and that resulted in the dividend decline.

As for new dividend payers in January, there were 4 of them.  This included 2 closed-end funds (CEFs), which provided the largest new amounts.  These were PIMCO Corporate and Income Strategy Fund (PCN) and BlackRock Health Sciences Trust (BME), delivering $132.54 and $61.27, respectively.  Then it was a pair of new Tech stocks in INTU and CRM with the smaller amounts, providing $14.47 and $8.34, respectively, as noted earlier.

Three stocks no longer paid me a dividend this January.  Each came from a different sector.  The largest lost dividend ($67.32) was from Comcast (CMCSA), which I purged due to poor performance.  Following close behind ($62.54) was OGE Energy (OGE), while McCormick & Co. (MKC) was a distant 3rd ($21.49).  The latter two stocks were let go in order to allocate my capital elsewhere.  I’d consider adding them back to my Portfolio in the future.

 

Reinvested Dividends

For the first time ever, no dividends got automatically reinvested into the stocks that paid them.  That’s because starting this month I’m using the dividends to cover some of my monthly living expenses.

Unfortunately, this means that $0.00 of additional forward dividend income was generated due to reinvested dividends.

 

Dividend Raises

In past years, January proved to be my best month of the year, not only because of a large number of raises, but because of the magnitude of those raises.

Sadly, this January didn’t live up to past ones, but the results were still good.  I’d say dividend raises were solid in January, but not extraordinary.

January delivered 5 dividend raises for my Portfolio.  However, none of those raises managed to reach a double-digit percentage, although one was very close.

Surprisingly, one of my expected raises didn’t come to be, while another showed up unexpectedly.  More to come on this momentarily.

 

As is normally the case for January, the first dividend raise doesn’t arrive until mid-month.  That was true again this year, and it was BlackRock (BLK) that delivered my first dividend raise of 2026.  The company boosted their dividend by a beautiful 9.98%…. just shy of double-digit territory.  After 3 years of raises from BLK in the 2%-2.5% range, this year’s raise felt huge.  With BLK being one of my larger dividend payers, the raise had a nice impact on my additional forward dividend income, increasing it by $58.37.

The next day, another solid raise arrived.  Fastenal (FAST) came through with a dividend hike of 9.09%.  While this fell short of the 10.26% raise provided last year, I was more than happy to receive it, as it bested the majority of the raises I received in 2025.  In addition, with FAST being one of my larger dividend payers, it led to another solid additional forward dividend income increase of $52.89.

My last 3 dividend raises for January showed up in the final week of the month.

It started with a measly 1.12% dividend boost from Air Products & Chemicals (APD).  This made it 3 straight years of meager raises.  This raise also failed to top the 1.13% hike from last year.  Additionally, it only added $2.95 to my forward dividend income.  Dare I say ‘pathetic’?  I guess it was better than a dividend freeze or dividend cut.

Next up was the annual raise from Chevron (CVX).  The company provided a 4.09% raise.  Unfortunately, this failed to live up to the 4.91% increase provided last year.  Regardless, with CVX being a decent dividend payer for me, the raise translated into another $19.11 of additional forward dividend income for my Portfolio.

My final January dividend raise was from an unexpected source, Verizon Communications (VZ).  It was surprising because VZ raised just months ago in September.  Not only that, but the 2.54% boost was the largest raise from VZ since 2016.  It remains to be seen if VZ will raise in September, too.  If not, then it appears that VZ just pulled forward their 2026 dividend raise.  In either case, the dividend hike added another $12.14 for my forward dividend income.

Sadly, one of my best dividend raise stocks, which usually hikes their dividend by a double-digit percentage every year, failed to raise at all in January.  That stock is Nexstar Media Group (NXST).  I believe that the company’s plan is to preserve cash for its pending acquisition of TEGNA Inc.  Recent support from President Trump regarding the deal for TEGNA lit a fire under the stock price this past week.  Perhaps once the acquisition goes through, NXST will gain some clarity regarding finances and could pursue a dividend raise later this year.

One final note, Quest Diagnostics (DGX) and T. Rowe Price Group (TROW) did not announce raises in January (as they sometimes do), so I’ll expect these to show up next month.

 

 

After accounting for all my January dividend raises, my forward dividend income increased by a substantial $145.46.  Unfortunately, this was my smallest January total since 2019.  I blame the absence of the NXST dividend raise for this.  Still, I was happy to see a triple-digit total.

I’d have to invest $5,682.03 at my Portfolio’s current yield of 2.56% in order to receive the same boost to my forward dividend income as this month’s raises.

Looking ahead to February, I’m expecting at least 6 raises, with as many as 8.  I expect to hear raise announcements from DGX and TROW, as mentioned above, along with Pepsico (PEP), Cisco Systems (CSCO), NextEra Energy (NEE) and Meta Platforms (META).  There are potential raises from Hershey Co. (HSY) and Realty Income (O) as well.  As it turns out, four of the companies I noted above have already announced a dividend raise for February, but I’ll save reporting on them for next month.

 

Dividends Due To New Investment

Portfolio transactions were non-existent in January.  I expect this to be the case most months moving forward given my new reality.

Thus, I had additional forward dividend income of $0.00 coming from new investment.

The number of stocks/funds in my Portfolio remained at 58.

 

Tallying Up The Additional Forward Dividend Income

In 2026, I will continue tracking my additional forward dividend income generated each month from the trifecta of sources: reinvested dividends, dividend raises, and new capital investment.  However, expect nearly all the action to be from dividend raises.

I’ll show 2025 totals as well, so that we can compare as the year progresses.

 

 

In January, I continued my string of consecutive months with a triple-digit addition to my forward dividend income.  The streak is now at 14 months.  Accounting for all the sources, I recorded $145.46 of additional forward dividend income, all of which came from dividend raises.

I’m hoping to average about $100/month in additional forward dividend income throughout 2026, or $1,200 for the year.  At the moment I’m ahead of pace, but I’ll need some $$$ in the bank, as I usually fail to reach triple-digit income from dividend raises from April to September.

 

Progress Charts

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

The first bar for 2026 has arrived for January!  It shows good YoY growth.  Let’s see if the same will result for each of the remaining 11 months.  Shifting dividend payments wreaked havoc on YoY growth last year, especially from March to June.

 

 

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

From the chart, it appears I’ve got a long way to go to eclipse the total from 2025.  Have no fear though, I expect to top last year’s total by the time 2026 is complete.  I also expect another Y-axis adjustment by that time.  Let the progress continue!

 

 

Summary

I raked in a tidy $1,839.96 in dividends in January.  YoY growth was also solid at 14.21%, a bit shy of the 15% target percentage I have.

I received 25 dividend payments, with all but two of them being north of $27.  Seven of the dividend payments reached the triple-digit level.  The biggest of the bunch was a $178.03 dividend from PEP.

My Portfolio notched 5 dividend raises in January.  None of my raises reached 10%, but the one from BLK came very close.  That same raise also provided the largest bump to my forward dividend income at just over $58.  All the raises combined tallied more than $145 in forward dividend income.

Since I stopped reinvesting dividends at the beginning of the year to cover some of my living expenses, there was no additional forward dividend income resulting from reinvested dividends.

There were no Portfolio transactions in January either.  Thus, there was no new capital investment, and subsequently I was shutout by another one of my additional forward dividend income sources.

Tallying the contributions from all sources (really just one), over $145 of forward dividend income was added to my Portfolio to kick off the new year.  Not a bad start, for sure.

 

How did you fare with respect to dividends in the first month of 2026?  What are you expecting out of your portfolio this year?  Record dividend income due to continued portfolio growth?  Changes in holdings?  Please share in the Comments!

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