Another month is in the books.  I’ve now tabulated last month’s dividend info for my Portfolio and I’m ready to share the numbers from August.

Forward dividend income growth in my Portfolio continues despite no longer reinvesting dividends, nor investing any new capital.  Essentially, all the income growth is coming from dividend raises.  This means slower growth overall compared to my previous years, but growth is happening.  It should end up being enough growth to outpace inflation.

 

Here’s a preview of this month’s dividend income report…

Middle month dividend income each quarter is getting close to $2K, but I’m not quite there.  I’ll let you know where I finished in August.  My Portfolio did notch a nice YoY growth percentage for dividend income last month.  In fact, it was the 2nd-best percentage for 2026.  For now, I’ll tell you that it was double-digit YoY growth.

Once again, no dividends got reinvested this month.  Thus, I had no additional forward dividend income from this source in August.

Dividend raises in August were few and far between for my Portfolio.  I only received the 3 raises I was expecting, but the raise percentages as a group were pretty good.

Early in August I did purge one stock from my Portfolio.  Some of you may have an idea of which stock that was, as I briefly mentioned the stock in my last couple of posts.  If not, stick around to find out which stock is gone.  Despite the purge, there was no change to my additional forward dividend income.  How can that be?  I’ll explain soon.

Total additional forward dividend income from my 3 sources (reinvested dividends, dividend raises, and investment of capital) was limited to just Dividend Raises in August.  That’s OK, as at least I’m back to posting a positive additional forward dividend income number after the negative one from July.

I’ll be sharing my updated progress charts later as well.  Now that we are 2/3 of the way through 2026, it’s getting easier to see my overall progress in 2026.

Here are all the dividend details for August 2026, starting with my dividend income…

 

Dividend Income

 

My Portfolio raked in a wonderful $1,937.02 in dividends in August.  I’m inching closer to that $2K dividend number, which would be a first for a middle month of the quarter in my Portfolio.  Hopefully, no later than this time next year I’ll have crossed $2K.  This was my 3rd-best monthly dividend total in 2026.

Where I excelled this month was in my monthly YoY dividend growth.  I easily moved into double-digit percentage territory, finishing August with growth of 15.12%.  This was my 2nd-best monthly YoY growth percentage of 2026, trailing only the 33%+ from May.

I had 18 companies pay me a dividend this month, with six of those dividend payers paying me a triple-digit dividend.  Even better, a couple of those topped the $200 level.  Perhaps most impressive… all of my dividend payments exceeded $27.50.  Any time all my dividends top $25, I’m excited.

My largest dividend payer in August turned out to be AbbVie (ABBV), which provided $262.91.  This was my largest regular dividend payment ever.  Not too far behind in their dividend amount was Nexstar Media Group (NXST), sending me $228.65.  On the other end of the spectrum, my smallest dividend came from Main Street Capital (MAIN), a dividend of $27.53.  Another monthly dividend payer, Realty Income (O), slightly beat that dividend by delivering $31.21.

The increased dividend amounts from PIMCO Corporate & Income Strategy Fund (PCN), Texas Instruments (TXN), Accenture (ACN) & NNN REIT (NNN) were helped by one or more purchases over the past year.

Increased YoY amounts for all other companies were the result of dividend increases and reinvested dividends over the past year.  I added more than $27 in YoY dividend gains from Fastenal (FAST) and topped more than $17 from ABBV.  The next best bumps exceeded $6 and were from Lowe’s Companies (LOW) and Caterpillar (CAT).

Of the August dividend payers that paid me both last year and this year, only one of them had a payout reduction.  The dividend from Verizon Communications (VZ) dropped due to my trim back in March.  At that time, I reduced my position by unloading my most expensive shares after a strong run-up in price.

As for new dividend payers in August, there were none.  This will probably be the case rather often in future months now that my capital investments have diminished in retirement.

Additionally, there were no stocks that no longer paid me a dividend this August.

 

Reinvested Dividends

As usual this year, no dividends got automatically reinvested into the stocks that paid them.  I’m using the dividends to cover some of my monthly living expenses.

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

 

Dividend Raises

I received just 3 dividend raises in August.  This is tied for the fewest in a month this year, and it’s my fewest in 3 months.  All 3 of the raises I received were ones I was expecting.

The raise percentages were pretty good, including one that easily exceeded the 10% mark.  I wouldn’t classify any of the raise percentages as disappointing, so I am happy about that, as I usually have at least one of those each month.

From the perspective of additional forward dividend income, the number was solid.  I was happy to get back to a positive number in August after that negative one in July.

 

My first August dividend raise was delivered by Illinois Tool Works (ITW).  The increase was 6.83%… pretty good.  However, this came up a bit shy of last year’s 7.33% hike.  My forward dividend income rose by a healthy $30.40 thanks to the raise.

Intuit (INTU) provided my largest dividend raise percentage of August.  It was a stellar 15% raise that arrived despite the price struggles the stock has experienced in 2026.  This boost fell a bit below the 15.38% hike from INTU in 2025.  INTU has now raised their dividend by a double-digit percentage for 15 straight years.  This raise added $9.40 to my forward dividend income.

Lastly, Altria Group (MO) announced a 4.72% raise.  This raise percentage is in line with what MO has been providing the past 5-6 years.  The boost did exceed the 3.92% raise MO provided last year though.  My forward dividend income climbed by $20.03 with this raise.

 

 

After accounting for all my August dividend raises, my forward dividend income increased by a solid $59.83.  Back to a positive number after last month’s negative one!

I’d have to invest $2,318.99 at my Portfolio’s current yield of 2.58% in order to receive the same boost to my forward dividend income as this month’s raises.

Looking ahead to September, dividend raises should become more plentiful.  I expect to hear raise announcements from VICI Properties (VICI), Microsoft (MSFT), Texas Instruments (TXN), Accenture (ACN), and receive the quarterly token hike from Realty Income (O).  There’s a possibility that Starbucks (SBUX) announces a raise in late September instead of early October, too.  With Verizon Communications (VZ) hiking in January I suspect the typical September raise won’t arrive.  I’ve already received 2 of these expected raises for September, but I’ll defer reporting on those until next month.

 

Dividends Due To New Investment

I did execute one Portfolio transaction in August (which I’ve yet to post about).  I purged my Skyworks Solutions (SWKS) position after the company announced it will eliminate its dividend.  This sale didn’t impact my additional forward dividend income in the ‘Investment of Capital’ category though since the lost income showed up as a cut in the ‘Dividend Raises’ category last month.

As a result, I had $0.00 of additional forward dividend income coming from investment of capital.

Due to the SWKS sale, the number of stocks/funds in my Portfolio dropped by one to 56.

 

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.

 

 

As is normally the case now, Reinvested Dividends and Investment of Capital didn’t provide any additional forward dividend income.  Instead, I had to rely exclusively on Dividend Raises… and this source came through.  I’m back in the green in August, adding $59.83 of forward dividend income.

While I was well short of the additional forward dividend income total from August of last year ($212.12), my August contribution from Dividend Raises ($59.83) closely matched its total from 12 months ago ($60.04).

With more dividend raises expected in September, perhaps I can see a return to triple-digit additional forward dividend income from this source.  I certainly hope to achieve triple-digit additional forward dividend income in total, as I should see a bump from my Investment of Capital source once I reinvest the proceeds from my SWKS sale.

My hope for additional forward dividend income from Dividend Raises to reach $1K in 2026 took a major hit in July.  So, I’m resetting the target to $750 now.  It will take solid numbers over the final 1/3 of the year to get there, but at least I have a reasonable target to shoot for now.

 

Progress Charts

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

YoY growth in August showed a nice little step up.  There’s still only one month in 2026 (June) where I failed to record YoY growth.  I expect to continue monthly YoY growth for the remainder of this year, barring any dividend cuts or Portfolio sales.

 

 

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

Make it $16K+ that I’ve raked in so far in 2026.  I’ve already exceeded my dividend total for the entirety of 2022.  I should be looking at another Y-axis adjustment by the end of this year (i.e. I expect to top $24K in 2026).

 

 

Summary

Another quality dividend month concluded in August.  A bit more than $1,937 in dividends flowed into my account.

YoY dividend income growth was well above my 10% target in August, coming in at 15.12%.  This was my 2nd-best month in 2026 for YoY growth.

August brought 18 dividend payments to my Portfolio.  I said hello to six triple-digit dividends, including two that topped $225.  The largest dividend was nearly $263 from ABBV.  Each and every dividend I received in August was no less than $27.50.  There’s nothing better than significant dividends from every payer.

Only 3 dividend raises arrived for my Portfolio in August.  All three were expected ones.  The raise percentages were pretty good though, topped by a 15% hike from INTU.  All totaled, the raises boosted my forward dividend income by almost $60.

There was no additional forward dividend income resulting from Reinvested Dividends (as my dividends are currently used for living expenses), or Investment of Capital (as my lone sale was of a stock, SWKS, that no longer paid a dividend).

Tallying the contributions from all sources, I added $59.83 of forward dividend income in August.

 

What are the largest and smallest dividend payments you receive?  What’s the primary driver for those dividend amounts?  Large/Small share count?  High/Low Yield?  Please share in the Comments!

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