December 2019 Dividend Income

As I write this post, we're just a couple days away from entering into 2020! It really is unbelievable to think back on how fast this year passed us by. With that in mind, now is a great time for me to go into further details about the dividend income that my investments generated for me in the very last month of 2019.

Analysis:

During the month of December, I collected $91.63 in dividends (although I also received $50.24 in long-term capital gains from my mutual fund holding, which purchased almost an entire share of CAIBX by itself).

This represents a 30.9% quarterly growth rate compared to the $70.00 collected in September 2019, and an even more impressive 70.2% YOY growth rate compared to the $53.84 in dividends produced in December 2018.

Breaking it down further, I collected $32.37 in dividends for my Robinhood account during the month, $9.63 in dividends in my Webull account, $49.15 in dividends in my retirement account, and the remaining $0.48 came from 24 companies of the 49 companies held in my M1 Finance account.

The $21.63 in additional dividends collected in December compared to September were as a result of the following developments by account:

Robinhood: 

Adjusting for Pepsi's dividend that was paid in September and the next that will be paid in January, there was no dividend growth in any of the companies that paid dividends in my Robinhood account during the month of December. Because Pepsi doesn't pay a dividend in December, this was responsible for the $1.91 decrease in dividend income originating from the Robinhood account that will be made up for in January.

Webull:

The entirety of the $9.63 collected in my Webull account during December came as a result of the dividend stock purchases that I made in October, when I added a share of UnitedHealth Group (UNH), Prudential (PRU), Visa (V), Wells Fargo (WFC), and Lockheed Martin (LMT).

Retirement:

The $42.01 in regular dividends that I received from my retirement account mutual fund holding, CAIBX, represented a $6.77 increase compared to September. The other component that led to higher dividend income in December compared to September was the $7.14 in special dividends that I collected from CAIBX as a result of the end of year dividend being larger than all the preceding dividends.

All told, I received an additional $13.91 from the retirement account compared to September.

Concluding Thoughts:

I'm relatively pleased with the month of December and it was a great way to close out the year, although I came up a bit short of the $100+ in dividend income that I was expecting for the month.

This was as a result of CAIBX's special dividend being a bit less than I thought it would be and less than it was last year. Had the special dividend been maintained compared to last year at $0.14/share rather than the $0.085 this year, my dividend income would have came much closer to the $100 mark.

Fortunately, I am confident that I will be able to finally break the $100 mark in March due to continued contributions to my retirement account, anticipated investment in my taxable accounts, and dividend increases to help boost my dividend income over that milestone.

Discussion:

How was your December in terms of dividend income? Did you have any new dividend payers in your portfolio during the month as I did?

Thank you for reading and I look forward to replying to any comments that you may leave below in the comments section.