January 2015 Dividend Update and Goals

It is that time to report on the dividends received over the last month. The last couple years were exciting as we watched more dividend investors take the journey towards focusing on passive income. I personally look forward to many more years of great dividends. I accomplished the goal of paying my car off early and made some progress towards my BBA degree over the last year or so. I did not reach my goal of $2700 in dividends mainly because I could not afford to put too much capital to work and taking on school related debt. I will set the 2015 dividend goal of $2800. I would be really happy to hit $3K this year, but depending how things happen $2800 is a challenge as well. I decided to cut my hours at work nearly in half during the year last year. Another goal is to finish my Bachelor's degree by this year in December if possible.

December 2014 Dividend Update

December was another great month to end the year for dividends. Many are scheduled to pay out in December and a couple companies do special dividends yearly or semi annually on top of their regular payments. Some BDC's, CEF's, and MLP related oil stocks had to cut the dividend. They had to start the new year with a more reasonable dividend policy due to low oil prices and unsustainably high payout ratio. I received 44 dividend payments in December.

2 Big Dividend increases

Over the last 24 hours shareholders of two companies received a very nice pay raise. I own one in my taxable account and the other in a Roth IRA. Both of these stocks had big increases last year also. I remeber Boeing being 50% and 3M may have been 33%. Those raises are bigger then I may be able to achieve from any company in a lifetime of a working career.

First was Boeing raising the dividend 25% from $0.73 to $0.91/share and approving a higher buyback amount of $12B worth next year. Also a bullish outlook with a record baklog helped them raise the dividend above analysts expectations.  Below is from a press release:

Boeing Co. said its board authorized the repurchase of $12 billion of the aerospace and defense company's shares over the next two to three years and raised its quarterly dividend by 25%. The company's quarterly dividend will rise to 91 cents, up 18 cents from its previous payout to shareholders of 73 cents a share. The dividend increase results in a yield of roughly 3%. The dividend is payable to stockholders of record as of Feb. 13, 2015.

This morning was 3M raising the dividend 20% from $0.855 to $1.025 per share. 3M also said that they project 12% earnings growth next year. This is from the 3M press release:

The board of directors of 3M (NYSE:MMM) today declared a dividend on the company’s common stock of $1.025 per share for the first quarter of 2015, a 20 percent increase over the quarterly dividend paid in 2014. The dividend is payable Mar. 12, 2015, to shareholders of record at the close of business on Feb. 13, 2015. 3M has paid dividends to its shareholders without interruption for 98 years.

Anyone else a happy shareholder in these names?

Photo Sources:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing
                        http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3M
                   

November 2014 Dividend Update

November is over already and we are already over a week into December. I have final exams this week in my classes and then it is really time to start celebrating and getting ready for Christmas. I hope everyone is doing well. I noticed the big selloff and dividend cut in my prospect shares as well as the closed end fund GGN cutting the dividends a good amount. It would be nice to see the external management fees brought down on Prospect and I am interested on how the spinoffs would be handled. I am going to continue to hold and collect a still generous yield while waiting for more information to be released.

October 2014 Dividend Update

 

It has been a volatile month in October. With a big pullback and a snap back rally that caught many investors by surprise. As many have noticed the ARCP accounting scandal that ended the month was not welcoming. Many investors lost all confidence in the company and sold.  I cannot blame them after what management has already put them through.  However, I am not the same type investor as everyone else focused on a longer term as I still believe the assets and rent are there to make this company worth owning a position. Call me a contrarian or crazy, but if there are not any more major skeletons being uncovered in a few years I will be happy I did not sell at a loss. Another benefit to this ordeal is I am not underwater that much because I got some shares for a better price with the takeover ARCP did with COLE. I will be able to continue to collect the dividends and counting on them not to cut it if they can avoid it. Even with a cut the yield would be quite high and the properties and rental income should be able to cover the payments. Over time this should be able to dissolve assuming no major news comes out. It is a calculated risk worth taking and since you should be well diversified to start with, it is a lesson to some. In other news Enerplus (ERF) recently terminated the stock dividend program that was beneficial for shares and tax payments.

Dividend Update- September 2014

September is over and it is time to count up all the dividends received throughout September 2014.  A new personal best was set and will stand until December where I should be able to improve on.  I am still anticipating I will likely fall short of my goal this year in total dividends of $2700.  This is mainly because my buying has been put on hold for a couple months because of the cost of school and books these days.  I hope to be more active with acquiring income producing assets in the near future, but have been kind of stuck lately.  I eliminated my car payment debt at least and now own it 100%. The nice thing about this strategy is most of my dividend stocks are being reinvested in additional shares.  The portfolio continues to power along with higher income and share amounts without me at times.  Looks like we may see some decreases in our balances, but as long as our income keeps growing I'll be happy.  Once it is set up compounding can really take effect and if you are in a position to add more fresh capital you can reach Financial Independence that much faster.  I encourage everyone to keep on going down this path.  We started to get a little bit of a pullback that could be used to buy more value on the way down.  It can continue to correct for a bigger period of time then we expect.  That should not cause panic for the long term income investor, but rather encourage us to pick out the best values out there and accumulate more.

New Milestone! 30K Pageviews

It has been quite awhile since I have posted and wanted to give a little bit of an update on my thoughts now.  I am honored and humbled to reach over 30K page views .  Many of you have been communicating with each other since the inception of my blog.  Thank you to everyone who has supported and encouraged me along the way to keep this blog running.  I also paid off my car a couple days ago which was one of my goals.  I have been working a lot of days to pay for school which starts this week as well.  I am still very much focused on the same things as many of you.  I am always looking to learn valuable knowledge to apply to my investment strategy.  It is nice to be mentioned in the same company as many successful bloggers and their kindness to even include me in their blogrolls.  I look forward to many more months and years of communicating the successes and also sharing what we learn when something ultimately does not work out the way we had planned.  This community has been an encouragement to many beginning investors because it is mostly about sharing our investment experiences and building each other up.  I don't think you find it in too many other communities where they rally around each other and share in successes like we do.

Congrats to all the finalist and winners of FINCON 2014.  I think I will make an effort next year to join several others who plan to attend.  It will be nice to find out where it is going to be well ahead of schedule so I can plan ahead.

I hope everyone is having a great September.