Tuesday, August 1, 2017

JULY 2017 SETS NEW RECORD FOR MONTHLY DIVIDEND INCOME!

July 2017 was a great month for dividend income, setting a new record high!  It beat out the previous record set in June by 5%, although I don't expect this record to last long.  August kicked off with 9 dividend payments on the first, including my first dividend from VZ.  I initially bought shares of VZ with the intention of making a little money in capital gains, but after seeing the nice dividend I collected, I'm not in any hurry to sell the shares.  I collect my trade stock dividends in cash, so it's nice to see rising cash balances in my investment accounts.  

Completed the purchase of MRK and NCV for my IRA account.  MRK is a trade stock and NCV I bought for income.  There again, I'm not in any hurry to sell MRK unless I can make a ridiculously large profit in a short amount of time.  I'll be happy to collect cash dividends from them as well as VZ.  Have been very pleased with the performance of my portfolio this year.  Even though price gains haven't been stellar, the increase in dividend income has been phenomenal!  Just have to stick with the plan and keep things moving.

Cash permitting, I plan on purchasing more shares of CHI for my ROTH IRA to boost monthly income once again.  With any luck and maybe a little overtime at work, I may even add to my stake in SPHD.  I'm getting to the point where reinvested dividends are increasing monthly income substantially, so I'm spending more time working on improving the quality of my investments.  To keep it simple, for the individual stocks, I'm sticking with the Dividend Aristocrats with a history of increasing dividends.  For funds I want to increase my stakes in S&P 500 funds SPHD and SPLV.  I'll let the bond funds increase on their own through reinvested dividends.  

The 401k is doing good for the year.  I've been working extra hours so my 5% contributions have been much higher of late.  Even though my employer doesn't match any contributions, I'm still coming out good, since my contributions mostly come out of taxes instead of take home pay.  I figure whatever it grows into will be that much more for retirement.  Right now it still makes up only one seventh of my total investments, but with twice monthly payroll contributions, it may well become one of the largest holdings before I retire.

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