August 2019 Dividend Report

The Gods envy us

Achilles

Prologue

I’ll tell you a secret they don’t teach you in you schools. The Gods envy us. They envy us because we created dividends, because every month we can sit on our butts and collect passive income. Everything is more beautiful thanks to the freedom you achieve when earning passive income from dividends. You will never be more satisfied then you will collecting dividend income.

Welcome

I have been meaning to start a monthly dividend report for the past few months. Unfortunately life got in the way and it didn’t happen. However, here we are now and beginning with the month of August 2019 I will be reporting my monthly earnings from dividends every month. I already started writing a few posts for July and June which I will post eventually as well.

Before we get to it, a little background

Why am I doing this?

To be honest, I have been rather hesitant to include much specific personal information on my blog. For one, I din’ think people would be interested. Secondly, I just don’t feel all that comfortable disclosing certain facts about myself and my finances.

However, in the interest of full disclosure and in the hopes that it will help even one person I figured, whats the harm.

My dividend goals and strategy

I love dividends. The major majority of my portfolio consists of stocks that pay dividends. It is almost a pre-requisite for me to even consider investing in a stock. Most of my stocks are currently invested in DRIPS. I reinvest the dividend back into the company with the hopes that the compounding will do the heavy lifting for me and before you know it I will be receiving payments so large that it is like a 2nd income. (Or first once I can officially quit the rat race)

What I would like to achieve ultimately is a portfolio where dividends pay for my monthly expenses. Here is an article I wrote about living off dividends in retirement

Before that, my first goal is to pay my mortgage with income from my dividends.

I know what you are thinking, you should be paying down the mortgage. I disagree. The way I see it, I am earning nearly 4% in dividend income whereas the interest rate on my mortgage is less than that. If I can earn enough in dividends to pay off the mortgage, I will have done so and STILL have the entire principal leftover. If I put that principal all towards my mortgage, I know earn nothing.

Yes the mortgage would be paid much quicker but I would be back at ground zero. My way allows me to continue to grow the principal and have it always be available. If the shit hits the fan, I’m liquid and can access the funds, If I use it to pay of my house and the shit hits the fan, what can I do? Sell the house and wait months to access my money.

Anyway, enough of that, here is my dividend report for the month of August of 2019. Not a great month, but boy is September looking to be a big one!

If you would like to see my dividend income year to date, here it is