My Own Portfolio : Dividend Income Report Out March 2017

First of all I wish to say : HAPPY EASTER to all of you !! May you have a lot of happiness and joy today with your family.

March was the month of Tom Waes with “Reizen Waes”. This is a travel program I love watching as I love to learn and discover interesting places in the world. My life will be too short to see everything what I would like to visit. In the newspaper De TIJD on the 11th of March, there was an interview with Tom Waes. He answerred 10 MONEY questions . On the question “Are you an investor?”, Tom answerred :” I do have little confidence in the stock market. The years of great capital gains are behind us. If he had additional cash, he would invest in real estate for rental income….”

Well…I don’t know if Tom has a crystal ball in which he can predict the future about the stock market, but we can only say the future will prove him wrong or right. Rental properties in Belgium give only a 4-5% return. That is definitely lower than the return I achieved on my investments in the stock market. My rental properties are the ETF’s and shares I buy from companies and they do not cost so much money than a rental property. I do not have problems with tenants and I do not pay maintenance and repair fees. And I only invest in guaranteed dividend paying stocks or ETF’s.

Having no trust in the stock market and assuming the best times are over, my dear Tom,…are conclusions based on a lack of knowledge. What you don’t know, you don’t trust, right? This is logical behavior for people who manage their money.

Well, Tom… we can only advise you :”Invest in your financial education and read our past and below March Dividend Income Report.” When you state that “you always keep an eye open for opportunities“, we hope that also applies for growing your money and investing in the stock market is a lifetime opportunity to build your wealth. Just invest in your education.

So let’s flip towards our March 2017 Dividend Income Report.

Market Analysis

During the month of March, we did see more and more alerts from banks and media that a correction could happen.

The SPY ETF did search for some consolidation between the 235 and 239 level. We tested twice the 239 level but didn’t break it. We had a little correction for several days and everyone was saying:” here is the correction” after Trump failed to kill Obamacare but nevertheless we were within a few days quickly back at the 235 level.

That was a BUY signal for me to take some extra positions in different portfolios. I was able to pickup some high paying dividend payers at a discount.

During the last week of March, there was an initiative “The week of the Money” to teach kids financial literacy. We can only applaud this effort to teach kids more financial literacy. The goal of this project was also to make personal finance more open for discussion. People in Belgium are VERY RESERVED when it involves talking about their finances and their way to grow money.

In our blog post “Saving Belgian has no appetite for risk…” we reviewed the saving behavior of the Belgians and what they do with this money?

It will be interesting to see what the markets do in April. Can we see another strong upward trend? If the economy improves, if Trump will execute his tax cut or start executing his infrastructure investment plans,…many factors can impact the stock market. We can go sideways, up- or downwards. Nobody can predict the future.

Let’s dive in the numbers of my March 2017 Dividend Income Report.

Dividends received in March 2017

Dividend income is amazing. We had great two preceding two months. So how did our portfolio perform this month ?

January was a RECORD month of passive income of all months before. February was a solid month with a dividend total of 423,18$.

In March 2017, we earned a total dividend income of 591,35 Dollar. WOOOAAHHH!

300$ per month is our 2017 goal and benchmark and we achieved this result.

Now let’s analyze the breakout.

First of all, we earned 223,24 EURO dividend from an European company.  Besides the first European dividend payment, we earned 352,78 $ from three dividend paying stocks or ETF’s.

If we use the currency exchange rate of the 31st of March, we equal a 238,57$ dollar payment for the Euro dividend payout. This totals to 591,35 Dollar

See our detail overview of all our dividend payouts.

 

Portfolio Analysis and Growth

Our dividend income in March in 2015 was 95,71$ and in 2016 110,92$. When we compare the months in the spreadsheet, it has always been my weakest dividend income month. Well…not in 2017. We more than doubled our dollar dividend income and also increased our European dividend payout. Nice !

We optimized further our portfolio and made another change to our portfolio. We also said goodbye to WHLR in our portfolio. This investment company rents out shopping mall space to clothing chains in the USA. We purchased this stock at 1.59 $ and received a nice monthly dividend above 10% since October 2016. We sold when the company announced in March that they will execute a reverse stock split. I personally don’t like reverse stock splits. I have bad experiences with that kind of company decisions. So we locked in our 9% capital gain and thank Wheeler for the dividend payouts during those months. This increased our cash position again.

Wheeler and Fifth Company accounted for 56,74$ per month in my portfolio. Now the goal was to find new dividend payers that will replace this kind of dividend payouts…better and safe if possible.

On the 29th and 31st of March, we added two positions to our portfolio. 2 ETF’s that pay above 10%. One is a monthly payer, the other one is quarterly paying and the ex-dividend date was the 1st April. So I wanted to lockin those dividends for my April dividend income. I will be curious on the impact for my total income in April…

How are we doing on our journey towards our 2017 Objective?

We did a SMART objective of 6600$ for 2017 and we have now achieved 39% of this yearly objective. Not bad. We keep on grinding for more…

You can read our 2017 financial objectives here.

 

Going forward

In April we will cumulate our cash position with a pay ourself first payment and our dividends that will be paid in April. Last year we had 958$ dividend income. We hope to break for the second time the 1000$ level. That is our goal for April 2017. You can read in May whether we have achieved that. 

I want to end with another conclusion that makes me little sad…

In the Week of the Money in March, survey showed that the Belgian families were saving on maximum 217 Euro per month. If I compare that with the dividend income that my investments have generated in the month of March, I can only conclude that my investments generate MORE CASH FLOW than the monthly savings of a typical family. I have been able to achieve that now 3 months in a row. And I don’t have to do anything for that…

I just have to keep an eye on those investments…like my analogy with tomato plants or litlle gooses in my mom’s dividend portfolio blog post. You could also compare them with rental properties that pay me monthly or quarterly money…It is called portfolio management. (step 5 in my Financial strategy)

You might wonder why I am sad…well,…in the same survey it showed that more than 75% of the Belgian families put their money on a savingsaccount. Another 15% on their regular account. So with other words…they become poorer without realizing it.

This makes me sad…. this lack of financial knowledge. I also hope that the Belgian politicians will stimulate investing in the stock market instead of punishing the investors all the time. We pay enough taxes !! This is unsustainable.

Thanks for reading our blog post.  We hope you made more passive income than us. If not, keep on hustling and grinding. Invest in yourself !

We end with a quote that should be learned by each Belgian, including Tom Waes. Invest in your financial education. If you invest in rental properties, you also need to invest in knowledge, you just need a lot more capital…

Good luck with your personal finance strategy!