Ahh, dividends.
Even just hearing that word conjures up all kinds of warm and fuzzy feelings for me.
I remember playing the board game Monopoly as a kid. My favorite Chance card was the one where Mr. Monopoly (or Rich Uncle Pennybags) collected his bank dividend of $50.
I thought that was so neat. Collecting money for nothing. Growing up as poor as I did, it seemed like a pipe dream as a child.
Well, it’s no pipe dream.
But it is a dream; it’s a dream of a lifestyle that almost anyone can live, as I’ve proven out over the years.
Mr. Monopoly sits on my shelf at home, reminding me every day of just how far I’ve come…
How far?
I went from below broke in early 2010 to financially independent in early 2016.
And I did so with no particular advantage(s) over anyone else. I grew up in a crack house in Detroit. My parents abandoned me. I have no college degree. I worked at a car dealership making ~$50,000 per year – until I didn’t.
Those six years of my life I set aside to aggressively save and intelligently invest my capital resulted in financial freedom at 33 years old – which is how I became Mr. Free At 33.
That financial freedom is underpinned by the five-figure passive dividend income my FIRE Fund generates on my behalf.
I aptly named my portfolio the FIRE Fund because it allowed me to become financially independent and retire early (FIRE).
I built this portfolio on the tenets of dividend growth investing, whereby I allocate my capital almost exclusively toward high-quality stocks that have lengthy track records of paying rising dividends year after year.
These are world-class businesses. Because of that, they tend to rake in more profit year in and year out.
Well, shareholders are ultimately the collective owners of any publicly-traded company. Growing dividends are our rightful share of that growing profit.
The growing dividends that are sent my way by the businesses I own a slice of are enough to cover my essential expenses in life. Better yet, these dividends are growing faster than inflation.
That means I don’t need a job. Haven’t had one since turning 32 years old. And I have no plans to get one.
If you’re interested in using dividend growth investing to achieve FIRE for yourself, check out my two best-selling books on this: The Dividend Mantra Way and 5 Steps To Retire In 5 Years (also available in paperback).
What you’ll soon see is the tangible manifestation of all of these concepts I write about.
The table below lists every dividend I received (as well as each respective company that paid it) from the preceding month.
This is cash money. Every time a dividend comes in, that’s real-life money I can use to do whatever I want with. Now we all know why Mr. Monopoly loved to kick back with a cigar, like a boss.
When you’re collecting a dividend a day, you are a boss!
Without further ado…
| Aflac Incorporated (AFL) | $48.60 |
| Enbridge Inc. (ENB) | $49.91 |
| Invesco Ltd. (IVZ) | $3.10 |
| JM Smucker Co. (SJM) | $13.20 |
| Pfizer Inc. (PFE) | $21.60 |
| Phillips 66 (PSX) | $24.30 |
| Wells Fargo & Co. (WFC) | $45.90 |
| WEC Energy Group Inc. (WEC) | $14.75 |
| Hanesbrands Inc. (HBI) | $10.50 |
| Visa Inc. (V) | $6.00 |
| WestRock Company (WRK) | $13.95 |
| Unilever PLC (UL) | $45.16 |
| United Parcel Service, Inc. (UPS) | $24.00 |
| Discover Financial Services (DFS) | $6.60 |
| TJX Companies Inc. (TJX) | $2.30 |
| Amgen, Inc. (AMGN) | $14.50 |
| L3Harris Technologies, Inc. (LHX) | $30.00 |
| Southern Co. (SO) | $52.70 |
| Chevron Corporation (CVX) | $23.80 |
| Emerson Electric Co. (EMR) | $42.50 |
| Exxon Mobil Corporation (XOM) | $19.14 |
| International Business Machines Corp. (IBM) | $32.40 |
| Johnson & Johnson (JNJ) | $95.00 |
| Norfolk Southern Corp. (NSC) | $51.70 |
| Target Corporation (TGT) | $3.30 |
| United Technologies Corporation (UTX) | $29.41 |
| Main Street Capital Corporation (MAIN) | $53.40 |
| Microsoft Corporation (MSFT) | $12.75 |
| Archer Daniels Midland Company (ADM) | $15.75 |
| CenterPoint Energy, Inc. (CNP) | $25.88 |
| Southside Bancshares, Inc. (SBSI) | $27.20 |
| 3M Co. (MMM) | $17.28 |
| Cullen/Frost Bankers, Inc. (CFR) | $14.20 |
| Flowers Foods, Inc. (FLO) | $51.30 |
| KeyCorp (KEY) | $7.40 |
| The Kraft Heinz Co. (KHC) | $8.00 |
| Realty Income Corp. (O) | $21.57 |
| The Coca-Cola Co. (KO) | $56.00 |
| Duke Energy Corp. (DUK) | $28.36 |
| EPR Properties (EPR) | $15.01 |
| Hershey Co. (HSY) | $19.33 |
| McDonald's Corporation (MCD) | $68.75 |
| Polaris Industries Inc. (PII) | $12.20 |
| Stag Industrial Inc. (STAG) | $13.11 |
| Linde PLC (LIN) | $8.75 |
| Royal Dutch Shell PLC (RDS.B) | $47.00 |
| The Home Depot Inc. (HD) | $1.36 |
| Qualcomm, Inc. (QCOM) | $37.20 |
| BP PLC (BP) | $67.65 |
| Dominion Resources, Inc. (D) | $27.53 |
| Kontoor Brands, Inc. (KTB) | $3.92 |
| VF Corp. (VFC) | $26.40 |
| Brinker International, Inc. (EAT) | $28.50 |
| Chatham Lodging Trust (CLDT) | $15.95 |
| South Jersey Industries Inc. (SJI) | $14.75 |
| Public Storage (PSA) | $10.00 |
| Gilead Sciences, Inc. (GILD) | $12.60 |
| Union Pacific Corporation (UNP) | $58.20 |
| Travelers Companies Inc. (TRV) | $8.20 |
| C.H. Robinson Worldwide, Inc. (CHRW) | $12.75 |
| Service Corporation International (SCI) | $3.60 |
| Crown Castle International Corp. (CCI) | $18.00 |
| NorthWestern Corp. (NWE) | $14.38 |
| Broadcom Inc. (AVGO) | $13.00 |
| Total: | $1,621.55 |
Just for reference, a great resource for tracking your portfolio and everything related to it is Personal Capital.
Wow. Holy smokes.
A new milestone!
This is the first time I’ve ever earned more than $1,600 in dividend income in a single month.
That’s a wonderful way to cap off 2019, which was a wonderful year for me from start to finish.
Dozens of world-class enterprises are working hard on my behalf. And they’re sending me reliable and rising cash dividend payments for their efforts. It’s a fantastic arrangement. And one I’m very, very fortunate to be part of.
This kind of success doesn’t happen overnight.
But if you’re consistent, persistent, and patient, amazing things can and will happen for you over time.
I’m proof of that.
I grew up very poor. Have no college degree. Lost my entire family. Never made very much money in my short career.
Yet I’m financially independent and retired in my 30s. It’s all because I lived below my means and intelligently invested my capital.
It sounds simple.
Well, that’s because it is.
Some of the best things in life are simple. And some of the worst things are extremely complicated.
I don’t needlessly complicate my life. Simple is nice.
The compounding dividend income snowball I started rolling years ago is now rolling down the hill all by itself – at an ever-larger size and ever-faster speed.
Let’s see this snowball in action.
This month’s dividend income is 8.0% higher than the $1,500.76 I collected in December 2018. The total amount of dividend income I collected in 2019 finished at $14,096.55. I realized 10.2% YOY growth compared to the $12,788.52 in dividend income I collected in 2018.
I couldn’t be more proud of or pleased with the Fund and the life situation I find myself in.
Indeed, they’re inextricably linked.
I’m only able to live my dream early retirement life abroad because of the Fund and the growing passive dividend income it generates for me. I’m incredibly grateful for this.
The crazy thing is, I stopped aggressively investing more than three years ago. I achieved FIRE in March 2016 at the age of 33, which meant I achieved my primary financial goal in life.
Since then, I’ve decided to allocate the majority of my resources toward other areas of my life. This dividend income growth is mostly the result of the snowball rolling all by itself. If that’s not proof of the power of dividend growth investing, I don’t know what is.
Living off of dividends is the dream. And it’s a dream that can easily be a reality.
But getting started is critical. Life is too short to let these early retirement dreams pass you by.
I can certainly say I feel like I’m living inside of a dream. I wake up every day, overwhelmed with excitement to live exactly as I wish to. For a college dropout who grew up in a crack house in Detroit, it almost seems to good to be true at times.
This year was outstanding for me. I hope all of you had a great year, too!
Full disclosure: I’m long all aforementioned stocks.
How was your month? How much dividend income did you collect? Is your dividend income (and the growth of it) living up to expectations?
Thanks for reading.
Image courtesy of: imgflip and WarnerMedia.
P.S. If you’d also like to collect five-figure dividend income and reach FIRE, check out some phenomenal tools and services that personally helped me become financially independent in my early 30s!
Jason-
Congratulations on crossing $1600 dividend amount, thats an impressive number and I am sure it will hit $2000 pretty soon. It is truly amazing to see the compounding working like magic, one doesn’t need to complicate with investing, just follow dividend path, you are the living legend on this. Thanks for inspiring me and all the dividend investing people.
Bala,
Hey, very kind of you. Really appreciate that support. Means the world to me! 🙂
It really isn’t complicated. Simple is nice. I love simple. No need to complicate things. Just start rolling that compounding dividend income snowball, then get out of the way and let it do its thing.
Hope you had a great end of 2019 over there.
Best wishes.
Jason,
Congratulations on a new record for a great month and a great year. That is some extremely strong dividend growth from just reinvesting dividends and dividend raises. Truly awesome!
Likewise it’s been nothing but records for me too. It’s to the point where it’s not worth mentioning anymore as it’s at an income of a decent paying job already: $12.7K for December and $109.7K for the year, 20% above the prior year.
I never thought breaking six figures in dividend income would come so fast but there it is – the compounding effect of dividend growth investing is really something else.
This portfolio is providing for a family of four including one child who is in expensive private school. A portion of it is earmarked for charity. And I’m still 19 years away from traditional retirement age.
Thank you, Jason, for helping me get the ball rolling nearly six years ago with your writing and sharing of knowledge. I do wish I was tuned into this 15 years ago but better late than never. I’m extremely grateful.
All the best,
Mike
Mike,
Decent paying job?! I think more than decent, my friend. That’s almost twice the US annual household income. Very, very impressive. 🙂
And even without any new contributions, that should double all by itself less than every decade. Pretty amazing.
Thanks for sharing. Enjoy the freedom that kind of passive income buys.
Best regards.
Mike, Can you share some insights on how you achieved it? How much did you fund, etc?
Hi Jean,
My starting point was further along due to having a high paying job for several years and saving more than 70% of my income. So I had some cash in the bank but no strategy on how to effectively deploy this. When I first started the journey in 2014 with a few lump sum investments the dividend income that year was $18k and by getting fully invested 2015 dividend income was $57K. The rest of the growth came from continuing to reinvest, dividend raises and adding fresh capital by continuing to work and save for 3 more years.
Don’t let the starting numbers discourage you in any way. It’s the process that works and this true at all sorts of different scales.
-Mike
Nice! Got to love it when you have yoy growth over 10%!
jh,
I had to work super hard back in the day to get a 10% YOY boost in my job income, so I’m pretty happy. Being an investor is the easiest “job” I ever had. 🙂
Cheers!
Congratulations on an awesome Dec Income, over $1600 is an amazing milestone.
Very soon you’ll be knocking down that sweet 2k milestone in no time 🙂
I was happy to hit the 4k in annual dividend income on my end for 2019
DGX,
Thank you very much! 🙂
Records are meant to be broken. As a dividend growth investor, breaking records is part of the gig. And what a great gig it is.
Congrats on your own progress over there. It only gets bigger and better from here.
Best wishes.
Great stuff Jason! $1,600 for the month and over $14k for the year. It’s amazing what a few years of dedicating to investing can do to set you up for life.
JC,
Absolutely. Dividend growth investing is the gift that keeps on giving. And those gifts get bigger every year, even if you stop participating in the process. It’s phenomenal stuff.
Hope you had a great December and all of 2019 over there!
Cheers.
Congratulations on breaking $1,600! Way to finish the year with double digit YOY growth too! I’m loving the long list of great companies that paid you while you slept! Keep up the fantastic work! 🙂
MDD,
Thanks. Really appreciate the support.
It’s great to make money while you sleep. I sleep like a baby these days. 🙂
Let’s make the most of 2020!
Best regards.
It’s always nice to hit milestones. Good post Jason and excited to see next month’s update. Love seeing the snowball keep growing and growing. Nice work.
Mitchell,
It was a very cool milestone to hit. Just further proof of the inevitable march forward.
The snowball is all grown up and out of the house now. I’m a proud parent who is happy to largely get out of the way. 🙂
Thanks for dropping by!
Best wishes.
Hey Jason,
Welcome to another new year. I wish the best for you in the next chapter of your journey.
Did you consider analyzing how you achieved that growth?
Just from following you and very rough ball-parking, reinvesting your dividends at approximately $1000/month with an average dividend yield of 4% would be $480.00yr or $40.00ish / month, the other $60.00ish from a years worth of natural dividend increases paying you out more 12 months later? Less of one, more of the other. Or maybe you just happened to have purchased more stocks that paid out this month?
The desired result of your combination of high dividend growth, and high dividend payers working together in synergy as they should.
Paul,
Thank you. I’m very excited to see how things unfold throughout 2020. Every day alive is a gift. 🙂
Most of the dividend growth is, of course, organic in nature. And the delta between organic and non-organic will increase over time. I’m averaging less than $1,000/month in new capital, and I’ll slowly start to reduce that number further as I age and as different aspects of my life become bigger priorities. Simultaneously, the larger absolute size of the portfolio and dividend income means that dividend growth will naturally become overwhelmingly dictated by the dividend raises. There’s very little I can do from here to steer the snowball, which is just fine by me. In terms of percentages of this or that, I’ve never been anal-retentive about this stuff. I never wanted to be one of those people who obsess over spreadsheets or money. The money is simply a means to an end for me.
Cheers!
Congrats on the numbers ,how is KL after few days of settling in
desidividend,
Thanks. It’s a blessed life. 🙂
I’m not a big fan of KL. But that’s okay. It was always going to be a very temporary stay. I’m only waiting on Oh to get rid of her house. Then I’m out.
Best regards.
Hola Jason from Merida Mexico! Great post and great numbers. I look forward to this one every month, just like I look forward to my Sunday mornings with you and a nice cup of coffee. Your monthly amount struck me as being poignant, for I went out with 12 expats that I met yesterday (via a Facebook Coffee Club group), and I met a family of 5 here living on exactly $1600 / month. They said f’ this to the rat race 2.5 years ago, got rid of everything, and have never looked back with exactly that amount coming from their investments (plus some growth each year I hope).
Since they have chosen not to work, they won’t be seeing the benefit of reinvestments, or even new contributions, but everyone has to choose what ‘works’ for them. By virtue of my situation, I am up to $64k/year passive, and contributing 1/3 of my active into new investments as long as possible. I, too, am like Mike H above in that everything changed when I came across one of your articles, and am living proof as to what is possible by way of diligence, discipline, hard work, some educated guidance, and the power of compounding / time in the market.
Here is the great fireball in the sky (aka sun – I hate cold), and the great snowball in my portfolio. Hope you are well in KL, and look forward to hearing when you are planning your great escape from Malaysia, when Oh is getting there, and what comes next. Much love to you.
Andrew,
Wow. Awesome stuff, man. Hope you’re loving life over there in Mexico. Sounds fantastic to me. 🙂
Yeah, $1,600/month is actually pretty significant income in many parts of the world. That’s the beauty of geo arb. You might end up finding a HIGHER quality of life than that in the US, at a much LOWER cost of living. More life for less money is a sweet deal, although it’s certainly not a lifestyle choice for everyone.
This stuff scales up and down. It’s great to see that you’ve taken the principles and really run with them. You’ve got a world – literally – of options in front of you, which is very, very nice. Not too many people will ever experience that kind of freedom. Definitely not at a young age, anyway.
Thanks for the support. I’m plodding along over here in KL. As soon as Oh can sell her house, we’ll start to execute some plans together. Should be an exciting year for both of us.
Best wishes!
Congratulations on breaking $1600/month, Jason! That’s a nice milestone.
DL,
Thank you. Really appreciate the support! 🙂
Hope you had a fantastic December, too. Let’s enjoy 2020!!
Best regards.
Congrats Jason! I almost spit out my food when I saw you reached the $1,600/month mark. Outstanding progress but more importantly you are setting a great example of investors all over the world, especially young people just starting out.
To answer your questions, I achieved record dividend income in December earning around $20 for the month. Of course, this is not a lot but I earned only $3 during my first August report. I’m happy to see progress since I found your blog in May 2019.
My biggest problem is having the discipline to invest a substantial part of my income. My long term goal is to invest 90% of my income so I can retire before 40. I’m currently 33 and I think 40 is a conservative number where my dividend income will exceed my expenses because I dream of an extravagant lifestyle.
Kudos for showing your numbers because I am tracking my dividends thanks to you. I’m currently living in SE Asia but I will travel and live in more westernized countries (France, Spain, Cape Town, etc) once my dividend income increases.
Great update and looking forward to an amazing 2020!
investor trip,
Hey, that’s great. $20 is just the start. And starting is really what’s most important. I think my first such public report on dividend income (back in early 2011) showed a similar amount – something like $20 that month. So that snowball does roll if you give it a nice push. 🙂
Retiring by 40 would be awesome. That was my original goal, although I couldn’t continue on with a career I didn’t enjoy. And I kind of figured out somewhere along the way that “early retirement” is just a euphemism for spending more time on hobbies/activities you enjoy (and probably make money at anyway).
I’m very much looking forward to 2020. Think it’ll be a fantastic year for all of us!
Best wishes.
Jason –
What a list. Reducing the investment activity, but yet, your dividend income is sprouting. You’ll be at or over $1,800 this December of 2020, no doubt. The proof is here, more need to be seeing these articles, to see that if we can do this, anyone can do this. Discipline, time and consistency.
Thanks Jason, 2020 – LETS GET IT!
-Lanny
Lanny,
Thanks, man. Rolling that snowball takes some hard work at first. But after it gets going… watch out!
Looking forward to seeing 2020 unfold for all of us. Another year to live out our dreams (or make our dreams come true). What a gift. 🙂
Thanks for stopping by!
Best regards.
Congrats on the milestone!
Although my weapon of choice for FIRE has always been index funds, I enjoy seeing other methods and I definitely see the value of dividend investing.
Seeing those dividends land in your account must be an amazing feeling. Especially knowing how hard you worked for it.
Looking forward to seeing you pass the $2,000 mark!
BF,
Thank you very much! 🙂
Yeah, waking up to new money is rewarding. All of this is rewarding. The whole thing is a blessing. I feel extremely fortunate to live this lifestyle. Continue to do what I can to inspire others out there to experience it for themselves. It’s too good to pass up.
Cheers.
Wow. This fund is really producing.
One thing I have been wondering is what will my fund produce in say 5 years time. I know its difficult to predict but if there was some assumptions of return and continued investment I wonder if you have a tool or suggestion on something? Do you wonder when for example your fund might return an average of $2000 a month? or when you might reach $24,000 a year?
Rick,
I actually put together a little sheet back when I first started investing, extrapolating out what I thought I could invest per month and the dividend growth I thought I would get. It was just a simple exercise in compounding. I did this all the way out until age 40, proving out that my plan to achieve FIRE by 40 was realistic. Then I tracked my real-life results against this initial calculation. I was consistently doing better than I thought I would, mostly due to more extreme applications of frugality and making more money at my day job (after busting my butt and getting raises).
But I don’t pay any attention to that kind of stuff anymore. It’s fairly inevitable at this point that the Fund will continue to grow its income organically. I invest a little bit here and there mostly because I still have the passion for investing. But it’s not a big priority in my life.
I’d recommend putting pen to paper and drawing up some hard numbers. Would be interesting to see where you shake out. 🙂
Best regards.