July 2020 Dividend Income Review

Welcome back to my monthly dividend Investing review where I will analyze my dividend Income an Investments for July 2020.

July has been a very busy month as we are in the middle of earnings season. There have been a few surprises along the way but on our podcast, I talk a little bit about IBM, Coca Cola, ADP, and Pfizer reports.

Analyzing Quarterly reports is a fairly new endeavor for me but it is something that I enjoy doing. One of the best things about being a dividend investor is that it can be a set and forget approach. Once you have a strategy in place than you don’t need to be constantly checking the markets. In fact, you don’t even need to read earnings reports. But it helps!

My Investing approach

I believe in the KISS or Keep it simple stupid approach. It is much easier to stay the course if you don’t over complicate matters. My Approach can be laid out in 4 steps.

Invest Monthly

The long term aim is to save and invest at least 50% of my income. If I can live off 50% of my income than that means in theory I gain an extra year in retirement. Yes, I have ignored inflation but its a good starting point. Currently, I am saving/investing around 30% of my income.

Invest in Quality

Investing in quality is key to your success. In this post I give an outline into 4 steps to screen companies. But this is just an initial screen and is not enough to buy shares in a company. Before I make a purchase, I like to get under the hood of a company and do some research on Management, Financial Strength, Dividend Strength and potential growth. I want to be as sure as I can that a company will be around in 10 years time. Check out this example of my review on Walgreens Boots Alliance.

Diversify

Keeping all of your eggs in one basket is never a wise idea. I like to diversify in Sector allocation but also in Asset classes. For example, up until this month, as well as my dividend growth investment strategy I also co-owned a cafe and invested in peer to peer property investments. This has been thrown off track a little bit as we are now selling the cafe and I have pulled funds from the peer to peer property investments so I will need to sit down and decide on a new strategy. Maybe a good time to start another business!

Hold on Tight

I do not buy companies to sell. All of my purchases are intended as long term holds. I have made some mistakes. *cough cough Tanger* but as a rule, I do not like to sell companies that I own. remember the saying “Time in the market is better than Timing the Market”.

Dividend Investing

July has been another good month for me with a total of 14 companies paying me a total of $114.10 between them.

In July 2019 I received a total of $47.33 in dividends. This means that I have seen an impressive 241% Increase YoY. I would be more than happy to see these king of increases each year!

Dividend Raises

I had 7 Dividend Raises in total, OMC were unchanged and 1 dividend cut in the form of Disney.

KO and CAH were a little disappointing but in the current environment any dividend raise is a positive sign

Dividend Chart

The Chart below shows the Dividends I received in 2019 in Blue.

The Red is what I have received so far this year and the green is the projected dividend income. The projected income is assuming that there are no dividend cuts and I add no more cash to my investments.

In Reality, I will be continuing to add €1250 which will bring in roughly €37 in forward income each month. Currently, I am expecting to earn just over $1300 in dividends this year.

July Purchases

In July I have added to 4 existing positions. I bought 3 shares of Realty Income from dividends received. My Broker Degiro does not offer DRIP so I need to manually pick where to reinvest my dividends.

Buying 31 shares of T brings my total allocation up to 100 which may allow me to start trying these covered calls that seem to plastered all over twitter.

BTI was on my list to review but European DGI saved me the honour and wrote an excellent write up here.

ADP took a little dip after there earnings, I am still bullish on them for the long term so will add shares to them slowly over time.

Hope you enjoyed this review, If you did, please consider joining my community by signing up to my mailing list where I will keep you up to date with my investments and provide more analysis.

[convertkit form=1539473]

I also Co-host a podcast called Dividend talk where I chat with European DGI about Dividend growth Investing. Feel free to listen to our latest episode below

Thanks for reading and happy Investing!

Disclaimer - Engineer my Freedom is not a licensed or registered investment adviser or broker/dealer. We are not providing you with individual investment advice on this site. Please consult with a licensed investment professional before you invest your money. This site is for entertainment, informational, and educational use only. Any opinion expressed on the site here and elsewhere on the internet is not a form of investment advice provided to you. We use information, data, and sources in the articles we believe to be correct at the time of writing them, but there is no guarantee of their accuracy, completeness, timeliness, or correctness. We are not liable for any losses suffered by any party because of information published on this site or elsewhere on the internet. Past performance is not a guarantee of future performance. By reading this site or subscribing to it, you agree that you are solely responsible for making investment decisions in connection with your funds.