This is what dividend investing is all about!  Investing in dividend stocks allows YOU to earn dividend income, the best passive income stream!  Bias, you better believe it.

Time to dive into Lanny’s March 2023 dividend income results!  Were records set?  Almost to financial freedom?  One day and one month at a time!

Dividend Income

Dividend Income is the fruit from the labor of investing your money in the stock market.  Further, Dividend Income is my primary vehicle on the road to Financial Freedom, which you can see through my Dividend Portfolio.

How do I research & screen for dividend stocks prior to making a purchase?  I use our Dividend Diplomat Stock Screener and trade on Ally’s investment platform (one of our Financial Freedom Products), as well as SoFi’s investing application – commission free.

Related: Dividend Diplomat Stock Screener

Related: Financial Freedom Products

Related: 3 Financial Products to Create Wealth in 2022

I also automatically invest and max out, pre-tax, my 401k through work and my Health Savings Account.  This allows me to save a TON of money on taxes (aka thousands), which allows me to invest even more.  In addition, all dividends I receive are automatically being reinvested back into the company that paid the dividend, aka Dividend Reinvestment Plan or DRIP for short.  This takes the emotion out of timing the market and BUILDS onto my passive income stream!

Related: Tax Strategy – Part 3 to Reduce Taxes & Increase Investment.

Related: The Power of Dividend Reinvesting

Related: Why I Don’t Time or Predict The Market

Growing your dividend income takes time and consistency.  Investing as often, and early, as you can allows compound interest (aka dividends) to work it’s magic.  I have gone from making $2.70 in a single month in dividend income to well over … $10,000+ in a single month.  A NEW dividend income record was set in December of 2021.  Unfortunately, did not break it in December 2022.  However…was it broken this month?!  The power of compounding and dividend reinvestment is a wonderful component to the portfolio.  Each and every month, whether big or small, I continue to report the passive income that dividend investing provides me.  Why?

*Not pictured is my wife’s dividend income above*

I want to show YOU that dividend investing makes it possible to achieve financial freedom and/or financial independence.  We all start somewhere, but consistently investing, compounding (reinvesting) dividends and keeping it simple, allows you to be in a significantly better position than most.  Further, if I can grow this portfolio and income stream, YOU can too.

dividend income – March 2023

Now, on to the numbers… In March, we (my wife and I) received a dividend income total of $5,707.34.  Love crossing $5k on the quarter month ends, just never gets old!  However, As you see, a significant amount is from retirement accounts, which we currently will not touch the IRAs and/or the 401k’s at the moment.  

Always keep this in mind, the amount and number of stocks listed below show you what it means to buy and hold for the long term.  Most of the positions I have owned for YEARS, letting dividend growth and reinvestment do it’s thing.  This is what dividend investing for financial freedom is all about.  The passive income stream is growing at a RAPID pace.  Over a decade of investing is snowballing on it’s own, but we keep investing as much as we can.

Here is the breakdown of dividend income for the month of March, between taxable and retirement (far right column, under “Retirement”) accounts.  In addition, “W” means my wife’s account:

So what happened in dividend income this month?

As I usually share with the twitter community, Target (TGT), Lockheed Martin (LMT) and T. Rowe Price (TROW) are beats within my dividend stock portfolio.  The 3 dividend growth stocks sent massive dividend paymetns our way, all over $100 and even all over $125 each!

Then there is my personal favorite Vanguard ETF – Vanguard’s High Dividend Yield ETF (VYM)!  We recently crossed $100,000 of VYM and they produced us a nice total in Q1.  VYM paid me $366.79 and paid my wife $300.70; over $667 combined, just amazing!  This was all reinvested and pretty much added over 6 shares.

We have a great number of dividend aristocrats that we own and pay us, such as Aflac (AFL), IBM (IBM), Grainger (GWW), Johnson & Johnson (JNJ), Pepsi (PEP), the list really goes on!  High quality businesses that grow earnings and dividend payouts each year!  I love it.

I also split out my retirement accounts in the far right column and the taxable account dividends are in the left two columns.  The retirement accounts are composed of H.S.A. investments, ROTH and Traditional IRAs, as well as our work 401(k) accounts.  In total, the retirement accounts brought in a total dividend income amount of $2,293.68 or 40% of the dividend income total.  We were still successful in earning over $3,400+ in taxable dividends during March, LET’s GO!

Related: Maximizing your Roth for 10 Years… Then Set It & Forget It!

DIvidend Income Year over Year Comparison

2022: 2023:

Our dividend income was fortunately up by $95.03 or 1.7%.  A very small/low growth rate.  We’ll have to dive into the results of what transpired and what happened.  

First, Vanguard’s Institutional Index (VINIX) was lower, more than likely due to the distribution/return of capital during quarter 1.  Therefore, that dividend was lower for both my wife and I, by over $365 when combined!

Second, my current 401k last year had VFIAX, now it has FXAIX, due to switching of investment options.  Unfortunately, FXAIX did not pay in March, which means another $355 impact there.

Therefore, the impact from those mutual funds alone were OVER $700!  Talk about fluctuation.  Once I no longer am working, the 401ks will be fully consolidated into one fund and/or ETF for sure.

Those declines were offset from dividend increases and dividend reinvestment.

Overall, an incredible dividend month.  Now, the next milestone for non-December quarter-ends will be $7,500.  LET’S GO!  Keep on investing.

Dividend Increases

Dividend Increases were nothing but consistent in March, as we brought in 5 nice dividend increases, two over the double digit mark!

My wife holds SpartanNash (SPTN) and Oracle (ORCL).  Though Spartan was slightly disappointing, given they are being bit by the inflation bug, it was a welcome surprise to receive a 25% increase from Oracle!  Thank you Larry Ellison!

Then, my good friends at Armanino Foods (AMNF) came in hard with a nice 10% increase, which added over $12 to my forward passive income!

My favorite has to be Armanino, especially because I own over 1,000 shares of the micro stock.

Related: The Impact of The Dividend Growth Rate!

In total, the dividend increases created $35.01 in additional passive dividend income.  I would need to invest $1,000 at a 3.50% dividend yield in order to add that income.  Thank you for the increases, as I didn’t have to come up with the capital to create that form of income!

Dividend Income Conclusion & Summary

The name of the game is to apply what you learn through financial education.  The next steps are to maximize every dollar for investment opportunities and live life on your own terms.  My plan is to demonstrate that dividend income can be a revenue engine.  A revenue engine that allows you to take back control of your life.  A revenue engine to help you reach financial freedom.  Dividend investing, once you learn the right way, becomes easier and starts to immensely make sense!

Excited for the future, no doubt.  Further, all of the investing from last year and moves this year, shows that my aim to save 60% of my income, and making every dollar count, has provided the dividend growth.

If you are just starting out on your investment journey and you aren’t sure to start – please see the articles mentioned throughout this post.  We are trying to bring you financial education and help you reach your financial goals.  Further, if you are interested in our dividend stocks to buy for December, please see our YouTube channel, subscribe to our channel and check us out!  We’ll help break down further investing topics not only on this blog, but by showing you through video!

As always, thank you for stopping by, leave your comments and questions below.  Good luck and happy investing everyone!