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Saturday, September 8, 2012

Dividend Income Progress Update - August 2012

Once again it is time for a goals/progress update. I am pleased to report that annualized dividend income increased in August, extending the streak to 26 consecutive months of increases after June 2010's decline. Since I began publicly tracking annualized dividend income in November 2007, it has increased in 55 of the last 57 months.

My goals were defined in this December 1, 2007 Investing Goals post and last updated in my 2012 Investing Goals post. Below is an updated version of the table found in the original post.

Description Dividend
Income
Annualized
Yield
on Cost
2027 Goal 110,000 n/a
2017 Goal 30,000 n/a
2012 Goal 21,000 n/a
December/2011 16,161 4.38%
Purchases YTD 4,398 -0.03%
Div. Changes YTD 792 0.14%
Sales YTD -1,447 -0.04%
August/2012 19,904 4.45%
Purchases 427 -0.04%
Div. Changes 68 0.01%
Sales -105 0.01%
July/2012 19,514 4.47%

The above information covers the current month and year-to-date through the current month.

Click here for a Detailed Historical Progress Table.

For the month, annualized dividend income increased $390, and Yield on Cost (YOC) declined (0.02%). This month's changes were a net of new purchases, dividend changes and sales during the month. Let's examine each of the these categories:

Purchases: Purchases this month increased my annual dividend income by $427 and decreased my yield on cost by (0.04%). As noted in earlier updates, I generally expect YOC to drop in most months since new investments will yield less than my current YOC, and dividend increases will not be sufficient to offset the decline.

Dividend Changes: The $68 increase in annual dividend income and 0.01% increase in YOC related to the following dividend changes (a=dividend stated in annual terms, q=quarterly, m=monthly):


- $18 U.S. Preferred Stock Index (PFF) $0.20535m>$0.20957m
- $3 The Clorox Company (CLX) $0.60q>$0.64q
- $31 Alerian MLP ETF (AMLP) $0.245q>$0.252q
- $16 National Retail Properties, Inc. (NNN) $0.385q>$0.395q

Sales: During August, I sold my remaining shares of CL at a significant gain. CL was one of my lowest yielding dividend growth stocks and its debt to total capital is well in excess of the 45% maximum that I look for. In addition, I sold 6% of my WMT shares also at a significant gain. WMT is the lowest yielding stock that I hold and I am at my maximum allocation.

That's it for this time. The next monthly progress update will be early October.

Full Disclosure: Long all the aforementioned securities, except CL. See a list of all my dividend growth holdings here.

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(Photo: sanja gjenero)



Tags: [PFF] [CLX] [AMLP] [NNN]