Corona-virus fears hit the market

This week has eaten significant amount of value from our portfolio, but we are not panicking. Instead we increased our positions in last week of February. Dividend-wise the month was good. We increased our dividend income by 28,66% compared to last year February.

Last week we missed that  Coca Cola announced 1 cnt dividend increase. This will increase our yearly income by 2 €.

On Monday we bought 130 shares of Apple Hospitality REIT @14,73 USD. This will increase our this year's dividend income approximately by 100 €.

On Friday we bought 1 share of Johnson & Johnson @133,20 USD and 13 shares of PepsiCo @132,06 USD. The Johnson & Johnson buy will increase our dividend income approximately by 2,10 € and PepsiCo by 28,80€

This week we received dividends from three companies.

• From Ocean Yield ASA we received 52,18 € after taxes and fees deducted
• From LTC Properties we received 10,25 € after taxes and fees deducted
• From Transalta Renewables we received 19,97 CAD after taxes. This is around 13,51 €. 

So total amount of dividends from last week was 75,94 €.

These raised our February dividends to 581,11 € which is better than needed for reaching the goal we set. Total amount of passive income is now 944,92€, which is 60,92 € more than target pace.

3rd week of February

3rd week was a quiet week. We received dividends from one company, sold one position and increased another.

On 20th of February we increased our position at Dominion Energy by 7 shares @87,99. This will increase our this year net dividend income approximately by 20 €.  We sold our position of Five Star Senior Living Inc @5,19. This does not have any effect on our dividend income since company has stated that it will not pay dividends in foreseen future. Price for these shares was 4,81 when we received them so we made nice 10% profit by holding these for one month. We had 14 shares. We do not count these profits to our passive income.

On the same day we received  23,55 € dividends from Diversified Healthcare Trust after taxes and fees deducted.

Now we have accumulated  868,98 passive income, and we are nearly on track. By the end of the month we should have collected 884€ to meet our target. We are still expecting to receive around 70 € next week so we will get on track.

2nd week of February

We had a good week as usual in middle of the month.Finally Saratoga and Vodafone dividends arrived.

On Wednesday we received 2 shares of Saratoga Investment Corp as a DRIP @25,48 USD, and we paid 2,18 € taxes. The excess cash dividend went to taxes. Dividend amounted to 43,89 € after taxes and fees deducted.

On Thursday we received 23 shares of Vodafone @1,5636 £. We also received 0,41€ cash dividends from Vodafone. Our total dividend income from Vodafone was approximately 43,55 after fees deducted.

This week we received cash dividends from following companies:

• 13th Feb Whitestone REIT 51,84 €
• 14th Feb Abbvie Inc. 9,22 €
• 14th Feb Omega Healthcare Investors Inc 52,38 €
• 14th Feb Main Street Capital Corp. 21,15 €
• 14th Feb Realty Income Corp. 18,17 €
• 14th Feb Exchange Income Corp. 16,15 CAD which is 11,23 €
• 14th Feb Inter Pipeline Ltd. 36,46 CAD which is 25,35 €

Our this week's dividend income was 276,78 €.

In February we have now accumulated 481,62 € passive income, which is more than needed to meet this year's target, and more than we accumulated in February last year. So we reduced the gap which January left us. Now we are 38,57 € behind the pace needed to meet our target. By the end of the month we will be ahead.

 

First week of February

New month started and we had our investment loan payment day. We paid 213 € principal and 6,07 € interests and fees. As we renegotiated our investment loan terms in beginning of January we actually have already paid this month interests.

On Monday we received  99,55 € dividends from AT&T after taxes and fees deducted and 47,10 € dividends from Verizon.

We increased our position at AT&T by 5 shares @37,08 USD, LTC Properties by 20 shares @46,76 USD  and Johnson & Johnson by 5 shares @149,86 USD.  These will increase our net dividend income estimately by 56,49 € for 2020.

On Wednesday we received 1,17 CAD interest income, which is approximately 0,80 €. Also we received 57,39 € dividends from MSC Industrial Direct after taxes and fees deducted.

Again our bank failed to transfer dividends to us, this time from Saratoga Investment Corp and Vodafone. We are expecting the dividends to arrive asap or we have to complain again. We are a bit tired of constant failures of the bank.

In February we have accumulated 204,84 € passive income, and we need to get 520,19 € to stay in pace to reach our target. Most likely we will not accumulate quite that much, but we will narrow the gap a bit caused by low income in January.

End of the January

Dividend-wise the week was pretty quiet. We received dividends only on Friday. From LTC Properties we received 7,30 € after taxes and fees deducted and from Transalta Renewables Inc we received 19,97 CAD after taxes deducted. This is approximately 13,67 €.

On Wednesday we increased our position at ExxonMobil Corp by 10 shares @64,55. Now our position is 20 shares. This purchase will increase our dividends by another 26,33 €.

Some of our holdings announced dividend increase during this week.

Telia announced 3,8% increase to yearly dividend. New dividend is 2,45 Swedish kronor. This will increase our yearly dividend income approximately by 4,39 €.

Blackrock Inc annouced 10% increase to quarterly dividend to 3,63 USD. This will increase our yearly dividend income approximately by 14,25 €.

Kone announced 0,05 € increase to yearly dividend. This will increase our yearly dividend income by 2,61€.

We are pretty pleased of our January's outcome, although we are not in pace that is needed for our target. We expected this month to be significantly worse, but extra dividend from Diversied Healthcare Reit made month better. January dividends increased by 191,68% compared to last year. We still need to work to increase January, July and October dividends significantly in the future. Our January passive income was 363,81 €. As we need to get 442 €/month to reach our target, we are now 78,19 € behind.

Fourth week of January

Usual week. No news, dividends from two companies and one buy.

On Wednesday we received 37,40 CAD  dividends from Trancontinental Inc after taxes deducted  which is approximately 25,84 €. On Friday we received 27,50 AUD dividends from Clime Capital Ltd which is approximately 17,06 €. Thanks to franking credits, no taxes were deducted.

We increased our portfolio by buying 10 shares of Exxon Mobil @66,15 USD. This will contribute estimated 26,33 € (net) to our yearly target.

Now we have accumulated 342,84 € passive income this January. So far January dividends have increased by 160,4 % compared to last year. We expect January to be our worst month in 2020.

3rd week of January

Seems like problems in our bank are over. We have received all missing dividends and all dividends paid this week have arrived on time. Good. As usual we had good mid-month.

On 13th of January we received 2 shares of Apollo Investment Corp from DRIP worth of 31,27 € and 2,77 € cash dividends after taxes and fees deducted. We also received 11,77 € dividends from Iron Mountain after taxes and fees deducted. Both of these dividends were late.

14th of January Realty Income announced dividend increase. This will contribute approximately 4,16 €  to our yearly target.

On 15th of January we received 16,15 CAD dividends from Exchange Income Corp, which is approximately 11,08 €. From Inter Pipeline Ltd we received 36,46 CAD dividends after taxes. This is approximately 25,01 €. From Realty Income we received 17,32 € after taxes and fees deducted.  From Leggett & Platt we received  30,46 € after taxes and fees deducted. From Cardinal Health we received 36,63 € after taxes and fees deducted. The last dividends for the week were received from Whitestone REIT. We received 50,64 € after taxes and fees deducted.

Total dividend income for the week was 237,55 € and in January we have accumulated 299,94 €, which is more than we accumulated last year's January. Although we have increased our January dividend income substantially, we would not meet our target if rest of the months were as weak as January. Luckily January is our weakest month. We need average 442 €/month to reach target. We will end up to be around 80 € short on January. We are sure that we will catch up later.

 

 

Second week of 2020

Some of the dividends should have arrived last week, and some at the beginning of this week, but we are still waiting them to arrive. We did make inquery to our bank where our dividends are and they responded that they have some problems with dividends coming from US companies and they are trying to solve issue as soon as possible. So no real dividends received on this week.

Due these errors we renegotiated our loans to get loan interests a bit lower and we succeeded. Our investment loan interest is now halved, and we got our mortgage interest a bit lower too. But even though our bank has some problems with dividend payments, we did manage to get some passive income.

We received 0,28 € interests to one of our accounts from last year on 8th of January. Also Diversified Healthcare Trust paid special dividends. We received 14 shares of Five Star Senior Living Inc as a special dividend. We have not yet received calculation of exact amounts from the bank, but we estimated this was worth of 61,74 € at the moment of receiving the shares. Since Five Star Senior Living Inc does not pay dividends, we most likely will sell these later.

Also Canadian Utilities raised quartely dividend from 0,4227 to 0,4354. This will increase our predicted dividends for 2020 approximately by 3,15 €.

Already our January 2020 dividends have surpassed year 2018 January dividends and half of what we received last year even we haven't got all paid dividends to our accounts. Our estimate is that we will not meet needed 442 € dividends in January. Not even close. So we need to invest more in the near future to reach our target.

New year, old tricks

This week had last dividends from last year and first passive income for this year.

Last day of the year 2019 we received 7,17 € dividends from LTC Properties after taxes and fees deducted. From Methanex Corp we received 19,89 USD dividends after taxes deducted. This is approximately 17,75 €. Also Main Street Capital dividends arrived on 31st of December, few days late. From Main Street Capital we received 23,95 € after taxes and fees deducted. Last dividend payment for the year was from Transalta Renewables Inc. We received 19,97 CAD after taxes deducted. This is approximately 13,65 €.

We already made separate post of the last year's summary. We reached our goal with flying colours. New target for the year 2020 was set to 5300 €.  So we increased our target by 36 %, and the target is actually 11.6% higher than what we received last year.

This year's start was weak. We did not receive any dividends, even we should have. Instead we only received (unexpected) interests from our accounts. From year 2019 we received 0.37 € interests. This is pretty good considering the general interest level and the fact that we do not like to keep money sitting on the accounts.

As said we received Main Street Capital dividends few days late. We also should had received dividends from Iron Mountain but dividends has not yet landed to our accounts. These random delays at dividend payments have increased in our main bank (which is also our main broker). The explanations of these incidents has been ridiculous. For example, one "reason" was that "The dividend payment day was Saturday". No it wasn't, the dividend payment day was 10th of October 2019, which was Thursday.  After pointing that out to bank, they never returned to us. At the moment we have 4 unresolved service requests pending at our bank. No suprise that we have started to look out new bank. Unfortunately there are not many good options out there. We would like to have most of our financing activities in one bank with reasonable cost level.

And back to business. On 2nd of January we increased our position at Duke Energy. We bought 28 shares @90,29 USD. This will increase our estimated net dividends this year by 80 €. We also bought 25 shares of Iron Mountain @30,26 USD. This will increase our estimated net dividends by 35 €.

Year 2019 is over

We set a target for last year to increase our passive income. First we followed the gross earnings, but pretty soon we moved to follow the earnings which land to our accounts just for the sake of simplicity. Thus our target for the year 2019 was 3892,78 €.

And now our results are ready. During the year 2019 we received passive income total of 4 751,55 €. So we exceeded our target by 22 %. And for year 2020, we have set a new target, which is quite ambitious in our opinion. For this year target is 5 300 € passive income to land our accounts.

And how is our investment portfolio doing?

Investment portfolio

Asset class	1st Jan	1st Jul	1st Oct	31st Dec
Cash	N/A	N/A	N/A	1 799,70 €
Investment funds	11 241,88 €	12 424,39 €	10 725,61 €	10 478,22 €
Coop memberships	1 500 €	1 500 €	1 500 €	1 500 €
Shares	75 521,06 €	80 078,12 €	119 731,61 €	124 914,13 €
Gross investment portfolio	88 262,94 €	94 002,51 €	131 957,22 €	138 692,05 €
Investment loan	9 361 €	8 296 €	7 657 €	7 018 €
Net investment portfolio	78 901,94 €	85 706,51 €	124 300,22 €	131 674,05 €

We started to include cash to our portfolio. The cash is the cash at investment accounts, not our savings- or other bank accounts.

Our portfolio has grown total of 66.88%.

In year 2019 we received more dividends than year 2018 on 11 months. Only March was weaker than earlier year's March. We received more than 400 € dividends on 6 months, on average of 395,75 €/month.  To reach our target this year, we should receive on average 442 € monthly dividends.

We do have record of passive income from 11 years now and during that time we have accumulated total of 17 568,14 € of passive income. We have made some profits on selling shares, but we do not include them to our income what we follow. Those profits are included in portfolio if they have been reinvested. Unfortunately we have to had to use some of freed capital to cover our other expenses in the past.