I always love reading blogs about other investors’ investment income. Watching other people’s investment income rise is my second favorite thing (the only thing better is watching MY investment income rise!)
Here is our investment income for August, 2019. This report includes income from dividends, interest, mutual funds, and rental properties.
Overview
The summer wasn’t a particularly great time of year when I was growing up. I lived in the Arizona desert, so the high temperature during the day would exceed 100 degrees for weeks on end. We could pretty much only play outside before about 10 am and after around 4 pm. And yet, despite the heat and scorching sun, I was STILL sad every year when the summer finally came to an end, because that meant it was time to go back to school.
Thankfully, my kids don’t share these feelings. They were legitimately FIRED UP to go back to school. My daughter started kindergarten, so she felt she was finally a big girl. And our son moved up to the class that our daughter was in last year, so he already knows the teachers and most of his fellow classmates.
And of course for me and my wife, the start of the school year means getting back into our “regular” schedule. This means waking up a bit earlier, making the kids’ lunches , and getting out of the house in time to get the kids to school on time.
It’s been great.
Without further ado, here’s what our investment income looked like for August, 2019:
Dividend & Interest Income
Total dividend income for the month was $1,650.98. This is down 38.6% from last August’s total of $2,689.16. That’s a big drop, and due entirely to the loss of income from OHI (which I sold out of earlier this year).
Our cumulative dividends through the first half of the year are up 11% from last year.
Obviously I wish that our dividend income was a bit higher – we’ve definitely been hurt by the loss of ~$1,700/quarter from OHI. Ultimately, I didn’t like the risk profile of the company and I decided it made more sense to redeploy that money into other companies that I felt had stronger long term prospects.
That said, if we are able to grow our dividend income at 11% annually for the foreseeable future then life is going to be pretty good.
Rental income
This category includes net income from the 6 rental properties that my wife and I own, plus 50% of the income from 4 rental properties that we own with my mom. This number does not include appreciation of the properties or the decrease in the mortgage balance (those numbers show up in the net worth report).
However, this income is net of all mortgage, tax, and insurance payments. That is, this is a true cash flow report for our rental properties.
August was a solid month for our rental income and we made $2,093.92 in profit from the rental properties. One of the properties needed some repairs, and we’re doing some improvements on another (to reward a long-term tenant).
Our rental income is up 333% compared to the same period last year. The properties are performing better than last year and we have more of them.
I’m feeling very good about our decision to deploy some of our cash into rental properties. I think that if/when the next downturn occurs we’re going to love taking our higher rental income and using it to purchase stocks that are on sale.
Total investment income this month
Total (dividend + rental) income = $3,744.90
It is just fantastic to see our passive income continue its upwards march.
In terms of total cumulative income through August, we are up 41% from this point last year. Looking at our trailing 12-month total income, you can see that our passive income has been doing exactly what we want it to do – it’s been trending up and to the right.
My goal for the year is to generate $85,000 in passive income, and we are currently on pace to exceed that number. In fact, the actual passive income received over the last 12 months was $84,845.02, which is JUST shy of our goal.
Changes
No changes this month. We are still holding a bunch of cash, waiting to deploy it when we can find interesting opportunities.
Recap
August was a solid month. We are on pace to easily hit our passive income goal of $85,000 for the year, and I think we have a very good chance of hitting $100k in 2020.
How did everybody else do with their investment income this month?
Are there any investments out there trading at reasonable valuations that I should be looking at?