(I’m still working my way through our old updates. I’m planning on posting an update a day until I’m caught up.)
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, 2020. This report includes income from dividends, interest, mutual funds, and rental properties.
Overview
August was a terrible month for our passive income. We had expenses on one of our property and one of them was vacant. The good news is that our dividend income continues to perform well.
Without further ado, here’s what our investment income looked like for the month:
Dividend & Interest Income
Total dividend income for the month was $1,590.26. This is down 3.68% from last August. This decline was completely due to a sharp reduction in our interest income.
Our cumulative dividends for the year through the end of August are up 12% over 2019, and we seem to be stabilizing around this number.
My long-term goal is to have our dividend income increase by 10% per year, so we are still ahead of our goal pace, but we are definitely slowing down as the year goes on.
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.
As I mentioned at the top, we had a lot of expenses AND one unit was empty for a few weeks.
Our cumulative rental income is currently 60% LOWER than it was through August, 2019. Whew – that sucks.
As you can see in the table above, our rental income started strong in 2020 but our pace has slowed considerably.
Total investment income this month
Total (dividend + rental) income = $-1,422.33
This was our first negative income month since November, 2018.
It’s looking increasing unlikely that we’ll get our goal of $115,000 in passive income for 2020.
Changes
No changes to our portfolio this month. We are still holding $300,000+ in cash, waiting for an interesting investment at a reasonable valuation.
Recap
This was a tough month – negative rental income and negative total passive income for the month.
Thankfully, next month is the last month of the quarter, and the last month of the quarter typically has great dividend income.
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?
Sorry, I’d missed the beginning of your investment portfolio construction. How did you decide which companies to invest in? Which companies do you invest in your entire pie? Which companies are paying dividends next months?
How much do you have to invest to generate this kind of income?
When I’m looking at companies to invest in, I tend to be relatively conservative. I invest in profitable companies with long track records of increasing profits. These tend to be blue-chip dividend paying companies.
You can see our whole portfolio in under the “About” menu at the top. That will show our holdings and dividend income.