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 December, 2019. This report includes income from dividends, interest, mutual funds, and rental properties.

Overview

December was a tale of two months. Much of it was great – I think it’s impossible to not enjoy Christmas with a 5 year old and a 4 year old in the house. We started the “Elf on the Shelf” tradition this year and the kids absolutely loved it. My wife got me a beer advent calendar (a 16 oz can of craft German beer every day), she got herself a wine advent calendar (a small bottle of wine, roughly 1/4 of a standard bottle, from variously countries around the world every day), and she got the kids a Lego advent calendar (a different little winter themed Lego item every day).

But on the flip side, at least one of us has been sick for the last 8 weeks, and usually it’s been 2-3 of us. There was a cold, a flu, and another cold, and each one got passed back and forth through the house. The good news is that as I’m writing this in early January, 2020, we are all (almost) healthy.

Without further ado, here’s what our investment income looked like for the month:

Dividend & Interest Income

Total dividend income for the month was $19,074.24. This is up 37.8% from last December’s total of $13,840.07.

Every time I think about that number I’m shocked. $19k in passive income in one month? It’s unbelievable.

Our cumulative year-to-date dividends are up 18% from last year, which is higher than where we’ve been at year long. We definitely ended the year with a bang.

Overall, an awesome month.

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.

November was an ok month for our rental income. Total rental income for the month was $1,446.55. This is down a bit from last December’s income of $1,731.67.

Our average rental income for the last 12 months is $1,899.25, so we were a bit below our average, due to some repairs on one of the properties.

Our rental income is up 461% compared to the same period last year.

I’m feeling very good about our decision to deploy some of our cash into rental properties earlier this year. I think that when the inevitable stock market correction comes 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 = $19,074.24

It is just fantastic to see our passive income continue its upwards march, but it’s painful to see that we were SO CLOSE to hitting $100,000 in passive income in a year.

In terms of total cumulative income through December, we are up 44% from this point last year, and this percentage increase has been generally increasing as the year has gone on.

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 was to generate $85,000 in passive income, and we crushed that number this year. In addition, we were up a massive 44% over last year. It’s hard to image that we’ll ever see that kind of passive income growth again.

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

December was a great month. Our passive income was fantastic, our rental income was ok, and we absolutely crushed our passive income goal for 2019.

I’m already looking forward to seeing what 2020 has in store for us.

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?