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

Overview

June was a fantastic month for The Money Commando household. In the middle of the month we flew out to Florida to visit my Dad and step-mom. They have a condo across the street from the beach in a sleepy little town on the East coast of Florida. Getting there was a bit rough (we had to get up at 5, then get the kids up at 6 to get down to LA to catch our flight), but once we were there we had a great time.

We played at the beach, swam in the pool, went to a minor league baseball game, went on a boat tour down a river, went on a chocolate factory tour, and generally just had a very relaxing time.

And when we got back from Florida the weather in Santa Barbara was awesome – 75 degrees and sunny every day.

On top of all of that, June was the last month of a quarter, and that always means a blowout month for our passive income. How big of a blowout was it? Well, it was our best month ever for passive income!

So, without further ado, here’s what our investment income looked like for June, 2019:

Dividend & Interest Income

Total dividend income for the month was $14,054.09. This is up 18.5% from last June. That’s very solid growth, and is due to a combination of organic dividend raises plus new investments.

Our cumulative dividends through the first half of the year are up 12% from last year.

I’d be very happy if we ended up the year at 12% growth, as that would project to dividend income of $72,705 for the year.

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.

June was a solid month for our rental income. The two new properties (purchased last month) are now in a “steady state” and I think our performance this month is probably a reasonable projection for what an average month should look like going forward.

Our rental income is up 363% over last year. That’s due to two things. First, our rental income was terrible last year. One of the properties was not only vacant for many months, but also required quite a bit of repair and improvements to make it rentable. Second, the addition of two new properties and the paying of one of our mortgages has resulted in additional cash flow going forward.

The combination of poor performance last year combined with improved cash flow this year makes the comparison a bit ridiculous.

Total investment income this month

Total (dividend + rental) income = $17,811.97

Wow! This was by far our best month ever. Our previous best month was December, 2018, with a total passive income of $15,571.74, which means this month was 14% higher than our previous best. That’s a big improvement in just 6 months.

In terms of total cumulative income through June, we are up 40% from this point last year. Look 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 hit $94,238.72! Whether or not this happens is almost totally dependent on how our rentals perform for the rest of the year.

Changes

I made a bunch of stock investments this month. I found a number of companies that were reasonable values and that are a bit more defensive (I’m positioning us for a slowdown/recession). I mostly added to existing investments, but I did add 3M as a new investment (they were really punished after a recent earning miss and I think they are now too cheap). Here’s what I bought:

  • Home Depot (HD) – $25,083.30
  • Wells Fargo (WFC) – $25,004.78
  • Lowe’s (LOW) – $24,924.49
  • 3M (MMM) – $49,064.97
  • Disney (DIS) – $49,898.80
  • Bank of America (BAC) – $25,001.83
  • Coke (KO) – $25,533.65

Total: $224,511.82

This used about 40% of our cash. We still have ~$350k of cash that I’m hoping to allocate when the right opportunity presents itself.

Most of these new investments haven’t yet paid their dividends, so I we’ll start seeing the results of these investments in the second half of the year.

Recap

June was a fantastic month. We are on pace to crush our passive income goals for the year, and we’ll be just a stone’s throw away from $100k of passive income in a year (we’ll be almost certain to hit that goal next year).

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?