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 March, 2021. This report includes income from dividends, interest, mutual funds, and rental properties.
Overview
Without further ado, here’s what our investment income looked like for the month:
Dividend & Interest Income
Total dividend income for the month was $13,808.47. This is virtually unchanged from March 2020 (down .11%). I was somewhat surprised by this, but when I dug into the numbers I saw that the dividends from most companies have increased, but a dividend reduction from BP cancelled out the rest of the increases.
Our long-term goal is to have our dividend income increase by 10% per year, and unfortunately we came up short in 2020. My goal for 2021 is to receive $88,000 in dividend income (vs. $80,396.95 in 2020). Through the first 3 months of 2021 we are on track to receive just $70,600 in dividend income 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.
All properties are rented and we were finally back in the black for our rental income ($667.64 for the month). We had a new tenant in one of the properties last month, and because of the timing of the payments we didn’t receive a rent payment for that property this month.
Over the last few years our rental profits have been erratic. This is unsurprising, given the number of rentals we have. We have a few improvements scheduled for 2 of the properties, so we’ll likely see some more negative months later this year.
Total investment income this month
Dividend + rental income = $13,808.47
Total monthly income was down 5.75% from March, 2020, primarily due to mediocre rental income.
Year to date our total income is 23% lower than through the same point in time in 2020. Our dividend income is down just 9% from 2020, but our rental income is a brutal 60% lower than Q1 of 2020. Definitely a rough start to the month.
Changes
The options that I have purchased last month have expired worthless. The Tesla options were up pretty big at one point, but Tesla rebounded sharply and stayed above my strike price.
The S&P puts are good for another 2 months, and I continue to think they are reasonable protection against what seems to be an incredibly overvalued market.
Recap
Last year and this year have been pretty disappointing for our passive income. It looks like our passive income peaked in 2019 at just under $100k and was down to $90k last year. So far we are on pace for roughly $82k in passive income in 2021.
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?