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 September, 2018. This report includes income from dividends, interest, mutual funds, and rental properties.

Dividend & Interest Income

The last month of the quarter always delivers the highest income and this month was no exception. In part, this is because our various index funds pay dividends at the end of each quarter.

Related: Why I’ve switched from index funds to individual stocks

Three of our index funds paid over $1,000 apiece this month. The individual company that paid us the highest dividend was Exxon, at $820. Other major payers included BP, Chevron, Johnson & Johnson, and Target.

Dividends for the month were up 34.8% from September, 2017. Through the end of September our cumulative dividends for the year are up 35% over the same point in 2017.

Rental income

This category includes net income from the 4 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.

Although all the properties are rented, for one of the properties we are paying off a large rehab/repair bill. Our property manager is using the monthly rent to pay that off, and we should hopefully start receiving income again around the end of the year.

A few of the other properties had minor repairs that were needed – this further reduced our rental income for the month.

Total rental income was $642.15. Our average monthly rental income for the last 12 months has been $740.28, so we are below our average. The bottom line – our rental income has been very disappointing this year.

Total investment income this month

Total (dividend + rental) income = $12,054.23.

Our total income for September, 2017 was $10,334.31, which means we were up 16.64% YOY. This is due to a combination of organic growth of our dividends plus additional investments we made over the last year.

Trailing 12-month investment income

Since I only started tracking these numbers in Sept, 2016, I only have actual 12-month totals starting in August, 2017. This graph is doing exactly what I want it to do – it’s trending up and to the right.

Actual investment income over the last 12 months was $70,994.47.  This number should continue to rise each month as dividends and rents are increased and new money is put to work. My hope is to have this number hit $75,000 by the end of 2018. I think that’s going to be tough but achievable.

Our goal is eventually have $120k/year in investment income, so we are 59.2% of the way there!

Recap

September was a great month, despite the ongoing issues with lower rental income. It’s just crazy that we received over $12k of income in one month from our investments!

I continue to hope for a serious market correction soon, as I’d love to put some of our cash to work. I’m also considering paying down some of our mortgage balances. We have enough money to completely pay off our mortgage. This is a very enticing option, but for now I think we can earn high returns by holding cash and scooping up cheap investments when the inevitable market correction occurs.

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?