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

Overview

September is a great time of year in Santa Barbara. The weather is great, football is in full swing, and the kids are in school. And, perhaps most importantly, September is the last month of the quarter, which means we usually get some seriously large dividend income.

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

Dividend & Interest Income

Total dividend income for the month was $14,487.13. This is up 27% from last September’s total of $11,412.08. That’s a very solid increase in one year, and is due to a combination of new purchases (Home Depot and 3M are both new investments in the last year) plus organic growth.

Our cumulative dividends through the first half of the year are up 15% from last year.

It’s hard to be anything other than pleased that our YTD dividend income is up 15% over last year. All of my planning has assumed 10% annual growth, so this is a nice surprise. I expect that we’ll end the year at around this level.

Our dividend income was pretty diversified. The largest single source was Exxon, followed by Bank of America, Home Depot, BP, and Wells Fargo. We also received our quarterly payouts from our mutual funds, 401k, and IRAs.

Overall, a great 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.

September was a solid month for our rental income and we made $2,420.44 in profit from the rental properties. Two of the properties needed some repairs this month, so that reduced our income by about $400.

Our rental income is up 325% compared to the same period last year. The properties are performing better than last year and we have more of them.

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 = $16,907.57

It is just fantastic to see our passive income continue its upwards march.

In terms of total cumulative income through September, we are up 41% from this point last year, and this percentage increase has been relatively stable over the last 6 months. It’s reasonable to expect our 2019 total income to be about 40% higher than 2018.

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 is to generate $85,000 in passive income, and we are currently on pace to exceed that number. In fact, the actual passive income received over the last 12 months was $89,698.36. I expect our actual total passive income for 2019 will be just over $90,000.

Changes

We bought some more Altria this month. We picked up 748 shares at an average price of $40.09, for a total of $29,991.36. Altria is looking pretty cheap these days, and it’s exactly the kind of investment that will continue to throw off tons of cash during a recession.

Recap

September was a great month. Our passive income was outstanding, our rental income was solid, we were able to deploy a bit of cash into a reasonable investment, and we appear to be very much on track to hit our yearly passive income goal.

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?