Dividend Income Report – May 2022

Dividend income is great, but the truth is, we live in a very unpredictable world. It’s depressing watching the news these days. There is so much sadness going on. Even on a personal level, life has a way of throwing us curveballs. It has thrown me a HUGE curveball recently, as you will see later on in this post. But, despite the volatility of the stock market, the armed conflict between Russia and Ukraine, the mass shootings and the unfortunate loss of innocent life, the looming recession on the horizon, and even my own personal health scare, there are reasons to be hopeful.

We still live in a time where the opportunities to reach financial independence are greater than ever before. Moreover, despite the armed conflict and challenges mentioned above, we still live in relatively peaceful times. We can even count on the predictability of dividend income that stems for a diversified portfolio. So, despite all the craziness that is going on in the world right now, let’s take a look at how much dividend income I earned during May 2022.

Dividend Income

In May, I earned $20.15 in dividends broken down as follows:

NO.	STOCK	NAME	DIVIDENDS
1	AAPL	Apple	$0.72
2	ABBV	Abbvie	$5.07
3	HRL	Hormel Foods	$2.06
4	O	Realty Income	$1.75
5	PG	Proctor & Gamble	$2.28
6	SBUX	Starbucks	$2.56
7	T	AT&T	$5.71
			$20.15

$20.15 is a respectable amount for the value of my portfolio. But, I fully recognize that this is a small amount of money. Quit frankly, I spend at least $20 on a daily basis. Just today alone, while writing this post, I’ve spent nearly that much at Starbucks. I would like my portfolio to do better. Granted, I have a lot of competing interests right now. I am trying to get out of credit card debt while building wealth. So, its very hard to just focus on rebuilding my portfolio. Still, I also recognize that this is a marathon and not a race. Over the course of the next few months, I will first try to get out of credit card debt and then ramp up the contributions to my dividend portfolio.

Annual Income

Here is a graphical representation of the dividends earned in May in relation to the dividends earned in previous years:

Here is the raw data:

MONTH	2017	2018	2019	2020	2021	2022	Rate
January	$0.00	$14.93	$37.54	$2.22	$18.18	$15.62	-14.08%
February	$0.00	$77.66	$141.16	$7.49	$22.94	$22.58	-1.57%
March	$0.00	$72.93	$136.45	$78.68	$63.35	$35.02	-44.72%
April	$0.41	$31.47	$55.39	$0.33	$24.85	$17.59	-29.22%
May	$2.85	$79.33	$142.69	$2.23	$33.69	$20.15	-40.19%
June	$16.89	$98.51	$160.47	$10.29	$66.08
July	$5.99	$42.32	$59.68	$6.67	$31.22
August	$21.95	$108.44	$147.73	$9.72	$45.79
September	$28.72	$111.15	$151.66	$30.19	$78.88
October	$23.21	$48.09	$3.00	$11.46	$36.62
November	$62.11	$124.92	$7.18	$15.84	$19.33
December	$76.51	$140.24	$116.51	$47.57	$34.11

I made nearly 40% LESS in dividends this May than I did in May of last year. It could be worse. Clearly my dividend portfolio did not move in the direction I would have hoped. But, with consistency and dedication, I fully expect May 2023 to exceed the income generated in May 2022.

Forward Annual Dividends

At the time of this writing, the forward annual dividends is $338.86!  A month ago, my forward annual dividends was $330.66 This represents a healthy 2.48% growth from the previous month. As mentioned, right now, I am focused on getting out of credit card debt. Once that happens, I will concentrate on rebuilding my dividend portfolio. Wish me luck.

What Expenses Would Dividends Cover?

Here, I visualize what expenses my annual dividend income could pay for. This is one of my favorite parts of pursuing dividend growth investing.

$338.86 per year is $28.24 dividends per month, on average. At present, I earn enough in dividends to cover Amazon Prime.  I cancelled my Acorns and Hulu Plus subscriptions. I hadn’t used those in months. The next bill I am targeting is Netflix. The total amount needed until I can pay the next bill is $1.88 in dividends.  I hope to cover this bill during the first half of 2022.

The following is a list of expenses I am targeting:

Credit Card Report Balance

This is a new section. In my previous April payment post, I reported that my credit card balance was $7,589.71.

I’ve made some payments AND purchases on the card since then. At the time of this writing, my new credit card balance is $10,464.88. That’s a MASSIVE INCREASE of $2,875.17. Before you scream at me through the computer or mobile screen, I am aware that the credit card debt is high. For what its worth, I just got back from a much needed vacation, and a lot of those expenses were expected and placed on the credit card. Additionally, in the next few days (hopefully as early as this week, but if not, early next week), I plan on making a substantial payment on my credit card debt. Finally, relating to this issue, I am still on track to payoff my credit card debt by the end of October.

Stay tuned for my next post on this issue to see what the balance will be for May.

I can’t wait to get rid of this debt. All I want to do is focused on my investments, but I can’t because of the credit card debt I am in. The interest rate is high, currently at about 16%, and so the sooner I can get rid of this debt the better!

Cancer Update

This is also a new section that I will sometimes include in my monthly dividend income reports. I will only provide an update when there are SIGNIFICANT developments to report. As mentioned in my last post, entitled, My Life Has Drastically Changed, I reported that I was recently diagnosed with Stage 3 Cancer. Here is an update since I made that last post.

Although I am still not out of the woods, I did receive some encouraging news from the doctor. The CAT scan revealed that the cancer has NOT spread to other parts of the body. However, I still need to do a PET scan to confirm that this is the case… but so far so good. I will take any bit of good news I can get.

As of right now, the treatment options will be radiation, chemotherapy and surgery. The point is that they think it is eventually curable, rather than simply terminal. Of course, that will depend on the PET scan, but again, so far so good.

So, there are definite reasons to be hopeful. As you can imagine, this devastating news has changed my whole perspective on life. I am still focused on my finances, but I am also focused on figuring out how to be happy and how to enjoy every day of my life. No one knows when it will be their time to go. All we can do is live life to the fullest day by day.

Thank you for the support that I have already received. It is very much appreciated. I am trying to stay strong, and news such as the one I received from the doctor recently is encouraging.

The next few months are going to be very difficult! But, I am determined to see it through.

Conclusion

In my last post, Hristo mentioned a quote that I hadn’t heard before. It says, “If you want to make God laugh, tell him about your plans.” I thought that was apt. I am more familiar with a similar quote that says, “life is what happens when you make plans.” Well, life just happened to me recently. It’s a huge road block, but it’s not the end of the road for me or this blog. It is a sudden wake up call for me to focus on the best parts of life, which are things more than money. Too often I focus on my financial health and not enough on my physical or mental well being. Well, that has practically changed over night.

While I continue to figure out what I want out of life, rest assured that I will continue to invest and blog about my dividend portfolio. As mentioned in my previous post, doing so is a bit therapeutic to me. I hope you join me and stick around for the journey.

How was May for you? I sure hope you had a better month than I did.

What are your thoughts on this post? Let me know by commenting below.