It has been a couple of months since our last dividend portfolio update and we continue to make slow and steady progress. Slow is probably the operative word here since we are now retired and need to adhere to our budget. Just to reiterate we only invest money earned from side hustles, like this blog, as any income earned is not included in our budget and doesn’t impact our standard of living.

As someone that has always been willing and able to put cash to work at a moments notice this can sometimes get frustrating, especially when you see a good stock at a low price. There have been a few times where I have had to walk away some my trading platform on days when I would normally be buying. But we have a plan and we need to stick to it in order to be successful. On the bright side this has given us some incentive to find new side hustles to keep our portfolio growing.

One side hustle we recently started doing in our spare time is taking surveys. It’s easy to do and has actually turned out well for us on a couple of fronts. First, with both of us doing surveys we have been able to acquire gift cards to places like Walmart and Amazon which has already saved us quite a bit of money on food and household supplies. Second, and more relevant to this post, is that we also have the ability to cash out money earned. This has given us another small stream of income to use for buying dividend paying stocks. It’s not a ton of money but between lowering our out of pocket expenses and being able to consistently buy shares of dividend paying stocks it’s a win win so far! Over time these shares will keep adding up and compounding to help the continued growth of our dividend income stream.

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Here is where our dividend portfolio currently stands:

Symbol	# Of Shares
ABBV	13.211
ABR	2.038
BKH	2.016
DOW	7.079
FRT	4.034
GIS	5.067
IBM	3.036
IRM	11.215
JNJ	6.031
K	2.018
KHC	5.022
KMB	2.017
KO	2.032
MMM	4.024
MO	8.187
MPW	7.124
O	3.048
QYLD	16.358
SO	2.03
SPTN	6.117
T	13.316
WEBR	50
XOM	5

We have continued with our strategy of only adding to existing positions so we can build them up. However, there are a couple of stocks out there that I have been watching so this might change soon. I would like to add one or two more monthly payers if or when the price is right.

Since our last update we have added shares to the following positions: ABBV (1), DOW (2), IRM (1), JNJ (1), KHC (1), MPW (1), QYLD (3) and T (3),

We have also reinvested dividends via DRIP for ABBV, FRT, GIS, IRM, KMB, KO, MO, MPW, O, QYLD, SPTN and T.

And on top of all of this the following companies have announced dividend increases which is like getting a pay raise for doing absolutely nothing. ABBV (+8.5%), ABR (+2.9%), BKH (+5.3%) and XOM (+1.1%) Let that snowball roll!

As you know we have been anticipating an announcement from Weber (WEBR) regarding their aforementioned dividend distribution plan and they finally followed through by announcing a quarterly dividend of $0.04 per share. With this Weber will add an additional $8.00 to our annual dividends starting in December. It’s not a huge amount but it’s what was expected and hopefully it’s just the beginning of a long and prosperous string of dividend announcements.

With purchases, reinvested dividends (DRIP) and the Weber announcement our dividend portfolio now sits at approximately $9,150 and has a yield to cost of 4.52%. This is about a $900 and .35% increase from our last update. Our dividend portfolio will now provide annual forward dividends of about $408 or about $35 per month which is an increase of $58 and $5 per month from our last update. This is pretty good progress from our last update considering the budget constraints and we are slowly moving in the right direction which is all that matters.

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Thank you as always for reading our blog, we really appreciate you taking time to follow us. Please leave a comment below if you have any questions, feedback or if you have a favorite dividend stock and/or EFT’s you would like to share.

Joe