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 July, 2020. This report includes income from dividends, interest, mutual funds, and rental properties.

Overview

July was a pretty bad month for our passive income. We had a bunch of expenses on our rental properties (repairs needed to multiple properties, plus expenses to fix up another property to get it ready to rent). In addition, our dividend income was down from a year ago because Disney suspended their 1H dividend payment.

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

Dividend & Interest Income

Total dividend income for the month was $2,852.86. This is actually down 6.25% from last July. As mentioned above, this is entirely due to Disney. Last July we received a $756.03 dividend from them. This year – nothing.

Our cumulative dividends for the year through the end of July are up 12%.

My long-term goal is to have our dividend income increase by 10% per year, so we are still ahead of our goal pace, but we are definitely slowing down as the year goes on.

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.

July was another poor month for our rental income. Repairs and upgrades ate into our returns, and our troubles were compounded by a vacancy. The good news is that the upgraded property has been rented out and the upgrades appear to have paid off. We are renting it for $1795 vs. $1500 previously. According to my calculations, the upgrades will have paid for themselves in just under 11 months.

Due to the various repairs and vacancy our rental income is way behind where it was at this time last year. Our cumulative rental income is currently 31% LOWER than it was through July, 2019.

As you can see in the table above, our rental income started strong in 2020 but our pace has slowed considerably.

Total investment income this month

Total (dividend + rental) income = $2,957.11

Our trailing 12-month income is down to $99,719.40. Seeing it drop below the $100k mark was definitely a psychological blow.

In the table above you can see that our cumulative total passive income through the end of July was up just 1% over the same period in 2019. It’s looking increasing unlikely that we’ll get our goal of $115,000 in passive income for 2020.

Changes

No changes to our portfolio this month. We are still holding $300,000+ in cash, waiting for an interesting investment at a reasonable valuation.

I’m considering purchasing some downside protection via put options.

Recap

This was a pretty disappointing month for our passive income. On one hand, it’s awesome to make $2,800 in what feels like “free” money. On the other hand, we are barely above where we were at this time last year, and if more companies cut or eliminate their dividends due to the COVID-19 crisis it’s entirely possible that our 2020 passive income will end up lower than 2019.

That would suck.

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?