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 March, 2020. This report includes income from dividends, interest, mutual funds, and rental properties.
Overview
Well, March was certainly an interesting month. We saw the stock market start to decline at the end of February and it was in full scale meltdown by the middle of March.
Thankfully our investment income doesn’t depend on stock market valuations, so our income for March was very solid.
Without further ado, here’s what our investment income looked like for the month:
Dividend & Interest Income
Total dividend income for the month was $13,823.95. This is up 15% from last March. My goal is to grow our investment income by about 15% per year, so we’re right on track.
I also like to track our cumulative dividends for the year to date. So far we are at $19,369.97, which is 14% ahead of where we were in 2019. Again, we are targeting 15% annual growth, so we’re on track.
It’s interesting to look back to our dividends through March of 2017 and realize that our dividend income has almost doubled in just 3 years.
Overall, a good 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.
February was a poor month for our rental income because we are doing some work on one of the properties we own with my mom (the carpet is worn and we are replacing it with tile). Total rental income for the month was $1,534.96. This is up just 3.68% from March of 2019.
Our average rental income for the last 12 months is $2,116.43, which is down slightly from where we were last month.
Despite our poor performance this month we are still significantly ahead of where we were in March in previous years.
Total investment income this month
Total (dividend + rental) income = $15,358.91
Our trailing 12-month investment income hit a new high of $105,115.85. This means we are 87.6% of the way to our short-term goal of $120,000/year.
In the table above you can see that our cumulative total passive income through the end of March is up 28% over the same period in 2019. This is impressive growth, but you can see the YOY growth has been decreasing each month. I expect it to eventually settle around 15%.
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.
Q1 was a good quarter and a solid start to the year. We are on track to hit our goal of $115,000 in passive income.
Changes
I made a few small purchases this month to take advantage of the stock market correction. I picked up some Chevron and Wells Fargo – you can read more about my purchases here.
Recap
The last month of a quarter is always great for our passive income and March was no exception. I’m excited about the stock market drop and I’m hoping to be able to finally put the rest of our cash to use.
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?
Hello again MC,
Hope you and your family are safe and healthy!
Question for you: within the equity portion of your portfolio, what is the percentage/allocation that you have in International?
Jay
Thanks. We are all healthy and safe, just going a little stir crazy. We are fortunate to have a big backyard for the kids to play in, so they are getting plenty of outdoors time. But still, it would be a lot better if they could go to school, visit museums, have play dates, etc.
I just ran an asset allocation report in Quicken and here’s what it said:
Large Cap: 72.15%
Mid Cap: 0.08%
Small Cap: 11.15%
International: 7.58%
Cash: 8.99%
My international allocation is a bit low – I’d like to see it a bit closer to 15%.
That’s so awesome!
We have a big backyard as well. My kids are playing outside everyday. We are doing our own homeschooling. At least, our own version of it.
Thanks for sharing you current allocation.
What would be your ideal allocation within the equity portion of your portfolio?
I’m glad to hear your family is handling the quarantine. I certainly feel fortunate to be in the position we are in.
My ideal allocation is a bit different now than it was a year ago. Given the fact that the Fed is just printing money like it’s going out of style I’m growing a bit more concerned about inflation and a potential crash in the dollar’s value. As a result, I think it’s probably prudent to have a bit more money in non-US investments than I previously did.
I think something like 20% foreign, 50% large cap, 20% medium cap, and 10% small cap would be reasonable for us. I tend to tilt a bit more towards the blue-chip stocks because we are more interested in protecting our assets than in growing them.
MC,
I completely agree with you!
Something that I’ve been pondering is that the Fed is the “central bank of the world” and even though they are printing money, so is everybody else. I guess we have some kind of edge because we have the reserve currency.
Sometimes I think that we are the better looking house in a bad neighborhood.
One of the big questions that I always ask myself is, compare to what?
Are we in a better position compare to other countries?
Your thoughts?