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 May, 2019. This report includes income from dividends, interest, mutual funds, and rental properties.
Overview
May was a very forgettable month. Just how forgettable was it? I was so uninteresting that I just spent about 5 minutes trying to think of what the hell to say about May. Here’s what I came up with – the weather sucked, it was the last full month of school for the kids, and we went on a family camping trip (where it rained for an entire day but the kids still had fun). Yes – it was a really uninteresting month.
So, without further ado, here’s what our investment income looked like for May, 2019:
Dividend & Interest Income
Total dividend income for the month was $1,516.44. This is actually 36.6% LOWER than May, 2018. This is due to the sale of our OHI stock (discussed in last month’s investment income update). To recap – I sold OHI because I felt that the business was deteriorating and as a result, OHI was the riskiest investment in our portfolio.
Selling OHI has increased the quality of our portfolio but resulted in a loss of about $1,700/quarter in dividends. Ouch!
The good news is that our cumulative yearly dividends is still higher than this point in each of the last 2 years.
The loss of our OHI dividends means we’ve dropped a bit off our pace, but we are still 7% ahead of last year.
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.
May was a fantastic month for our rental income. We closed on 2 new rental properties at the end of April, so May was the first month that both properties contributed to the bottom line. We collected rent on both properties but the first mortgage payments are due until June 1, so that skews the numbers quite a bit. I expect that June will be the first “normal” month with the new rental properties.
As you can see, our rental income is significantly ahead of where it was last year, and despite a rough few months at the beginning of 2019 we are even ahead of our 2017 pace. I expect that we’ll finish the year with around $20,000 – $25,000 in total rental income.
Total investment income this month
Total (dividend + rental) income = $5,641.92
Our total passive income is up a very satisfying 34% from this time last year. And of course, that’s absent any additional investments or dividend raises we might enjoy this year. I continue to think it’s reasonable to expect to hit $85,000 in total passive income in 2019.
Changes
No changes to our portfolio this month. A few stocks are starting to get a bit more interesting, but nothing is quite cheap enough to tempt us to buy.
Recap
I’m already looking forward to June. The last month of each quarter is always bit, and I’m expecting well over $10k in investment income for the month.
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,
I am a long time lurker and was wondering if you have any recommendations on which Vanguard dividend funds to invest in other than VTSAX and VTIAX. My intent is to increase passive income in my brokerage account.
It seems that majority of the advice I find online is to invest in VTSAX and VTIAX but I’m looking for other funds to dabble with. Currently I have a 95% stock and 5% bond allocation and will not need to make any withdrawals for the next 30 years. I also live in FL and don’t pay state tax.
Appreciate any advice.
The answer depends on your goals. VTSAX is the Vanguard Total Stock Market Index Fund and VTIAX is the Vanguard Total International Stock Index Fund. VTSAX is an index of all publicly traded US stock. VTIAX is an index of all publicly traded global stocks, excluding the US. Between the two of them you have the entire globe covered.
If you’re looking for other funds to “dabble” with then, by definition, you’re looking to overweight certain sectors or geographic areas. That leads to the question – what areas do you feel will outperform over your 30 year time horizon? Once you have a position on what you think will outperform then you can look for funds that track that position.