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, 2022. This report includes income from dividends, interest, mutual funds, and rental properties.

Overview

Here’s what our investment income looked like for the month:

Dividend & Interest Income

Total dividend income for the month was $2,832.31. This is up 63% from last May and was driven by primarily by our new investment in British Tobacco. We also had a sizable dividend increase from Lowe’s (from $479.32 to $641.00, for a 34% increase).

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.

Total rental income was $2,146.14 for the month. This was up 366% from last May. We had a property tax bill due on one of the properties, but all the units are rented and we had minimal repair/maintenance costs.

Total investment income this month

Dividend + rental income = $4,978.45

Our total monthly passive income was up 126% from last May. Our trailing 12-month passive income was $112,253, which is almost 94% of the way to our short-term goal of hitting $120k/year. I say short-term because I think the reality is that we’ll need something like $200,000/year in passive income to be able to truly retire.

Changes

No changes this month. I’m still waiting for my large commission check to arrive (it should be in by June 15) and I plan to deploy virtually all of it into the market. I’m continuing to monitor the market and keep a short list of stocks that I’m interested in buying once we have the cash available.

Recap

This was a solid month. Dividend income was good and rental income was good. Total passive income for the first 5 months of the year was $34,813.76, which is our highest ever. I still think it’s very possible for us to hit $120,000 in passive income in 2022.

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?