The first month of 2022 has now been and gone, and I've received my first batch of dividend income for the year. As I mentioned in my portfolio reveal post, my target for this year is to receive £1000 in dividend income - and having done the sums, it looks like I'm on track to achieve that goal.
I had 5 lots of dividend income come in in January, 2 from individual stocks and 3 from investment trusts:
- Castings: £9.15
- Ferrexpo: £16.18
- European Assets Trust: £11.00
- Middlefield Canadian Trust: £12.75
- Schroder European Real Estate: £47.15
Making a total of £96.23 for January
I'm really happy with this, as my secondary target is to achieve £1200 in dividend income, or an average of £100 per month, so this is on the right track. Some months will pay out more than others as different holdings pay out at different times, and January is one of my lower payout months. That being said, this total was helped by Schroder European Real Estate paying out both a normal dividend and a special dividend, and I can't always rely on those.
One thing to note is that since my portfolio reveal post, I have actually sold Ferrexpo, which at the time was my largest holding. I placed a stop loss on this stock for 30% below what I had paid (a stop loss is useful as if the holding hits or falls below where you place the stop loss, it will automatically be sold) and it sold the very next day. This meant that I now had around £1200 in cash in my ISA that I could put into other holdings. With this I doubled my holdings in both European Assets Trust, and JP Morgan Russian Securities.
Speaking of JP Morgan Russian Securities, there was also an announcement that they were changing their dividend policy from a semi-annual dividend to a quarterly dividend - so instead of receiving around £70 in dividend income per year (£50 interim and £20 final), I would now get around £120 in income per year (£30 per quarterly dividend). The new payout months are likely to be March, June, September and January (instead of March and October); and this is great news for me as these months I currently have fewer payouts for, so that will be a nice boost. They're also going to be paying both the final dividend for 2021 and the first quarterly dividend for 2022 in March, so similar to Schroder European Real Estate in January.
As I write this I've currently had 2 payouts for February so far, with another 3 to come. Normally I would have had a payout for Hipgnosis Songs as well but there wasn't a dividend declaration at the end of January like usual so I'll have to keep an eye on that trust I think. I've planned out which holdings I'm going to be topping up each month for the rest of the year, and I check the numbers once a week so I have a rough guide of how much I will have in each holding by the end of the year. This is all based on me paying £500 of my salary into my ISA each payday, and even with the rising cost of living, I still feel that this is doable, especially as my salary will have to increase to be in line with the new National Minimum Wage coming in in April.
February round-up should be posted by around this point in March - please let me know if you have had any dividend income come in for January, as I do like seeing how others have fared and what holdings they have. Happy investing!