It’s dividend income update time. One of my favorite times of the month as I get to review my previous month of passive income received from my dividend income portfolios.

On a side note, July was the first time ever I did not reinvest my dividends. This isn’t by choice, rather my broker, Capital One Financial, has stopped reinvesting all dividends until later this year when they complete their transition to E-Trade which bought them out recently. I have to admit, it kind of sucks not being able to automatically reinvest dividends for the next few months but there are worse things in life than that. In the meantime, I’ll be building up cash positions in my accounts which I haven’t done in about ten years.

At least I could find comfort in one thing, my dividends are still rolling in. As we all know, the market may move up and down irrationally and seemingly on a whim while our dividends remain much more stable, reliable and predictable. Sure, dividends may not increase every year and a cut or elimination is even possible but the odds are greatly reduced when you diversify among different companies and sectors and focus on dividend quality (free cash flow, EPS, and payout ratios). Forget chasing the high yield unicorns and focus on the boring lower yielding but sustainable dividends. In the long run, you’ll be better off. With that being said, let’s take a look at my July 2018 dividend totals.

Dividend income from my taxable account totaled $297.93 up from $253.27 an increase of 17.6% from July of last year.

Dividend income from my ROTH account totaled $137.10 up from $129.56 an increase of 5.8% from this time last year.

Dividend income from my IRA account totaled $63.13 up from $1.93, a year over year increase of 3,171.0%.

Grand total for the month of July: $498.16 an increase of 29.5% from July 2017.

Brokerage Account

Year to date dividends: $3,140.95

(Click on image to enlarge)

ROTH Account

Year to date dividends: $1,226.57

IRA Account

Year to date dividends: $514.61

Now those are some figures to get excited about. I realize that not every month will produce these great results as payout schedules can shift throwing year over year increases out of whack. As long as I’m on track to surpass my 2017 results I know I’m headed in the right direction and with half of the year gone by so far, 2018 is looking good.