Yes, for me dividend investing is more and more fun. I am now into it for three years and managed again to double my dividend income from 706.26 EUR in 2016 to 1446.97 EUR in 2017 and to date I received dividends in total of 2513.24 EUR - all money I did not have to work for because it was working for me.

For reaching financial freedom there is still a long way to go, but by receiving my first special dividend by ORI of 1 USD per share, it gives me the feeling that I am on the right path to it.

Review 2017

In 2017 my dividend fund increased from around 43 000 EUR to 58 000 EUR. My main focus in 2017 was on ETFs as I did not have one so far I bought 3 different dividend ETF’s which now have a total share of around 10 000 EUR, due to that purchases I was also able to reduce my USD share.

Also in 2017 I sold a couple of positions like Wal Mart (WMT), Wells Fargo (WFC), BASF, General Electric (GE) and AB Inbev (BUD). The reasons for it were different ones but the biggest mistake was of course my initial purchase of General Electric. When it comes to selling positions from time to time it is just necessary and in the end all the money was reinvested again.

Currently there is one thing, which is a bit disturbing - the weak USD; my dividend income is suffering a little and if it stays at that level I probably will not be able to make such high yoy increases like in 2016 and in 2017.

In the end of 2017 I also discovered the crypto world, particular I am holding a small stake of IOTA’s, it is a promising project with a lot of potential and although the price dropped heavily in the last 2 weeks it is something I am regularly investing about 50 – 100 EUR per month.

My total holding is at the moment 717.32 Miota’s.

Outlook 2018

Well what should I say, yesterday I went through my financial plan for 2018 and I am quite sure I will not do any major investment until May. First of all I want to accumulate as much cash as possible and second of all the current market is just way too high to do any investment. Besides some ETF’s I do not really see any good opportunities out there. So in the first half of the year I will stay more or less on the sideline.

Nevertheless my goal for 2017 is to have a projected full year dividend income of 2 000 EUR. Due to the chosen limitation of available cash for investing activities I have to reach that number by investing an additional 13 000 EUR, to reach that number I need to create around 450 EUR in additional dividend income, which would be a yield of 3.5% after tax. All in all sounds reasonable and achievable.

Also I am of course confident that my crypto investment will turn out positive by the end of the year. Unless other cryptos I think with IOTA you need more patience but at the same time it is a crypto project with some real world use cases already. By the way I am of course aware that this can end with a total loss, that’s why I really only invested a small amount of money, which I can afford to lose.

Conclusion

Although I will be a bit more conservative with my investments in 2018, and concentrate more on accumulating cash, I am more than confident that it will be another good year for my dividend income and I am also looking forward to my crypto investment.