Well, another year has flown by. I hope your 2024 has been a good one and I wish you all the best for 2025.
The ETF dividend portfolio started the year at $7,807 and has finished at $21,821 which is 179% increase! I had set the goal to reach $20,000 in my first year and I have beat that by almost 10 percent.
My big dividend goal for this portfolio is to make more than $2,000 per year. I didn’t expect to achieve it in 2024 but I’ll do whatever I have to do to achieve it in 2025. I ended up making a total of $725.85 in dividends for the entire year. which is about 36% of my first goal.
ETF Dividend Payments in December
December was the monthly paying ETFs and I received my first dividend payment from SCHD which pays out in March, June, September and December. It’s the first quarterly payer to do months 3,6,9 and 12 so that’s another thing I like about SCHD. The other quarterly payers I own distribute dividends in months 1, 4, 7 and 10.
JPEQ paid out $32.06, FEPI paid $42.80, QQQI gave me $12.70 and SCHD sent me $3.95 which is a total of $91.51 for the month of December.
I’ve started keeping a record of the rolling 6 month, monthly dividend payments and last month it was $76.89 which was enough to buy 60 packets of ramen noodles in Australia, 1kg of rolled oats, thirteen fresh apples, and 3 kilograms of oranges. This month the 6 month dividend average is $87.20. So I can now add some meat and eggs to my shopping cart.
I’ll probably have one or two more months fun with my food thing as I said I would stop doing it when I reach an average of $100 per month. So I could have 2 minute noodles twice per day, a kilogram of rolled oats for breakfast, 13 apples, about 3 kilograms of oranges, a dozen free range eggs, and 480grams of rosemary and garlic flavored sausages for the month. The grocery shopping cart is really starting to look like something meaningful now.
As my negative Nelly friend has pointed out to me several times now, this is not realistic. I couldn’t survive on $87.20 per month in Australia or most other countries. My point is to show how important it is to get started with investing and how dividends can improve your life dramatically with time and persistence. Remember this ETF portfolio is less than 18 month old and the snowball effect hasn’t had a chance to properly kick in yet.
The ETF Dividend Portfolio for December
This month the ETF dividend portfolio has increased to $21,821, up from $20.794 in November which is an increase of about $1,027. New contributions were $866 which means that there was a $161 increase in the value of the portfolio. Not much of an increase but it’s heading in the right direction.
I added a new ticker to the portfolio this month, almost by accident. I had $60 in a brokerage account and it wasn’t quite enough to buy one share of JPEQ. I then started thinking about the minimum amount to purchase a new ETF which used to be $500. After looking in their FAQ for about three seconds I figured I would just try to buy one share of NDQ for $51.69 and voila! The purchase went through. So I’m assuming Betashares Direct no longer have a minimum first purchase amount. If you’re in Australia and like ETFs and free brokerage then I really do recommend them.
NDQ is the Nasdaq 100 ETF by Betashares with a management fee of 0.48% and a 2% dividend yield with payments in January and July. Over the past 12 months it has seen a 33.81% increase and I wasn’t in a hurry to start buying the Nasdaq 100 as it’s definitely not cheap. But now that I have a NDQ position I’ll continue to add to it.
Just as a note, the ticker symbols ending in .AX are Australian listed ETFs and those without them are US listed ETFs. The US listed prices and average cost per share are in US dollars but everything else like market value and total dividend income are in Australian dollars.
Here’s what the ETF portfolio looks like this month…
See the ETF Dividend Portfolio from November.
What to Expect in January
I have set a goal to buy at least 5 SCHD shares every month this year, so that’ll be one of my purchases in January.
I’ll be adding to the new NDQ position too as I only have about $450 worth of it. My first dividends from this new stock will be 26 cents in January so I probably should improve upon that number. It may be the smallest dividend I have ever received.
Overall though, I probably won’t be contributing as much to the ETF dividend portfolio as I want to add more to my individual stocks in preparation for dividends in March. Most of my Australian stocks pay out in March and September and I try to own more of every company I hold before each new dividend pay out.
How is your freedom making machine going this year? What’s your 6 month rolling monthly dividend average for your ETFs? (total dividends paid over the last 6 months, divided by 6 equals your average).
Total ETF + REIT + Managed Funds Portfolio for December
Portfolio value inside the Vanguard website: $5,962 down from $5,974
Betashares ETF portfolio: $7,976 up from $7,374
US & ASX listed ETFs held in brokerage accounts: $7,874 up from $6,259
Total Index Funds portfolio value (VHY, VGS, GEAR, JPEQ, FEPI, QQQI, SCHD, NDQ and IVV): $21,821 up from $20,794
Most recent dividend payment (December): $91.51 up from $77.47 in November (Monthly and quarterly dividends from SCHD, JPEQ, FEPI, and QQQI)
6 Month Dividends Monthly Average: $87.20 up from 76.89
Dividends paid in 2024 so far: $725.85
All dividends paid in 2023: $102.68
All ETF dividend payments since buying $876.49
ETF Dividends Goal 1: $2,000+ per year.
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