Well it was nice to start the year on a high. Let’s hope that 2024 finishes on an even higher note! There’s still a lot of new contributions to be made and dividends to be reinvested before Santa comes around again though. If stocks behave and increase like they’re supposed to then the ETF portfolio should reach $20,000 this year!
If you’re new around here, I started the ETF Dividend Portfolio back in September of last year as a way of showing how easy it is to get started with investing in stocks. I had mostly avoided ETFs as I enjoy valuing and picking the companies that I want to invest in myself. Individual stocks is still where most of my assets are and it’s where I focus most of my attention, but I want ETFs to become a larger part of the mix in the future.
The plan was to start automatically investing about $300 per month with Vanguard Australia. Set it, forget it and check it once a year. But then me being me, I had to keep looking into ETFs and now I have six ETF from Vanguard, Betashares and iShares. I’ve also increased my monthly contributions and want a portfolio increase of about $1,000 per month.
My first goal is to receive more than $2,000 per year in dividends from my ETF portfolio. That’s about $250 per quarter and is a nice amount to reinvest or treat myself to a night out! Obviously it’ll be used to reinvest as I’m pretty much a hermit now.. lol. So if I get the portfolio returning about 5% in dividends per year then I’ll need about $40,000 worth of ETFs.
I probably won’t reach that amount in 2024 but I do hope to get at least half way there with $20,000. Unless of course I decide to sell other assets and put the proceeds into ETFs.
Dividend Payments in January
The majority of the ETFs I currently hold pay quarterly dividends. So January, April, July and October are dividend months for VHY, IVV, VGS, and VBLD. The other two ETFs pay twice each year in January and July (GEAR and QRE).
So January was pay day for me. The previous high and most recent payout for the month was $52.90 in October last year. With more contributions I was obviously hoping to beat this amount.
The iShares S&P500 ETF (IVV) paid out a grand total of $7.19. It pays a pithy little dividend but it keeps its place in the portfolio because it grows faster than most. The Vanguard global infrastructure ETF (VBLD) paid me even less with $1.92 but that’s because I held about $300 worth at the time. Vanguard’s MSCI World ex-Australia (VGS) paid out $6.08 and their high yield Australian shares ETF (VHY) gave me $21.01.
The two new entrants to the portfolio paid out $9.65 and $25.53, from the Australian resources ETF (QRE) and the geared Australian shares ETF (GEAR) respectively.
Which brings the total dividends paid in January to $71.38! I’m pretty happy with that progress as it’s about a 35% increase on the previous quarter. A 35% income increase per quarter for ten years would be nice!!
The ETF Dividend Portfolio for 2024
As you can see from the title image the ETF Dividend Portfolio is now at $9,321. That’s $1,514 or about a 19% increase on last month. Much of the increase was contributions but most of the ETFs also had an increase in price during this time.
See the Dividend Portfolio from December.
What to Expect in February
I’m writing this post on the first of February in Australia and markets are down globally. Microsoft was down a couple of percent and Google had a wobble of 5 or 6%. It’s just a reminder that things don’t always go smoothly up and to the right.
The plan for the ETF dividend portfolio in February is more of the same. My contributions won’t be as much this month but I would like to reach $10,000 in February.
I may even consider buying a high yielding covered call ETF like JEPQ or JEPI. The monthly income would be nice and I really want to see the overall portfolio producing 5% dividends per year. So I need some higher paying ETFs with yields above 8% to make up for IVV (S&P500) which has a yield somewhere between one and two percent.
How has your 2024 started? What are you expecting in the year ahead?
Total ETF + Index Funds Portfolio for January
Portfolio value inside the Vanguard website: $4,896 up from $3,924
Betashares ETF portfolio: $1,938 up from $1,780
ASX listed ETFs held in brokerage account: $2,487 up from $2,103
Total Index Funds portfolio value (VHY, VGS, VBLD, GEAR, QRE and IVV): $9,321 up from $7,807
Most recent dividend payment (January): $71.38 up from $52.90 in October
Dividends paid in 2024 so far: $71.38
All dividends paid in 2023: $102.68
All ETF dividend payments since buying $222.02
ETF Dividends Goal: $2,000+ per year.
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