January is already in the books, folks. The dividend investing community collected their dividends of the first month of 2020. We’re all curious how things turned out and excited to write about our progress towards financial independence. Some dividend investors have already reported excellent growth numbers and new records. My dividend growth numbers YoY were staggering as I got paid $1,200 more in 2019 in comparison with 2018. Let’s see what my numbers are for January.

The Numbers

My total dividend income for January was $310.16. In this month I got several raises as compared to the dividend amounts in October 2019. There were also higher dividends, because I increased several positions during the last months of 2019. You can see the dividend growth numbers QoQ and YoY right below:

This makes the total amount of dividend income for January $310.16, meaning we crushed the number of $300 with a solid YoY dividend growth of 43%. That’s a pretty good start of the year! The $300 in monthly dividend income seems to become a new baseline for 2020 after last year’s August ($331.12) and November ($353.43). I also like the double digit growth number of 43%. You can see that the QoQ increase is a small 9%. I’m working on this with my plan to buy high-growth dividend stocks in 2020. Here is the graph YTD:

You can see I’ve come from less than $50 exactly three years ago to more than $300 as it stands today. That already looks like a track record of a quickly and steadily growing passive income. Sometimes I get impatient as I want the dividend amounts to grow faster and more meaningful in terms of absolute numbers. But I guess on a relative basis I should be more than confident. It’s good to look back every now and then to see the real change and accomplished steps as I tend to look beyond the small, incremental changes QoQ.

Transactions during January

The oil behemoths have been in the news lately after a sell-off in their shares due to disappointing Q3 numbers and consequences of the expanded spread of the coronavirus. The oil price of a barrel WTI or Brent has dropped with as much as 20% since the beginning of the year. The volatile stock prices of Chevron (CVX), Royal Dutch Shell (RDS), ExxonMobil (XOM) isn’t likely to be only a short-term event as LNG exports from the U.S. are uneconomical at these price levels. Many exporters have contracts at fixed, higher prices. Only a steep and long production cut could drive the oil price upwards, but that would lead almost certainly to a public reaction by the U.S. government adding more uncertainties to this market. With all these headwinds I’ll keep a close eye on the big oil players.

I already took advantage of the market volatility this month by buying 19 shares of ExxonMobil (XOM) for a price of $64.65. With this buy I added an extra $66.12 to my annual dividend income. The quarterly dividend is paid in the last month of every quarter which means a small boost of $16.53 in my lower dividend income months. I currently own 76 stocks for an average price of $74.21.

Looking Forward

My total dividend income YTD is, obviously, $310.16. Going forward, the key is to save as much as I can and make smart, sound investments based on cheapness and quality. Consistently, month after month, keeping the big picture in mind.

Thanks for reading.

Happy investing!