Hello!
It's been a long long while since I've contributed anything to this blog.
This year was a milestone year as my total dividends collected exceeded $12,000. This meant that on average, my passive income from dividend investing total about $1,000 / month.
Looking at the excel sheet I've used to track my dividend earnings since 2019, Ive been very blessed to be able to come relatively far in 4 years. In 2019, my total dividends for the year was $1325.57. This means an increase of 937%.
It sounds a lot, but I don't think there have been any big bets that paid off over the last few years. I've just been saving and investing whatever excess cash I have throughout the year. I guess its a good reminder that (boring) investing works too!
Here's a breakdown of what I collected in 2023 for each month. This is purely from cash investments, excluding other dividend avenues like SRS, my company's share scheme, etc.
January
$0
February
$0
March
$622.89
April
$1766.40
May
$3033.36
June
$813.50
July
$406.44
August
$3377
September
$290.75
October
$0
November
$1161.60
December
$945.06
Total: $12,417
There are a few 'lobangs' here and there, whilst it'd be pretty nice to have non-zero months, I'm not in any hurry to do so as I don't want to specifically restrict myself to companies that pay out on those months.
Personal Thoughts for 2024
This year would be another milestone year as my wife and I will finally be shifting into our BTO. We have waited almost 4 years (or more?) for this.
We have decided to do it the DIY method, since we aren't going for anything too fancy. As such we have started purchasing some appliances and furniture from our estate's group buy, as well as fleshing out a 3D mock up of our flat using SketchUp.
I think we will be quite busy in 1H 2024 with this.
Our investment plan is quite straightforward; we will settle our house, shift in, and wait a few months before we find out the 'new normal' of how much we should invest, as we would have to take extra fixed costs into consideration. But it'd be a fun journey, I think.
I've also started delving in to optimizing my credit card spend, which means hours of perusing milelion and other of such websites. If time permits, I'll see if I can do up blog posts for that.
Economic outlook-wise, I am still not sure what instruments I'll be investing in and how much. There is a lot of uncertainty these few months and it will continue to be the same in the next few. I might dial back a bit to build up a war chest if things spiral downward in the later half of the year. A lot of things moving at the same thing, and it is anyone's guess if things turn out to be a perfect storm. The Russia-Ukraine war (hey, anyone remembers that this is still happening?), the Israel-Hamas war, and China's housing meltdown and slowing economy.
We await with abated breath. Until then, stay safe!