For several days now, my M1 Finance account has been creeping towards the $100 in earned dividends mark.
Today, Thursday 4th November, 2021, the latest trenche of dividends hit the account. 79 cents worth, pushing my earned dividends for the lifetime of the account to $100.45.
Now I know that just a few cents over $100 is not impressive to many. I earn much more in other stock portfolios. But this account was set up to show that earning dividends from fractional shares is a viable form of income. I began investing just $10 per week on January 15th, 2020. I added occasional cash deposits, items such as loose change found around the house, birthday cash. I have also increased the regular deposit in recent months from $10 per week to $15 per week, now $18.31 per week.
Slowly increasing the deposit or savings rate allowed me to adjust my own feelings about saving and investing in this account. As I became comfortable with the reduced spending I increased my savings level. Now at $18.31 per week I am at about my limit for saving and investing rates for this account.
I may increase the account savings rate to $20 next year, maybe more. That will depend on income.
The First Dividend
The first dividend in this account was received in the first week of February, 2020. That dividend was just one cent. It was paid from LQD, a corporate bond fund which pays monthly, in the first few days of every month. LQD has been a stalwart of this portfolio. Every dividend from every one of the dividend paying stocks has been reinvested into the portfolio. With this reinvestment and regular weekly inputs the portfolio has grown to approximately $4,600
You can see the portfolio at My Dividend Portfolio
The above link is an affiliate link. You may open an M1 account for yourself, if you do, you will receive a $30 cash bonus when you fund your new account with $100. I will receive a small cash payment too if you open a new account using my link. Thank you for supporting me.
Attaining the next goal of reaching $200 in earned dividends should take me a lot less time. This milestone took me a few weeks short of twenty months. Looking back over recent months, I now have a dividend return of about $23.56 per quarter, this varies as days pass, but $23 suggests that I should reach $200 in earned dividends in less than twelve months. Watch out here for regular updates. October is one of my weakest months for dividend receipts and this account received only $6.52, so my minimum I can expect to receive over the next twelve months is about $72.
But bear in mind that as the whole account grows, every fraction of a share has increased earnings power. Many of the stocks in this portfolio are expensive stocks, Home Depot, Costco, NVDA, Microsoft. The overall rate of return is just 2.5% but many of the stocks and ETF in the portfolio are dividend growth stocks. Some like Johnson & Johnson are dividend kings. Which means that they have paid increasing dividends over decades.
My largest single holding is Apple, This stock took a big boost in the portfolio when Apple split in August 2020. I went from about 0.5 shares to 2 shares.
Since then the rest of the portfolio has been playing catch up. Not a bad thing for an increasing needf or diversification.
Take a look at the latest offers in our Amazon Store.
To read about my Crypto Currency Investments goto Why I am Investing in Crypto.
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