
After 34 years of clocking in and out of work and religiously saving 10% annually in my 401K every year, in good times and bad, I have decided to share my monthly dividend income to show what regular saving and investing can accomplish.
Received my annual review at work and my raise was higher than expected. Since I budgeted to max out my Roth IRA for the year, this is the first time I have ever increased my 401K savings rate from 10% to 11%. This improved my annual saving rate to 24.6%. Below is a new metric I decided to include in my monthly updates. You can see 2019 was the turning point in my saving rate and was the first full year I had no credit card and no mortgage debt.
2012 | 2013 | 2014 | 2015 | 2016 | 2017 | 2018 | 2019 | 2020 | 2021 | |
401K | 10% | 10% | 10% | 10% | 10% | 10% | 10% | 10% | 10% | 11% |
Brokerage | 0.2% | 0.7% | 0.5% | 0.8% | 1% | 3.7% | 4.0% | 4.2% | ||
Roth IRA | 1.9% | 5.4% | 8.3% | 9.4% | ||||||
Total Saving Rate | 10.2% | 10.7% | 10.0% | 10.0% | 10.5% | 10.8% | 12.9% | 19.1% | 22.3% | 24.6% |
For the month of February I made $2,837.59; an increase of 9.94% versus this time last year. This increase is a bit illusionary as a couple of typical January payers were pushed into February. First was B&G Foods (BGS) who decided to pay on Feb. 1 instead of the end of the month. The second was Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce (CM) who did pay a dividend in January however, due to the dividend reinvestment policy at Fidelity it was not credited to my account until February.
Overall market valuations for the most part remained high. My consistent buys for the month were AbbVie (ABBV), Pepsico (PEP) and Verizon (VZ). I am now at a full position in all three and do not plan to buy any additional purchases. Going into March here are the stocks on my watch list; BCE Inc (BCE), Duke Energy (DUK), JM Smucker (SJM), and Lockheed Martin (LMT).

Date | Symbol | Company | Amount |
2/1/21 | BGS | B&G FOODS INC | $253.27 |
2/1/21 | CM | CANADIAN IMPERIAL BANK OF COMMERCE | $252.51 |
2/1/21 | GIS | GENERAL MILLS INC | $77.45 |
2/1/21 | T | AT&T INC | $603.10 |
2/1/21 | VZ | VERIZON COMMUNICATIONS INC | $35.15 |
2/4/21 | BLV | VANGUARD BD INDEX FDS LONG TERM BOND | $14.79 |
2/4/21 | VCLT | VANGUARD SCOTTSDALE FUNDS LONG-TERM COR | $15.65 |
2/5/21 | HYG | ISHARES TR IBOXX HI YD ETF | $19.29 |
2/5/21 | PFF | ISHARES TR PFD AND INCM SEC | $50.47 |
2/8/21 | APD | AIR PRODUCTS AND CHEMICALS INC | $30.06 |
2/16/21 | ABBV | ABBVIE INC | $155.18 |
2/16/21 | HAS | HASBRO INC | $31.20 |
2/16/21 | OHI | OMEGA HEALTHCARE INVESTORS INC | $722.72 |
2/16/21 | PG | PROCTER AND GAMBLE CO | $103.16 |
2/18/21 | PSEC | PROSPECT CAP CORP | $155.54 |
2/22/21 | ARTNA | ARTESIAN RES CORP | $189.48 |
2/26/21 | ODC | OIL DRI CORP OF AMERICA | $14.11 |
2/26/21 | SBRA | SABRA HEALTH CARE REIT INC | $83.25 |
2/26/21 | WSM | WILLIAMS-SONOMA INC | $9.61 |
2/26/21 | M1 Finance | M1 DIVIDEND GROWTH ACCOUNT | $21.60 |
Great month. I love ABBV and believe it is way undervalued. I don’t add as much as I was but I still add to it as it has grown to my third largest position and second largest dividend payer. I’m also looking at Duke also.
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Every time ABBV dips below $104 it becomes tempting. Even though I’m at a full position I’ll still nibble on a few shares when it happens.
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Man that T and OHI dividend is huge. Congrats on an excellent February and that nearly 10% YoY increase.
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Thanks JC, when both were trading in the mid $20s I bought quite a bit and got lucky
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That is one heck of a T dividend, topped only by your OHI position. It’s great to see your results and you’re buying streaks.
Nice work!
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Thanks Mr. Robot,
T is a an income machine for sure but not something I’d recommend for young investors due to lack of growth but it is a gift for folks in or near retirement.
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Holy crap! What an impressive month SD Dividend. Fantastic results!!
Bert
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Thank you Bert
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