December 2014: Dividend Income and Trading Activity

Every month I am going to be providing a breakdown of the dividend income received from my shares. The overall monthly total will be included on the main “Dividends Received” page.

• Barclays--£4.04
• This is the same dividend as previous quarters. Bought one additional share.
• BP--£14.54
• Bought three additional shares.
• HSBC--£10.31
• Bought one additional share.
• Lancashire--£59.60
• Bought 10 additional shares.
• Sky--£12.40
• Bought one additional share.
• Tesco--£1.80
• This is a hefty cut of about 75% over last years interim dividend.
• Unilever--£9.01

Total for December: £111.70.

This month saw me nearly double my highest dividend income for a single month. Before December, the highest had been September at £63.40. This happy achievement was purely due to the Special dividend from Lancashire which threw £59.40 into the pot--in other words, over half.

Nonetheless, even if we put aside the Lancashire windfall I would have seen £52.10 dropping into my account which would have still made it the second highest monthly contribution. Not bad.

So does this mean that I hit my third income target for 2014? This has been progressively revised upwards to £350. But have I reached it again? No, sadly I have not quite:

Even with this stonking month I have only hit a total for the year of £331--which is 94.5% of the way to my target but still £19 short. However, I still consider this an excellent outcome as I had originally only targeted to bring in £200 over my first year. This has been easily beaten.

Here's to 2015 and the new goals!

Purchases

During December I have also invested in one new FTSE 250 company:

• Consumer goods company, PZ Cussons (LON:PZC).

I also topped up my holding in one FTSE 100 company:

• Drinks giant, Diageo (LON:DGE).

These two purchases combined should add about £30 to my annual dividend income for next year.

[Creative Commons image from Flickr user 401(k) 2012]

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