July 2015: Dividend Income, Trading Activity and Portfolio Snapshot

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.

• Britvic--£6.70
• GlaxoSmithKline--£36.67
• Bought 2 new shares
• HSBC--£18.41
• Bought 3 new shares
• WPP--£10.90

Total for July: £72.68 ($113.54).

After a spectacularly strong showing in April and May (with over £150 dropping into my account in both months) June went down to a more "ordinary" level of about £71. July has followed a similar pattern with a little over £72 dropping into my account.

However, calling this "ordinary" is maybe a little unfair. It still remains well above my monthly average last year (£27.58). What is more, like June's income all income came from "ordinary" dividends rather than any help from "special" dividends. this should mean I will get at least around the same income in July 2016.

Overall, therefore, I am pretty happy with this figure in total. Another solid month to help push me towards my investing goals for the year.

Historic Performance Comparisons

So, how does July 2015 compare to July 2014? Rather nicely actually. Last year I managed to scrape together £19.90. That means this year's total is edging up towards being 4 times larger than last year. That is quite a nice annual progress.

What is more, after the strongest quarterly performance ever in Q2 2015 (£392.56!) July has given me a modest but welcomed start to Q3. I don't anticipate this quarter to beat last quarter. Indeed, I suspect that quarter to be the top performer for some time yet.

However, Q3 2014 threw together £107.82 in total. As such, the £72.68 July has provided so far has already seen me fast approaching this entire quarterly total for last year in just one month! Excellent news.

You can see more on my progress on my Dividends Received page. 

April and My Annual Goals

So how does June look in relation to my annual goals? Let's take a look:

Total Dividend Income: June represents another pretty solid step towards my new 2015 dividend goal of £1100. So how close am I to my target now? Well, with this month's cash I am now at a total of £629.79 for the year. This leaves me at an excellent 57.25% towards my total:

Monthly Average Income: With June and July being in the low £70's I have now been pulled quite a distance from the nearly £100 per month average I was sitting at in May. Nonetheless, that figure was somewhat staggering. Clearly these more modest totals have pulled us away from that £100 average a little. Where to? £89.97. 

I am still amazed by this figure. If I could retain this throughout the rest of the year I would have an annual income of nearly £1,115. As it turns out, the next few months will be weaker which will obviously lead to a drop in this average. But I am in a fairly strong position to reach my goal at present nonetheless. 

Monthly Expenses: July has not been the best month expenses wise. A family member needed a new laptop and my current laptop fitted the bill perfectly so I thought it would be a good time to recondition it and give it to them. As a result, I bought a new laptop which--although I got heavily discounted--is obviously a large expense. 

In addition, it was Miss DD's birthday this month so we went to the Globe Theatre (as has become traditional) to see "As You Like It". It was, as always, an excellent performance. However, that whole trip was very expensive including food, travel, etc. It was worth every penny though!

I also had to travel to London more than usual this month (for work and pleasure) which made a dent on my wallet a little. 

Clearly, therefore, my expenses were not going to be particularly low. Despite this my expenses for the month came to an incredibly modest £1129.55. Incredible. What is more, if I take out the laptop purchase my expenses would have amounted to just £737.95. Very good indeed. 

This higher figure does, of course, impact on my average monthly expenses figure. However, first things first, I have to revise my previous average a little after I realised a miscalculation. Rather than my monthly average being £745.50 as stated last month. It was, in fact, £777.50. Still impressive, but not quite so!

So, how does it look after July? Without the laptop included, my average monthly expenses this year would be down further to £771.85. However, with the laptop purchase included it jumps up to £827.79. I will take that as my figure as I want my expenses to truly reflect what I spend.

That is clearly quite a hefty jump up after several months of progress downwards. Nonetheless, it was an expense that was timely and as I tend to keep my laptops for about half a decade it is a worthwhile long-term investment.

What is more, at nearly £828 per month my average expenses are still below 2014's average of £845. Pretty solid as far as I am concerned!

Work Freedom Day: And what about my Work Freedom Day? How many days have I bought myself for this year? Well, things conspired against a hefty jump this month. Indeed, I only move 1 more day into the year as a result with my dividend income only getting me up to 23 January 2015. 

All told, though, I am still making good progress. So this should mean that that I am on track to meet my 3 February 2015 target by the end of the year (hopefully)!

Portfolio Additions

During this month I opened a new position:

• FTSE 100 engineering giant, Rolls-Royce Holdings (LON:RR).

I also topped up one of my previous holdings:

• FTSE 100 pharmaceutical giant, AstraZeneca (LSE:AZN). 

All in all, these new additions should add about £52 to my predicted annual dividend income. This is a very healthy addition to my future income I hope!

That being said, for this year my Rolls Royce purchase will add nothing to my dividend income as I have missed both the final and interim payments. In contrast, for AstraZeneca my new top up will see me receive the interim dividend in September (about £19 for the entire holding) which is a nice addition to this year's tally.

Portfolio Snapshot: Risers and Fallers

Below is the breakdown my holdings in terms of their weighting. I also include whether they:

• ▲ = Moved  up places during the month;
• ▼ = Moved down places during the month;
• ▬ = Same place as last month;
• ★ = New addition this month. 
• ★ = Large top-up purchase this month.
• ★ = Large sale this month.

	Company	Ticker	Shares	Value	Cost	Weight	Yield
1	GlaxoSmithKline	LON:GSK	195	£2,717.48	£3,015.93	10.05%	5.74%	▬
2	Interserve	LON:IRV	286	£1,848.10	£1,711.53	6.83%	3.56%	▬
3	HSBC	LON:HSBA	292	£1,692.72	£1,789.11	6.26%	5.41%	▬
4	AstraZeneca	LON:AZN	33	£1,425.48	£1,406.30	5.27%	4.15%	▬
5	Diageo	LON:DGE	69	£1,235.31	£1,211.56	4.57%	2.89%	▬
6	WPP	LON:WPP	84	£1,234.80	£1,291.03	4.57%	2.60%	▬
7	Royal Dutch Shell "B"	LON:RDSB	65	£1,210.23	£1,401.75	4.48%	6.46%	▬
8	Barclays	LON:BARC	411	£1,185.08	£1,076.63	4.38%	2.25%	▲
9	Unilever	LON:ULVR	40	£1,161.40	£998.11	4.29%	2.77%	▼
10	BP	LON:BP	237	£937.22	£1,056.67	3.47%	6.39%	▬
11	Hansteen Holdings	LON:HSTN	597	£727.15	£689.25	2.69%	4.11%	▲
12	Sky	LON:SKY	63	£716.30	£567.65	2.65%	2.81%	▲
13	Babcock International	LON:BAB	72	£713.88	£699.55	2.64%	2.38%	▼
14	Imperial Tobacco	LON:IMT	21	£703.13	£599.64	2.60%	3.83%	▲
15	Old Mutual	LON:OML	326	£691.45	£623.66	2.56%	4.10%	▬
16	Britvic	LON:BVIC	100	£686.50	£756.06	2.54%	3.04%	▼
17	Amlin	LON:AML	134	£680.61	£688.50	2.52%	5.32%	▲
18	BHP Billiton	LON:BLT	58	£679.85	£1,020.52	2.51%	6.61%	▼
19	Rolls-Royce Holdings	LON:RR	86	£644.52	£682.44	2.38%	3.04%	★
20	Stock Spirits	LON:STCK	330	£644.33	£658.91	2.38%	1.35%	▬
21	Legal & General	LON:LGEN	246	£641.32	£671.64	2.37%	4.68%	▲
22	SSE	LON:SSE	41	£621.45	£552.99	2.30%	5.83%	▲
23	Lancashire	LON:LRE	93	£597.93	£613.45	2.21%	1.49%	▲
24	PZ Cussons	LON:PZC	171	£593.54	£519.43	2.19%	2.30%	▼
25	National Grid	LON:NG	70	£591.97	£619.58	2.19%	5.07%	▬
26	BT Group	LON:BT.A	126	£585.21	£506.66	2.16%	2.67%	▬
27	Carillion	LON:CLLN	157	£542.91	£541.12	2.01%	5.13%	▬
28	Banco Santander	LON:BNC	98	£430.81	£515.86	1.59%	3.25%	▬
29	Tesco	LON:TSCO	155	£331.13	£518.20	1.22%	0.54%	▬
30	Seeing Machines	LON:SEE	6600	£322.08	£499.16	1.19%	0.00%	▬
31	Blinkx	LON:BLNX	500	£128.75	£493.68	0.48%	0.00%	▬
32	XL Group	NYSE:XL	3	£73.01	£55.24	0.27%	1.68%	▬
33	South32	LON:S32	58	£47.42	£0.00	0.18%	-- %	▬
	TOTAL			£26,995.63	£28,051.81	100%	3.96%
	TOTAL ($)			$42,246.64	$43,822.54

Charity

I have recently started linking my investing activities to my charitable giving.

This month has seen an additional £2.68 added to my charitable microfinance account. This means that 2015's dividend income has resulted in £20.58 drop into that account so far. This is a hefty £17.64 ahead of last years total by this stage in the year.

For my standard charity giving total May added a minuscule 68p. My total for 2015 is now £2.57. That is about £1.63 ahead of 2014 up to this point in the year.

How did you do?

How did your dividend income look for July? What new holdings did you pick up or old ones topped up? 

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