Receiving dividends is fun!

[ken-do-nim]

Hi all,

We're all here to grow our portfolios and it shouldn't matter whether its through price increase, dividend income, and when those dividends actually arrive.  But yet ... frequent small amounts arriving in the account is fun!  I love waking up, checking my phone, and seeing a notification from the E*Trade app telling me dividends have arrived.

Furthermore, the E*Trade website has an amazing "Estimated Income" tab.  It tells you everything you'd want to know about when the dividends are going to arrive.

There's the bar graph at the top (I'll just go ahead and show you mine), that estimates income for a specified period; default is 1 year:



(The October spike is due to RIO's semi-annual payout.)

It also gives the detailed listing of when the dividends arrive.  I scanned the list and the longest I ever have to wait between dividends is 9 days, but that's an outlier and I'll mostly get dividends every 3 days or so.



EDIT: you can also group by equity, and then sort to see how much each company/fund pays out annually.

I think getting the dividends piecemeal is way more fun than say having them all arrive in a lumpy fashion.

[crimsonghost747]

It certainly is more fun this way. I only update my spreadsheet at the end of the month though, so I don't see them arriving one by one.
It's even more fun when you compare the payout from a certain company to the amount you got last quarter, or last year. It's super motivating to see the increase.

[ken-do-nim]

(04-23-2021, 08:02 AM)crimsonghost747 Wrote: It certainly is more fun this way. I only update my spreadsheet at the end of the month though, so I don't see them arriving one by one.
It's even more fun when you compare the payout from a certain company to the amount you got last quarter, or last year. It's super motivating to see the increase.

Oh good point; I may want to keep a spreadsheet of my own to keep track of the increases.  I have a spreadsheet to track overall monthly dividend income, but not by company.

[fenders53]

(04-23-2021, 08:29 AM)ken-do-nim Wrote:

(04-23-2021, 08:02 AM)crimsonghost747 Wrote: It certainly is more fun this way. I only update my spreadsheet at the end of the month though, so I don't see them arriving one by one.
It's even more fun when you compare the payout from a certain company to the amount you got last quarter, or last year. It's super motivating to see the increase.

Oh good point; I may want to keep a spreadsheet of my own to keep track of the increases.  I have a spreadsheet to track overall monthly dividend income, but not by company.

Not a bad idea.  Even if you just record the ticker and and the projected div for the next 12 months.  You seem to be in the exploratory phase for strategies and you'll probably trade some names away.  It's not bad to have a quick list to look back on and see your victories and mistakes n a few years.

And Vanguard software is very boring.  I have to go search up my dividends and the report capabilities are lame for the first or second largest fund company on earth.  They really go out of their way to encourage you to set up a DRP and auto invest in VOO and check back when your hair is gray or missing. 

[ken-do-nim]

Yeah, I've already traded away Verizon and Eli Lilly for example and it will be good to see how that fared a year from now.

E*Trade has such amazing capabilities; there's another place where you can see all the upcoming ex-div dates for your stocks for example. So I put up with the occasional software glitch I know they merged with Morgan Stanley, but I haven't seen anything change because of that.

[ChadR]

I do love the Estimated Income tab in E*Trade. I've always wondered why more people don't use them. And I've been lucky to not notice any software glitches so far.

[fenders53]

(04-23-2021, 09:29 AM)ken-do-nim Wrote: Yeah, I've already traded away Verizon and Eli Lilly for example and it will be good to see how that fared a year from now.

E*Trade has such amazing capabilities; there's another place where you can see all the upcoming ex-div dates for your stocks for example.  So I put up with the occasional software glitch  I know they merged with Morgan Stanley, but I haven't seen anything change because of that.

I can help you out with VZ.  It's like popcorn without butter and salt.  I mean it won't hurt you but the 10yr chart is so flat.  That would be OK if we weren't coming off a 10 yr bull market.  It really is a bond substitute.  I use it in my option selling strategy when it is near the bottom of it's tight range.  I get the annual dividend but can deploy the capital elsewhere the other 9 months of the year.     

I need to open my kids IRA today before I get outside the IRS rules for redeployment of an IRA.  I am thinking about going with M1 Finance while she builds an account up a bit.  It has cool charts, graphs and reports.  Buying stocks is about as complicated at shopping on AMZN.  But it's not like Robinhood and encouraging day trade gambling.  It does hands off fractional shares.  She can literally make a pie chart.  50% VOO, 10% high div ETF, and fill in the rest with some tiny positions in GOOG, AAPL and whatever fast growing up and comer stock she hears about from her friends.  5% of this or that.  It's free but they only adjust your account once a day if you make moves.  I like this because otherwise she couldn't even buy one share in half the brands that she is going to be truly interested in.