How Much My Dividend Portfolio Paid Me in August! ($313,000 Portfolio!)

In this video, I'm going to be going over exactly how much dividend income I made from a $313,000 dividend growth portfolio. And to break this down, we're going to be jumping into my ticker data portfolio tracker, looking at my investment dashboard, my dividend dashboard, dividend calendar, the daily dividend calendar, as well as projecting out how long it will take me to achieve my long-term goal of one day living off dividends. And like always, if you'd like me to download the spreadsheet you see in this video and also get access to the ticker data add-on in Google Sheets or in Excel, then you can head over to tickerdata.com at the link in the description. So, let's go ahead and dive in. But first, I'd like to say thank you to Dividend Wealth for sponsoring this video, where you can currently get a 14-day free trial and 40% off at the link in the description. If you're tracking dividends by hand, then you're still making a huge mistake. Dividend Wealth just released a huge update where you can automatically connect your brokerage with your dividend wealth account. This makes it incredibly easy to see the dividends you have coming in, the future dividends that you'll collect, and to see exactly how far away you are from achieving your income goals. Dividend wealth doesn't just break down your portfolio allocation, but perhaps just as importantly, your income allocation, revealing some potential risk in your portfolio that you may not have been aware of. You can run different models to see exactly how far away you are from achieving your income goals. And with the dividend calendar, you'll know exactly when those dividend payments are going to be paid. They also just updated their three model portfolios. The dividend income strategy, the income growth strategy, and the balanced dividend strategy, where you can get deep insights into what developing an actual dividend portfolio should look like. So again, check out Dividend Wealth at the link in the description to get a 14-day free trial as well as 40% off. Dividend Wealth is also getting ready to host a stock competition where you can win cash prizes, so keep that in mind, but more on that later. Now, if we go ahead and dive into my portfolio and zoom in, you can see my portfolio value is now sitting at about 313,000 with over half of that capital coming strictly from dividends and realized gains. So, I've been really happy with my portfolio and it's certainly been a strong year for the S&P 500 up about 11.2%. And in the last month, we've seen a little bit of a pullback just in the last few days. But overall, again, my portfolio, especially relative to the market this year, has performed very well. And that is in part due to the fact I have some dividend growth positions that are growing free cash flow at such a substantial rate. They're beating the market, but also because I own SCD, which is just having an absolutely stellar year. But we'll take a closer look at some of those moves here in just a moment. If we scroll down here, we can see my cash position has increased over the last year. This is actually the second month in a row that I haven't added new capital to my portfolio, which is somewhat of a rarity, but it does happen occasionally. I'm sitting on about 92.3% stocks with a cash position of 7.7% while sitting on 27 total holdings. So, what actually are those holdings? Well, we can see two charts here. We have my cost and market value and then my growth chart. Basically, the cost and market value chart is going to allow me to see the growth of these positions relative to my cost basis. So, for example, SCHD, I've invested around 87,000. It's now worth close to 130,000. So, it accounts for the overall size of the position, but probably the easier way to break this down is really simply looking at the growth. Now, I've shown this chart a lot before because, well, I'm a long-term investor. My holdings don't frequently change month over month. Sometimes I add new capital to positions where I see opportunities, and sometimes I do add new positions to the portfolio. Speaking of which, I've added three new positions to the portfolio this year, and I want to take just a moment to point out each of them. Now, if you've been keeping up with the channel, you already know what those three stocks are, but we have MLX, SPGI, and then we have Mastercard. MPLX has done really, really well. It's up 24.5%. S&P Global has certainly pulled back and lagged the market, down by about 9%. And then Mastercard, another addition that's outperformed the market this year, up by about 18.14%. And I want to take just a moment to give you a very, very brief update on the thesis for each of these. Starting with MPLX. Now, overall, I'm a dividend growth investor. When you look at most of these stocks, you notice these are stocks with relatively low yields, but they grow dividends at a very high rate. MLX is a somewhat rare addition to my portfolio because it's a very high yielding stock. In fact, the indicated yield as of right now sitting roughly 7.3%, but when I added it to my portfolio, it was closer to about 8.5%. In fact, if we just jump over to my dividend dashboard, go ahead and cheat and look at my yield on cost on this position, you can see it's sitting at about 8.53%. So, the recent run up in share price has caused the starting yield to go down. But again, when I added, it was yielding 8.5%. So, this is a much higher yielding position than I typically add to my portfolio. But, I want to point out a couple of things. Just because I'm a dividend growth investor doesn't mean I pass over really good high yield opportunities. And entering into this year, really the midstream space was a very interesting high yield sector. And here's four example of stocks that I cover frequently on the channel in dividendology.com in the midstream space. And to be honest, they've all done really well this year, and they're all relatively high yield. Now, these stocks have some unique features. To start, you do need to understand the tax consequences before you buy these stocks. But one of the things I love about this sector is how uncensitive that's unsensitive to oil prices these companies are relative to other energy stocks. And why is that the case? Well, it's because they primarily earn fees for simply moving, storing, and processing energy products. And this is a huge advantage to me because what do we know about oil? Well, we know oil prices are incredibly volatile and 2026 has been a huge reminder of that fact. And I'm in the game of wanting to buy predictable cash flows. And that's what these stocks are able to do much better than traditional energy stocks. And not only did I buy MLX with a 8.5% yield, management has been guiding towards around 12.5% distribution growth over the next few years. They've already hiked the dividend by a high amount this year. The company's not overleveraged. It's trading at a pretty reasonable leverage ratio range. And then most importantly, when we look at these stocks, we want to pay close attention to how much distributable cash flow per share they're generating because essentially that tells us whether or not the dividend is sustainable. Distributable cash per share is the northstar metric for these MLPS for these mid-stream stocks. It's like looking at free cash flow per share or earnings per share for a traditional stock. So if this is growing, the intrinsic value is growing. And if it's covering the dividend, then generally speaking, that dividend is sustainable. So you can see in 2026 the dividend should be very well covered and it's projected to continue to be that way through the year 2030. So that's the thesis for MPLX in short. And you can see anytime you buy a stock with a 8.5% yield that's growing distributions at double digits as long as those distributions are truly sustainable. All else being equal, it's probably an undervalued stock. And that's exactly what happened to MLX. Now we'll skip SPGI for just a moment and talk about Mastercard. Now this is a very different stock. But Mastercard you're probably somewhat familiar with. If we look at the PE multiple over the last 5 years, the average valuation was around 31.2. Well, just in the last year, the PE multiple cratered. It went from around 35, close to 36 all the way down to roughly around 23.6 times earnings in June of 2026. There's a lot we could talk about. We could do plenty of deep dives into Mastercard as I have in the past, but the reality is this company still has some incredible competitive advantages. And the reality is we're going to continue to see more online transactions taking place with the rise of Agentic Commerce and Mastercard is set to benefit. Whether or not we have more Agentic Commerce, stable coins, these companies are still going to need things like fraud prevention and payment verification. Mastercard already has the infrastructure in place. So, I think sentiment got way too low on this stock. I added shares of Mastercard and we've seen a bit of a rebound in the short term as the price to earnings multiples climbed higher. But over the long term, this is still a stock growing earnings at a high rate. So, I expect earnings growth to continue to push this stock higher. And then we have S&P Global, which again I've covered a lot over on dividendology.com and on the YouTube channel over the last few months. And again, this is another story where the valuation multiple has dropped substantially in the last 5 years. And if we take a close look this year, it's been quite choppy. At one point it got as low as around 19.5 times earnings which for reference again if we look at the last 5 years historically the average has been 28.6. So trading at a way lower valuation multiple than they have historically speaking. We've seen a little bit of a rebound over the last month along with Mastercard. But I still think this is a highquality stock. Now just in the last couple of days there's been some recent news surrounding S&P Global which I'm going to need to cover in a much deeper dive. So stay tuned for that. But those are the three additions to my portfolio this year. two out of three have outperformed the market, which obviously is fun to see, but the reality is I'm not concerned about short-term market fluctuations or or even outperforming the market in the short term. I'm interested in buying highquality stocks that can continue to grow free cash flow at a high rate in the future at reasonable valuations because over the long term, that's going to allow me to see long-term dividend growth and allow me to achieve my goal of one day living off dividends. And so far, over the last four to 5 years, that has worked out really well for my portfolio. We have some huge winners. Caterpillar up 344%, JP Morgan 241%. Even some higher yielding positions such as EPD, I'm up 107%. And again, this is another scenario when you look at my yield on cost, it's 9.67%. So again, we don't automatically overlook high yield opportunities when the valuation makes a lot of sense because EPD has been a huge winner in my portfolio. Even Coca-Cola up 96%. Altria, another stock that's high yielding and just increased its dividend by 4%. I'm up 87% and you can see my yield on cost on that position is now very close to 10%. We can see some other winners such as Bank of America, Texas Instruments, Cisco, Broadcom, where I'm up around 200% on my average cost basis, but on my original shares I'm up around 630%. And then one of the stocks I added last year was ASML, which has been an absolute rocket, up 150% since I added just a little over a year ago. So overall, I'm very pleased with the portfolio performance. Of course, the stock market has done well, particularly over the last four to 5 years. So everyone has certainly benefited from a rising tide. But here's where dividend growth investing in particular is a little bit different. The reality is even if the share price for these stocks didn't go anywhere over the next couple of years, these are stocks that have the ability to continue to grow dividend payments over time. So that's an important caveat to make note of and something we need to point out for just a moment. Why is that so important? Well, I was writing about this on dividendology.com just the other day. This is a chart that I occasionally share on my newsletter and social media. It shows the average annual real returns, which means adjusted for inflation for the S&P 500. Now, when you originally look at this image, you'll notice a few issues with this chart. We're looking at cherrypicked time periods. This is something people point out, and that's absolutely true and something worth pointing out. However, it would be a big mistake not to pay close attention to the underlying message of this chart simply due to the fact it's cherrypicked time periods. Why is that the case? Well, this is something I was discussing with a $10 billion dividend growth investor just the other day on the mispriced podcast with David Bonson. So, if you want a deeper dive into this conversation, be sure to check out that podcast. I'll try to leave a link in the description. But here's the issue with writing off that chart simply due to the fact it's cherrypicked time period. The reality is there is real people who retired right at the beginning of those time periods, meaning they were no longer dollar cost averaging. So, for example, look at the result of someone retiring at the beginning of 2003 with a $1 million portfolio. And this is really interesting because we're looking at two different scenarios. An investor orange, investor blue. These two investors generated the exact same returns every single year except the first year of retirement their returns were swapped and the last year of retirement their returns were swapped. Look how drastic the difference is. After 20 years, investor orange has a portfolio of 2.1 million, meaning they were living off of their portfolio and their portfolio still doubled in size. Meanwhile, investor blue completely ran out of money after just 17 years. They ran out of money in retirement due to what is known as sequence of return risk. The basic reality is if you're using the 4% rule for a retiree making withdrawals, an early bare market can be devastating. Now, what's interesting about the 4% rule is the Trinity study found that this strategy did work 95% of the time on a 30-year retirement horizon. So, that's a pretty strong success rate. However, that doesn't paint the full picture. It doesn't account for two different things. Number one, it doesn't account for where the valuation of the market is right now. So for example, anytime the Schiller Cape ratio, the cyclically adjusted price to earnings ratio is above 20, the 4% failure rate jumps to 25%. So the failure rate jumps to 1 and 4. All of a sudden, this doesn't sound so attractive. And that's anytime that valuation multiple is above 20. So naturally, the question is, where is that valuation multiple today? Well, it's sitting at 42.04, right in line with the dot bubble. Now, I'm not here to speculate whether or not we're in an AI bubble. I think the reality is we're seeing earnings growth ramp up, which to some degree does justify a higher valuation multiple, but this is the reality and the historical data tells us that the 4% rule does not work at this valuation multiple level. This is why I'm such a big fan of dividend growth investing because highquality stocks that are growing free cash flow can continue to grow dividends throughout time periods where the market sees 0% real returns. So yes, this image is extremely scary for people utilizing strategies like the 4% rule, any withdrawal strategy to be fair. But if you're using a dividend growth strategy, your payouts and your income continues to grow every single year, regardless of market performance. For example, Texas Instruments took 17 years to recover from the.com bubble, but grew its dividend over 2,300% during that time period. Just a mind-blowing statistic to think about. So now we understand why dividend growth investing is such an attractive strategy. It's strong from a total return perspective. It has lower volatility, but it also eliminates sequence risk. So let's talk about what my dividend metrics actually look like. Now, if we go ahead and blow up my portfolio value chart, again, I haven't added a lot of capital to my portfolio over the last few months, but the growth is still been incredibly strong. We can see back in March when we saw the dip, it was sitting about 265,000. Now, the portfolio is sitting at about 313,000. So, that's the snowball effect taking place more than anything. We can see my average expected yearly dividend income sitting at 8,000 almost $8,200. But let's see what everyone wants to see, and that's how much dividend income I generated in the month of August. In the month of August, I generated around $46.14 of dividend income. Now, the reality is I always get the same comment whenever I show a month like this. They look at the portfolio value, they see the amount paid out in dividends, and they just simply assume, why would a portfolio of that value be generating such a small amount in dividends? Well, obviously, there's a couple of things to point out. Typically, every 3 months, we have a very high month, somewhere in the 1,200 to even $1,300 range. So, it's much better to look at the average, which right now is sitting about $682. But the other reality we have to account for is again, this is not a high yield portfolio. I'm not trying to maximize dividend income right now. Now, over on dividendology.com, I am running a model high yield portfolio that is outperforming the market for the majority of this year and is yielding over 9%. So, that's a project I'm working on. But, my main portfolio is a dividend growth portfolio. We're looking for stocks growing free cash flow at a high rate so they can continue to grow dividends at a high rate. And the reality is what the data tells us is this allows us to live off dividends at a much faster rate. assuming you're not planning on retiring over the next 3 to 5ish years. This is also why my projected annual dividend income has climbed so much higher over the last few years. Now, obviously, this is due to a multitude of reasons. It's because one, I'm adding new capital to the portfolio. I'm also reinvesting dividends, but my underlying holdings are growing dividends at just such a strong and such a high rate. You can see back in July of 2025, my expected yearly dividend income sitting at about 6,700 and now we're already up to almost 8,200. So again, this is climbing at a substantial rate. Now, one of the things I do also track, and I think this is important, is my dividend income by industry because yes, over on the investment dashboard, we track my allocation by individual stock and allocation by industry. But make note of this. For example, tech is about 22.3% of my portfolio, but only makes up 7% of my dividend income. On the flip side, if we look at real estate, real estate only makes up about 5.6% of my portfolio, but makes up 13.7% of my dividend income. So, this is something for you to keep in mind. You can look diversified on the surface level, but if you're living off dividends and all of that dividend income is primarily coming from one sector, that's a major risk that a lot of people will potentially overlook. So, be sure to not make that mistake. Now, let's go ahead and get into my dividend calendar. See exactly where are those dividend payments coming from. And basically, the beauty of a dividend calendar is you can see stocks you've held for a long time, what the total dividend amount you received is, but you can also see what dividend growth looks like over time. In every single video, the example I use as realy income, but because I pay out monthly, you can visualize what that dividend growth has actually looked like. And of course, I've added capital at a couple of instances when I think the opportunity was right. But a few years ago, we were making $5 a month in dividends. And now you can see the recent month was sitting at $3143. So let's see which stocks actually pay me dividends this month. Starting in August, we have EPD at about $2362. Realy Income $3143, Lowe's 32, Texas Instruments almost 57, Caterpillar around $7, Jeff Financial 24.64, 64 Apple 275 ASML 1093 Novo Nordisk a stock I'm down around 10ish% on I believe 1776 and then MPLX a big dividend payment almost $200 and Mastercard at about $7. Now if we look at the daily dividend calendar we can see so far in 2026 I've generated around $4,700 in dividends and we can see the exact days that those actually came in. So, for example, the 14th, with the exception of my SCHD days, was one of the biggest dividend days I've had this year at about $223. And then we have a few other one-off days where the dividends are in the $20 range. But the reality is, if we zoom out just a little bit, one of the things you can see is I'm already well above where I was sitting in dividends for the entire year of 2023. So, it's been a really exciting year. the dividends continue to compound. But ultimately, we still need to answer the question, how far away am I from achieving my long-term goal of one day living off dividend income? Well, to answer that question, if we go ahead and jump over to my portfolio projection, basically what we're doing is I'm projecting out what my portfolio will look like basically over the next 30 years. This is a model that I built out specifically for this purpose. And we're making a few different assumptions such as dividend growth rates, which really is a very reasonable price and growth rate to assume as well as a starting yield of around 3.5% with monthly contributions. Now, here's what a lot of people miss. You don't just have to hit a certain number. It's a moving target because your cost of living is changing constantly to inflation. And inflation compounds over time just like any other investment. So, the reality is we have to get our dividend payments above this black line and to stay above this black line. And I'll make another comment on that here in just a moment. But if we start scrolling down, we can see at year five, really the end of year 5, we're still not there. Even though monthly dividends is at about $2,400. If we keep scrolling down, we can see we get to around year 10. Monthly dividends is above $4,370, but our cost of living has continued to compound. So, we're still not at that level yet. But we can see here on the back end of year 11, it looks like this is the point at which we could live off dividends forever because your monthly dividend payments surpasses your monthly cost of living. Now, the question I always get is, yes, but what if you stop reinvesting dividends? As long as your dividend growth rate is above the rate of inflation, you could still live off dividend income forever. And what's really cool about this is if we jump all the way over to our investment dashboard and look at this on a grand view, look at how much your portfolio is compounding during this time period as well. If we don't reinvest dividends, 15 years from now, the portfolio is generating still $57,000 of dividends, sitting at a 1.6 million value. But if we do reinvest dividends, jumps to 88,000 a year with a portfolio value of 2.5 million. Now look at the difference by the time we get to year 30. $186,000 in dividends with a portfolio value of 5.3. And if we do reinvest dividends, it gets absolutely wild. $450,000 with a $12.8 million portfolio. Now, the reality is as your portfolio climbs and you get closer to living off dividends, you can actually live off dividends slightly faster if you start to utilize a high yield strategy on the back end of your income investing journey. So, that is something to keep in mind. And I've talked about this in other videos, but I'll create more analysis of this on how exactly this works and when you should switch to a high yield portfolio. But there you go. That is how much dividend income I generated in the month of August from a $313,000 portfolio. Go ahead and let me know what you think in the comments down below. And like always, if you'd like to download this spreadsheet and get access to the ticker data add-on in Google Sheets or Excel that allows you to automatically import stock financials directly into your spreadsheet, then you can head over to tickerdata.com at the link in the description. So again, thank you to Dividend Wealth for sponsoring this video. But with all that being said, thank you guys so much for watching and please don't forget to like and subscribe to the