Yes, 1/3 of the year has passed us by *finger snapping*, and with April dividends and rental income recorded, I have my first four months of passive income received and documented! I feel like a big first step has been taken on my journey settling into financial independence. It feels great. It’s the first year under president Trump, and despite some celebrities are saying that they’re going to move to Canada, it looks like we’re all still here :). All in all, I feel this year was a great success as my first year of recording both dividend and rental income as passive, taking the fund away from the dividend growth portfolio and pouring it in rental property. That translate to April’s dividend taking a huge cut again for the fourth time this year. But in turn, the passive income is exploding to a new level. This is the point where I can start to see how passive income can replace my monthly expense. April was a big success. **Note, this income doesn’t count the 4-plex income that has putting me at financial independence state, this is just extra income that I’ll use to reinvest into the stock market**
I hope these monthly passive income reports provide inspiration for any investors out there that are just starting out. It’s easy to see these payments rising month after month and it shows that it’s possible to one day pay for monthly expenses with dividends, which would provide an investor opportunities and freedom to pursue other interests than full-time work. Without further ado:
Dividends from 4 companies and $0.02 in interest from cash: $33.55
| 04/28/2017 | Interest | BANK DEPOSIT SWEEP 042817 2,195 | $0.02 |
| 04/19/2017 | Dividend | FOXA TWENTY-FIRST CENTY CL A 041917 30 | $5.40 |
| 04/17/2017 | Dividend | FCPT FOUR CORNERS PROPERTY TR INC 041717 4 | $0.97 |
| 04/17/2017 | Dividend | STWD STARWOOD PROPERTY TR INC 041417 20 | $9.60 |
| 04/12/2017 | Dividend | DEO DIAGEO PLC SPONSORED ADR NEW 041117 15 | $17.56 |
Income from Rental Properties
I consider these properties as *passive as I don’t manage the one in the midwest, and the commercial property doesn’t require much involvement from me. I do have to do some fixing here and there for the residential half of it. I’ll talk more about this later.
- Income from Midwest Rental the $77K investment (This is after insurance, maintenance, and taxes): $700
- Income from Commercial Rental: $2000
- Income from 1 of 2 unit: $1000
April Total: $3733.55
So far in 2017 total: $9913.13
- January: $720.58
- February: $1710.00
- March: $3749
- April: 3733.55
If I leave my investments alone and included my take home income from last year, my portfolio would worth $450K, I would have generate $18,000 with 4% yield. But my yield was around 2% so it would have only be $9,000. So, by shifting my investment, so far this year income is beating last year dividend income.
This month income of $3733.55 is noticeably higher than the $141.29 in dividends I received in April 2016. That’s a 26X increase over YOY. That, right there, is great progress, and I hope I can keep up similar levels of success as I go!
I was able to cover just over 250% of my expenses (check out how I kept my lifestyle from inflating) this past month through the power of compounding interest/dividend/passive income. It’s really great to know that I was able to cover a 250% of my monthly expenditures by way of complete passive income. The progress of dividend growth investing is real and tangible. The market can decide to mark up or mark down the value of a company day by day, but the dividends and rental income will still roll into my brokerage account just like usual. Passive income are reliable just like my expenses, and that’s one of the reasons I plan to use this strategy as my income generator through early retirement. I either use dividend income to continue to reinvest to offset old age expenses or if one day I’m tired of managing property, dividend income will serve as my main source of income. It’s funny when my income is now come from 6 businesses rather than just relying on one company (my job). My job which there is always a risk of getting fired or layoff at anytime, but with pay checks coming from 6 different sources, even if I don’t receive pay from 1 or 2, I’m still largely unaffected. That’s the beauty of dividend investing strategy.
**Note: This expense list is a little outdated, as I’m now married to Mr.W. His expenses is way higher than mine. However, taking into the consideration of we share the same house expenses like: Housing, Cable, utilities are the same. Only added, his travel, medical, eating out, clothing, and entertainment expenses. I might update this Expenses post in the future posts.
With the a third of the year behind us, I’m now four full months into one of my goals to generate $50K in passive income during the year. The year is 33.3% over and I am 20% on my way to completing my primary goal. I’m a little behind. I need to step up to get my other empty unit rented. I might have to revise my goal.
I’ll update my dividend income page to reflect April passive income.
How are your dividend/passive income tallies progressing? Everything progressing the way you had planned?
**The young leave leaves in the pictures are the tea leaves from my garden which I’m going crush to make green tea powder. If successful, I can make green tea cake, and million layer green tea flavor crape cake. LOL 🙂 If you don’t see future pictures, that means I wasn’t successful at the baking business. Wish me luck! … And pray for Mr.W’s stomach … hhehe
….. PS: Mr.W if you’re reading this post please don’t die from laughing. I still need you to try the cake first.
Awesome month! You properties are really paying off big time. Hitting almost 10K in passive income this early in the year is impressive. Especially when it is able to overly cover your expenses. Cheers.
I hope to rent out the other unit soon. I might have to adjust the price to make it attractive.
But $10k in 4 months is amazing. I’m just so thankful that I have the opportunity and all the helps around me.
Hope to more $10ks to come!
Cheers!
Being able to cover all of your expenses with passive income is awesome. I am still working my way their, and I did double my dividend income year over year. Congrats to you.
Congrats on doubling in income. That’s the reason why I like dividend investing, they give you raises for doing no work, they pay you their profit while you’re sleeping. No tenants, so maintenance, no nothing. Just straight cash! 🙂
Cheers!
Excellent progress toward your goal with a big month in April. How passive are the rental properties?
Thank you for commenting!
The commercial property kicked my butt the first 2months. When I bought it, the ceiling on the restaurant side was opened as they had some water damage, I had to fixed the leaked plumbing drainage line, put in a new hvac for the one side.
Apartment also need extensive work. Holes in the wall, holes on the exterior, no floor, bathroom floor was uneven, so I had to settle it, bathroom toilet was leaking, no faucet, faucet wasn’t working, hot water heater was bad, washer was bad, dryer and washer wasn’t working on the other unit, no backdoor for restaurant, lock wasn’t working, the hole for the lock is not standard (too small), and boatload of things to do.
I worked 14-16hr/day. Night was blending to the day. I normally don’t eat out, and I had to eat out almost daily as I didn’t have time to cook for myself (gained like 10 pound).
It was awful. I even had several ranting posts on it. Haha.
But now, the restaurant is up and running by tenant. The contract says they are responsible for 100% of maintenance. So, I’m outie. 🙂
The 2 apartments on top, has issues here and there, but it’s 6 blocks from where I work, so I go there for showings and resolve any issues that are arise. More on that on the next few posts.
Sure, you have to put in some hours. I bought a class C, brought it to class B+ property. Otherwise, I had to pay $600k for that building.
The property in the Midwest, it was completely redone so, we are good for awhile.
Do you really trust you tenant to perform maintenance? Would find that one tricky arrangement to be honest. Have you agreed on the level of standards, allowable modification, etc.? This could be a potential legal nightmare. You are a brave girl 🙂
It’s a restaurant. If the toilet break, they fix it. I rented to them and “empty shell” (well there were fixtures and sinks and stuff that were left over from the previous restaurant. But They has to change all the lightbulb, locks, broken window or other stuff. That’s pretty standard for restaurant owners to do the upkeep. There is no yard work that I have to worry about. So, I remain positive on this one.
Wow fantastic progress! Also a great cash flow from the rentals.
Thank you! I checked out your blog, your income is also rolling. Pretty soon it will replace each category of expense.
Best of luck to you!
You are living the life. Congrats on all that you have achieved thus far. Sticking with dividends, shifting your portfolio towards real estate, creating an insane year over year growth rate and sticking with your down to Earth lifestyle has earned you complete coverage for your expenses. It can be easy to succumb to lifestyle inflation but kept in check FI is closer than most think. Great job with those rentals!
I think my lifestyle inflated quite a bit after I got married, acquired 2 more properties, so I worked a lot more to prop them into rent-able condition. No time for myself, so I ate out a lot more. But the 4-plex does cover all of the extra expense that I incur as once I announced FI, I calculated inflated expenses. More will come once Mr.W and I tally up our credit cards.
That is a lot of money! Well done Vivianne. Just curious, do you keep a detailed ledger with all the incomes and expense for all your rental properties? Including forecasts for maintenance, repairs, taxes and empty units?
Just curious how you would create a 50K passive income on a $450K portfolio.
hihi, you caught me “cheated” a little. My goal is to create $50K in “forward” passive income. I figured once I have the other unit rented ($1100, extra room rented $450, that’s $1500/mo, Plus my 4-plex cover all of my expenses, so I save 100% of my full time job salary, all invest in dividend paying stock, plus these extra from this portfolio that I’m not using …) That would easily top $50K going forward by the year end.
However, I’m putting aside $1K/mo to pay for income taxes, as my taxes were killing my saving. So, that might change the game a little. But I remain hopeful.
That’s really fantastic, well done. That is a massive passive income!
You are progressing with your FI journey with a bang each month.
Nice switch there to get a higher yield and more passive income that is.