On Monday we saw how to find dividend information for exchange traded funds. By going to Yahoo! Finance and putting the ticker symbol into the quote box, we saw how to find the actual payment dates and payment amounts on a per share basis.
On Tuesday we created a table to calculate the weighted yield of a simple portfolio.
The final step is to take this information and put it into a table that shows payments expected throughout the year.
As shown, the table here is from Excel and just shows the first 4 months of the year. In Excel, or whatever your favorite spreadsheet is, you can put in various formulas to update to calculate dividends based on number of shares and changes in dividends. As usually happens, much of the work is in the setting up of the table,
Bonds are no problem. They typically pay interest every 6 months, so they would have 2 payments at the appropriate times during the year.
To track payments as they come in, you want to use the "History" tab of your broker. For example, in Schwab:
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| Source: Schwab |
CLICK IMAGE TO ENLARGE Click and then, in the "Show" drop down box, select "Dividends and Interest" to get:
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| Source: Schwab |
CLICK IMAGE TO ENLARGE For do-it-yourselfers who prefer individual stocks, there are several dividend bloggers who, in my opinion, do outstanding analysis and present many good ideas. They look for companies that have the ability to increase dividends over time.
Two idea sources are:
http://www.dividendninja.com/
http://www.thedividendguyblog.com/
These sources will give you ideas and lead you to other bloggers in the dividend blogger community.
Disclosure: This post is for educational purposes only. I hold some of the securities mentioned. Individuals should do their own research and/or consult professional advice before making investment decisions.
I think anyone who has been investing for a while has created one of these charts in one form or another. Thanks for the step by step instructions.
ReplyDeleteI wish such howto posts were available when I started investing!
ReplyDeleteHey Robert,
ReplyDeleteThis is an excellent series of posts! :) I'll feature them in my weekly roundup for the weekend, very well done. I had planned to do a post like this (though not as detailed), so you beat me to it ;)
I have two tables in the excel spread sheet of my portfolio. One is in my main portfolio listings, and shows me both the yield and the weighted yield. For example I can look at my portfolio on any day and see what the weighted yield of my fixed income, equities, or entire portfolio is (currently at 4.67%).
Then I have a second table which shows me my monthly dividend distributions and bond fund/ETF distributions. It is a table of my monthly income. The latter is very important to me as a retirement tool, to project my monhtly income when I want to live off my dividends and bond income.
Cheers
The Dividend Ninja
Richard, I second the earlier comment: I wish this was available when I started investing. Great post/series!
ReplyDeletere: to all Thanks for the comments and stopping by. Welcome back Shawn!
ReplyDelete