Merry Christmas and Happy New Year! I hope your holiday season was good and Santa was kind to you, your family, and your dividend investing portfolio. Here in the Pacific Northwest, we had a bit of snow on Christmas Eve, so we did get a white Christmas. But the snowfall was short-lived and by Thursday it was completely gone, washed away by the rain that soon came afterward.

So how were my dividend payouts for December? Well, let’s do the numbers and see what the month’s total was:

AWP $ 50.00
BGY $ 38.00*
CHW $ 21.00*
CIK $ 22.00*
CLM $ 46.52*
DHY $ 38.50
DMF $ 12.30
DSM $ 22.83
EAD $ 9.03
EDF $ 45.00*
EHI $ 26.60
EHI $ 25.40
EXG $114.00*
FGB $148.75
HQL $ 43.00
** $ 1.25
NCV $ 45.50
OIA $ 4.30
PFN $ 36.00
RA $ 69.85
VFL $ 15.00
ZTR $ 33.90
TOTAL $868.73

* Includes Return of Capital

Not bad! December’s dividend payout total was better than I had expected. Thanks to FGB shifting its payout date from late November to early December and EHI’s early payout of January’s dividend ($25.40), December got a $174.15 boost. This made all the difference in keeping December from being just another $600-something end of quarter month like September ($689.52), June($689.38), and March ($646.14).

Along with December’s end comes the end of 2017’s 4th quarter. So how does Q4 compare to 2017’s previous quarters? Let’s see:
2017 Q1: $2215.26
2017 Q2: $2369.74
2017 Q3: $2476.31
2017 Q4: $2527.39

Meh. Q4 was only a tad better (+2.06%) than Q3. Considering how few buys I made in Q3 and Q4, that was to be expected. Fortunately with few dividend cuts taking their toll, Q4 was a solid, albeit barely growing, quarter.

Overall, December was a good month and a nice finale to the year. Let’s keep our fingers crossed and hope that the new year is kind to dividend investors’ portfolios and our divided income will continue to grow.

Image Credit: jarmoluk (pixabay.com)