Dividend Income Summary: Lanny’s December 2024 Summary

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dividend-income-summary:-lanny’s-december-2024-summary

dividend income, dividend investing

This is what dividend investing is all about! Investing in dividend stocks allows YOU to earn dividend income, the best passive income stream! Bias, you better believe it.

Time to dive into Lanny’s December 2024 dividend income results! Were records set? Almost to financial freedom? One day and one month at a time!

Dividend Income is the fruit from the labor of investing your money in the stock market. Further, Dividend Income is my primary vehicle on the road to Financial Freedom, which you can see through my Dividend Portfolio.

How do I research & screen for dividend stocks prior to making a purchase? I use our Dividend Diplomat Stock Screener and trade on Ally’s investment platform (one of our Financial Freedom Products) and on SoFi.

Related: Financial Freedom Products

I also automatically invest and max out, pre-tax, my 401k through work and my Health Savings Account. This allows me to save a TON of money on taxes (aka thousands), which allows me to invest even more. In addition, all dividends I receive are automatically being reinvested back into the company that paid the dividend, aka Dividend Reinvestment Plan or DRIP for short. This takes the emotion out of timing the market and BUILDS onto my passive income stream!

Growing your dividend income takes time and consistency. Investing as often, and early, as you can allows compound interest (aka dividends) to work it’s magic. I have gone from making $2.70 in a single month in dividend income to well over … $10,000+ in a single month. My dividend income record was set in December of 2021. Was it broken this month?! The power of compounding and dividend reinvestment is a wonderful component to the portfolio. Each and every month, whether big or small, I continue to report the passive income that dividend investing provides me. Why?

*Not pictured is my wife’s dividend income above*

I want to show YOU that dividend investing makes it possible to achieve financial freedom and/or financial independence. We all start somewhere, but consistently investing, compounding (reinvesting) dividends and keeping it simple, allows you to be in a significantly better position than most. Further, if I can grow this portfolio and income stream, YOU can too.

dividend income – December 2024

Now, on to the numbers… In December, we (my wife and I) received a dividend income total of $7,626.70. OVER $5,000! What I’m pumped about is that despite Vanguard 401k moving my VINIX to a “trust” type of investment that doesn’t pay dividends, still am close to $10,000 in dividends.

The amount and number of stocks listed below show you what it means to buy and hold for the long term. Most of the positions I have owned for YEARS, letting dividend growth and reinvestment do it’s thing. This is what dividend investing for financial freedom is all about. The passive income stream is growing at a RAPID pace.

2023 was up 24%. Guess what? 2024 was up 23%! 2 years of back to back 20% returns. Bitcoin crossed $100,000 again and S&P 500 is already up over 2% in 2025 in a few short weeks.

Here is the breakdown of dividend income for the month, between taxable and retirement (far right column, under “Retirement”) accounts. In addition, “W” means my wife’s account:

Aflac (AFL), Grainger (GWW), Target (TGT), IBM (IBM), Johnson & Johnson (JNJ), Emerson (EMR), Archer Daniels (ADM), McDonald’s (MCD) and T. Rowe Price (TROW) rounded out the dividend aristocrat list! What a list, right? Holy smokes!

Vanguard’s VYM really packed a punch for us this month. $929.22 for me and $676.56 for my wife’s account. Over $1,600 in taxable dividends from one ETF in one quarter is astonishing. Soon, that will be $2,000 in a quarterly dividend.

Also, my daily investments in VOO and VIG are really starting to bring in dividends, at over $200 and $100, respectively. Similarly, soon those will be over a few hundred each, as I’m not stopping buying Vanguard ETFs.

I also split out my retirement accounts in the far right column and the taxable account dividends are in the left two columns. The retirement accounts are composed of H.S.A. investments, ROTH and Traditional IRAs, as well as our work 401(k) accounts. In total, the retirement accounts brought in a total dividend income amount of $861.91 or 11.30% of the dividend income total. Therefore, the majority of the dividend income came from my taxable account. LET’S GO!!

Dividend Income Year over Year Comparison

2023: 2024:

Our dividend income is down $2,566.34 year over year. What the heck happened? My Vanguard 401k mutual funds is what happened. Let me explain.

In 2024, Vanguard, where my old 401k is, decided to change the fund option I was in, which was VINIX, the S&P 500. They moved it to a trust, which now – pays no dividend. Therefore, in 2023 I earned $4,090.62 in dividends.

Therefore, if we back that out from 2023, that amount is $6,102.42. Then, comparing that to 2024, we would actually have made more this year than last year by over $1,500! I’ll take that as a win.

I do plan on moving on from my old 401k at Vanguard, but not sure if I should move it to Fidelity or SoFi or Robinhood.

My Vanguard ETFs obviously are growing massively against 2023, hundreds of dollars higher.

Majority, if not all, stocks increased their dividends above. Love it.

I wonder if I can make my Vanguard 401k moves, if I can be closer to actually $15,000 in December 2025, GOAL IS SET!

Dividend Increases

dividend investing, dividend increases

December was a HUGE month for dividend growth! 7 TOTAL dividend increases, 5 in my account and 2 in my wife’s account. I was all about the dividend increases, love when my passive income grows without doing ANYTHING.

The BEST and most surprising dividend increase was from Aflac (AFL). A HUGE 16% dividend increase added $91.38 alone from this dividend aristocrat. Thanks Aflac!

Then, John Deere (DE), who just came off of increasing the dividend THREE times in 2023, came in with a monster 10% dividend increase, LET’S GO!!!!

Also, now that Paccar (PCAR) is a solid addition to the portfolio, a 10% increase in the first year was awesome.

In total, dividend increases created $171.57 in additional passive dividend income. I would need to invest $4,902 at a 3.50% dividend yield in order to add that income. Thank you for the increases, as I didn’t have to come up with the capital to create that form of income!

Dividend Income Conclusion & Summary

The name of the game is to apply what you learn through financial education. The next steps are to maximize every dollar for investment opportunities and live life on your own terms. Therefore, my plan is to demonstrate that dividend income can be a revenue engine. A revenue engine that allows you to take back control of your life. A revenue engine to help you reach financial freedom. Dividend investing, once you learn the right way, becomes easier and starts to immensely make sense!

Excited for the future, no doubt. Furthermore, all of the investing from last year and moves this year, shows that my aim to save 60% of my income, and making every dollar count, has provided the dividend growth.

If you are just starting out on your investment journey and you aren’t sure to start – please see the articles mentioned throughout this post. We are trying to bring you financial education and help you reach your financial goals.

Further, if you are interested in our dividend stocks to buy, dividend news, stock purchases, etc., please see our YouTube video (below), subscribe to our channel and check us out! Accordingly, we’ll help break down further investing topics not only on this blog, but by showing you through video!