Monthly Review: July 2013

July was a transitional time in my life. At the start of the month I moved into my new apartment and I spent the first week unpacking, running errands, getting things set up, and buying stuff. I'm pretty much settled into my new home now. Even though I have not officially started my new job at the university yet, I have been voluntarily going into work on a regular basis for the past three weeks to make various preparations for when the fall semester starts. The more I do now, the less the burden will be once I am busy teaching and doing research. Due to an administrative mistake, my official start date has been postponed until mid-August, which means I will continue to be unpaid for the time being. I am not happy about the delay, but there is nothing that can be done about it. Aside from that, my transition has gone well.

On the investing front, here is a review of what happened in July:

Dividends: I received a total of $130.61 in dividends from 7 stocks, as indicated on my Dividends page. This represents a 9.3% increase compared with the same month a year ago. My year-to-date dividend total is now $1,200.66.

Dividend Increases: I was pleased to see dividend increases announced for the following stocks (click on each stock to see my post about the increase):

• CMI: 25.0% increase, $7.52 more in annual dividend income
• KMI: 5.3%, $7.20
• NSC: 4.0%, $7.60

Thus far this year, there have been dividend increases for 20 of the 28 stocks in my portfolio. The mean increase has been 10.3%.

Savings: I had no savings in July because I had no job income. Of course, I still had expenses (which were above average due to my move), and they were covered by savings from previous months, as planned. Given that my new job will not start until mid-August (see above) and this is an unusual, one-time situation, I will be excluding July and August from my savings rate calculations for 2013.

Transactions: After a four-month hiatus, I finally bought a stock (click on the transaction to see my post about it):

• 40 shares of KMI

This purchase was made in my taxable account by combining $700 in new capital with $900 in dividends that had accumulated over the last few months. The purchase will increase my annual dividend income by $64.00. My forward 12-month dividend total is now $2,503.

Portfolio: My portfolio (taxable account and Roth IRA together) currently consists of 28 stocks and has a market value of $87,502.36 (including cash), which is a 4.2% increase over last month's value. About 3/4 of the increase reflected capital gains during the month.

Seeking Alpha: This month I published one new article on the investing website Seeking Alpha:

• A Real Dividend Growth Machine: Q2 2013 Review

It received over 10,000 pageviews. I earned $112.01 from pageviews in July, increasing my year-to-date total to $830.32. In mid-July I also received my Q2 payment of $284.36, which partly compensated for my lack of job income.

Looking Ahead: My dividend total will be much higher in August than in July. Dividend increases from ITW and UNP were announced at the start of August; I am not expecting any other increases during the month. Even though I will not receive any income from my new job until the end of August (at the earliest), I am hoping that I will get my moving expense reimbursement soon. I plan to use a portion of it to make a partial contribution to my Roth IRA. If that happens in a timely manner, then I should be able to make a single purchase in August, provided I find a good investment opportunity.