Picture this: a wild ride from Seattle to sunny Florida to support a cross country military reassignment. Complete with apartment hopping and financial acrobatics along the way! Join us in recapping how our budget danced, investments thrived (despite a twist to single income!), and how $170,000 in 2023 contributions made waves in our dividend income. Let’s unpack our portfolio performance and our Passive Income journey in this blog post!
Let’s kick things off by taking a sneak peek at our financial landscape.
Here’s the financial snapshot: Our dividend growth portfolio is sitting around $276,000, with an extra $50,000 lounging in our high yield savings account. These investments are gearing up to deliver an estimated $11,435 annually or a cool $950 every month in passive income in 2024. Ashley and I, amidst the excitement of finally reuniting after a five-month separation due to military orders, have huddled over our budget, prepping for January and beyond. Ashley is gearing up for her new gig as a Medical Assistant in Florida. During that time we’ll be stashing away approximately $750 monthly outside of my TSP account until she’s settled in. Quite the shift from our previous $3,000 monthly investment sprint, but fear not – once life’s on a smoother track, we’re revving up to resume our investment engines!
Our investment journey this year has been quite the ride! With our eyes set on retiring and hitting the road in an RV across North America within the next decade, we made some strategic moves. We bid farewell to our Washington home as our new duty assignment had us relocating to Florida. With $150,000 from the sale, we juiced up our Dividend Portfolio, and another $50,000 found a cozy home in our high-yield savings account with Amex, snagging us a sweet 4.35% boost to our passive income. Here’s where it gets interesting: during our move, my ship decided to take an extended vacation, leaving Ashley and our daughter camped out in Indiana to hang with family since we couldn’t complete our PCS. It’s been a bit of a financial tightrope since May with just my income, but we managed to navigate those choppy waters like seasoned experts.
Dividend Portfolio Positions
We’ve got quite the lineup in our portfolio: 19 positions doing their thing, with ETFs standing at a 56% allocation and individual stocks rocking 44%. Our heavy hitters—SCHD, Microsoft, Realty Income, JEPI, and Apple—are leading the charge. We’re all about strategic rebalancing as we pump in more funds, keeping things shipshape without setting off any tax alarms. 2024’s plan? We plan to part ways with DGRO as an ETF in the new year, allocating those funds to SCHD instead. Our individual stocks are mostly allocated at 2% each, so come the new year, MMM and Disney will likely be our first positions we add to.
Below is a break down of all of our portfolio positions as of December 21st.
Passive Income Breakdown
Whoa, our passive income hit turbo speeds this year with a jaw-dropping 240% Year over Year growth! The MVP? That $150,000 we added from our home sale—talk about a game-changer. Our portfolio balance jumped considerably, soaring from $95,000 to $250,000. The dividends? They were the cherry on top, bringing in at a total of $6,156 for the year, averaging a sweet $500 a month. Not too shabby!
Hitting that $1,000 per month mark in passive income feels like it’s within arm’s reach each passing month. In fact, Dividend Tracker has at $1,000 a month already on average so we’ll have to see which estimation tool ends up being correct. When we combine our HYSA and dividends, we’re cruising at an impressive $11,111 annually, averaging $925 predicted in 2024. Charles Schwab’s numbers might wiggle a bit compared to my calculations, but they’re toeing the same line overall.
Our strategy? Keep fueling that dividend account with $750 every month until Ashley gets a job lined up after this cross-country shuffle. It’s no small feat for her to start over somewhere new, but we’re on a mission to keep that momentum going!
Portfolio Performance
Our portfolio’s been a trooper this year, even with SCHD playing a bit of an underdog role. But hey, we’ve been doubling down on SCHD and Realty Income when they took a dip—faithfully believing they’ll bounce back strong, especially with interest rates on the decline. Sure, they weighed on our overall performance, being big players in our allocation, but we saw that as a chance to snag future dividends at a bargain.
Moving to Charles Schwab…
Finally after a year, I got my TD Ameritrade account settled into Charles Schwab, so the performance tracking is only for the last month and a half. Our dividend growth rate clocked in at a solid 6% this year, setting us up for an organic bump of around $450 in dividends for 2024. Our goal? Keep that dividend growth cruising at a steady 4-5%, making sure our retirement income stays ahead of the inflation game. Smooth sailing ahead!
We’re set to retire here in the next five to ten years. That will put us at 41 (Me) and 39 (Ashley). That’s the goal, and we’re on a full-throttle mission to turbocharge our investments and pump up those dividends. They’re not just topping up our military pension, they’re the ticket to our early retirement dream. Our Barista FIRE I number is $6,000 a month with full FIRE being achieved at $8,000. By the time our daughter hits 18, we’ll be all set to kick back, relax, and savor the fruits of our labor.
Catch all the action on Twitter—follow us as Dr. Dividend for an inside look at our ongoing journey. Dive deeper into our story and start crafting your own path toward financial freedom on our website! Oh, and be a superstar—share this article far and wide so everyone can hop on board and build their own rock-solid retirement portfolio. Let’s make those dreams a reality together!
Happy Investing!