I wanted to give you guys an update to my dividend portfolio for 2021.  

For some context, I started heavily investing in these accounts towards the end of 2019/beginning of 2020.  In that time, there was a heavy downturn in the March/April pandemic lockdowns, and a quick rise back up in the few months following.  Since that time, there has been a heavy climb, particularly in certain sectors like tech/innovation.  

I've benefited from the quick recovery, and was able to acquire a far amount of positions at a decent discount during the lockdowns. 

My current goal for 2021 is to get to $5,000 in annual dividends. This equates to about $416 per month.  Initially I thought it would be cool to replace one full days normal work with a month of dividend income (a little over $300) but then figured why not push it a bit.  As Grant Cardone and his 10x strategy would suggest, aim for the moon in your goals.  You might miss the moon, but you'll still reach closer to the stars.

I'm happy with my progress so far.  My monthly total could more than cover a few of my monthly expenses such as:

• Car Insurance:  $73 a month
• Cell Phone bill:  $74 a month
• Gas:  About $80 a month in personal miles

However, all dividend income is continually reinvested back into more dividend paying holdings. I only DRIP (auto dividend reinvestment) back into ETFs.  The rest I have manually deposit into my brokerage and then I purchase what I feel is undervalued at the time or new positions I'm building. 

The current yield on my taxable brokerage is about 2.63%.  This yield is pretty low - as I've got about 10% of the account invested in more pure growth stocks that pay zero dividends (and some additional stocks that have temporarily suspended/canceled their dividends - like Disney $DIS).  

Ideally I'd like to be getting a yield in the 4% range.  But I'm happy with my overall investments and gains for the year (averaging about a 24% return).

A few notes + my top holdings:

• I try to keep my investments to 50% ETF/Index funds, and 50% individual stocks.  To me this acts as a good buffer against my own decisions.  This way if I'm wrong, at least I have the index funds to back it up.
• My top holdings currently include: 
  • $VTI (Vanguard Total Stock Market ETF).  Yield 1.38%.  Average price paid per share:  $163.78.
  • $SBUX (Starbucks).  Yield 1.58%.  Average price paid per share:  $76.77.
  • $VGT (Vanguard Information Technology ETF).  Yield 0.80%.  Average price paid per share:  $310.30.
  • $T (AT&T).  Yield 7.19%.  Average price paid per share:  $29.78.
  • $QYLD (Global X Funds Nasdaq Covered Call ETF).  Yield 11.13%.  Average price paid per share:  $22.82.
  • $RTX (Raytheon Technologies).  Yield 3.20%.  Average price paid per share:  $58.44.
• These do not include dividends from my M1 Finance portfolio, that averages about a 4% yield but includes A TON of fractional shares and is therefore hard to breakdown and include like the above.

I hope in sharing it'll inspire some of you the way others transparency has inspired me.  Please do not take any of the above to be investment advice, merely me sharing what I'm doing.  

One dividend course I really enjoyed (and affiliate for) is written by @Divcultivator on Twitter and IG.  His course lays out, in my opinion, a very user friendly and simple explanation about how to go about researching companies and stocks likely to continue to pay dividends and grow.  Feel free to check it out via my affiliate link here (if purchased from here, I receive a portion of the proceeds):  Too Much Money (Dividend Investing Course)

Thanks for reading, and until next time - stay hip!