Here’s my quarterly income update as a companion post to my October 2024 asset allocation & performance update. I prefer to track the income produced as an alternative metric to performance. The total income goes up much more gradually and consistently than the number shown on brokerage statements (market price), which helps encourage consistent investing. Here’s a related quote from Jack Bogle (source):
The true investor will do better if he forgets about the stock market and pays attention to his dividend returns and to the operating results of his companies. – Jack Bogle
Here is the historical growth of the S&P 500 total dividend, which tracks roughly the largest 500 stocks in the US, updated after 2024 Q2 (via Yardeni Research):
That is a much smoother ride than the price index. I imagine my portfolio as a factory that churns out dollar bills, or a tree that gives dividend fruit.
Why I like tracking dividends in general. Stock dividends are a portion of profits that businesses have decided to distribute directly to shareholders, as opposed to reinvesting into their business, paying back debt, or buying back shares. They have explicitly decided that they don’t need this money to improve their business, and that it would be better to distribute to shareholders. The dividends may suffer some short-term drops, but over the long run they have grown faster than inflation.
In the US, the dividend culture is somewhat conservative in that shareholders expect dividends to be stable and only go up. Thus the starting yield is lower, but grows more steadily with smaller cuts during hard times. There is also a growing trend towards buybacks, partially because they are easier to discontinue. Here is the historical growth of the trailing 12-month (ttm) dividend paid by the Vanguard Total US Stock ETF (VTI) via StockAnalysis.com.
European corporate culture tends to encourage paying out a higher (sometimes fixed) percentage of earnings as dividends, but that also means the dividends move up and down with earnings. The starting yield is currently higher but may not grow as reliably. Here is the historical growth of the trailing 12-month (ttm) dividend paid by the Vanguard Total International Stock ETF (VXUS).
The dividend yield (dividends divided by price) also serve as a rough valuation metric. When stock prices drop, this percentage metric usually goes up – which makes me feel better in a bear market. When stock prices go up, this percentage metric usually goes down, which keeps me from getting too euphoric during a bull market.
In the case of REITs, they are legally required to distribute at least 90 percent of their taxable income to shareholders as dividends. Historically, about half of the total return from REITs is from this dividend income.
Finally, the last component comes from interest from bonds and cash. This will obviously vary with the prevailing interest rates, the real rates on TIPS, and the current rate of inflation. In 2024, we are finally back to getting paid a small percentage more than inflation on our cash.
Dividend and interest income from my specific asset allocation. To estimate the income from my portfolio, I use the weighted “TTM” or “12-Month Yield” from Morningstar (checked 10/7/24), which is the sum of the trailing 12 months of interest and dividend payments divided by the last month’s ending share price (NAV) plus any capital gains distributed (usually zero for index funds) over the same period. My TTM portfolio yield is now roughly 2.38%.
2.38% is the lowest TTM yield that my portfolio has been since 2021. So even though the value of my portfolio is much higher than a year or two ago, the actual amount of income distributed hasn’t kept up. As you can see from my total annual income tracker, my actual income from this portfolio has been mostly steady since mid-2022 (when interest rates started to rise again). Again, this keeps me from getting too euphoric from the market’s gains. A lot of it is just P/E ratio expansion, which can just as easily be followed by P/E ratio contraction.
What about the 4% rule? For big-picture purposes, I support the simple 4% or 3% rule of thumb, which equates to a target of accumulating roughly 25 to 33 times your annual expenses. I would lean towards a 3% withdrawal rate if you want to retire young (closer to age 50) and a 4% withdrawal rate if retiring at a more traditional age (closer to 65). Too much time is spent debating this number. It’s just a quick and dirty target to get you started, not a number sent down from the heavens!
During the accumulation stage, your time is better spent focusing on earning potential via better career moves, improving your skillset, networking, and/or looking for asymmetrical entrepreneurial opportunities where you have an ownership interest.
As a semi-retired investor that has been partially supported by portfolio income for a while, I find that tracking income makes more tangible sense in my mind. Our dividends and interest income are not automatically reinvested. They are simply another “paycheck”. As with our other variable paychecks, we can choose to either spend it or invest it again to compound things more quickly. You could use this money to cut back working hours, pursue a different career path, start a new business, take a sabbatical, perform charity or volunteer work, and so on. You don’t have to wait until you hit a huge magic number. FIRE is Life!
