January 2020 Dividend Income Report - $164.99

Welcome to the thirty third (#33) dividend income report, covering earnings I've made from dividend-paying stocks and peer to peer lending in January 2020. 

Just like in the previous years, the last January disappeared like a flicker, little miss Fischer baby girl turned already 18-month old. We started to go to the Georgian language kindergarten, which at the end of the month we still decided to switch to English pre-school with the Montessori teaching method. 

During January we spent all-time in Georgia, did a few road trips to Tsinandali and Gudauri ski resort (twice)

Gudauri Ski Resort in Georgia

This January also marked a small 3 years anniversary since I originally set my goal to have in a savings account 1 million dollars by 2045.

From the market perspective, January was a catastrophe - starting bombings of US bases in Iraq, downing Ukrainian airplane and ending the Coronavirus in China. what a bad place we are living in.  

From the point of dividends, last January was really bad - because of the bad options trades back in November 2019, I have sold off some good dividend stock to cover losses, at the end of December I also got called away one of my anchor payers from covered call, and extra for the first time I have negative return from Mintos.com lending this month. More on that below.

If not all that my dividend in January would be at least $250 this month.

In the end, I have collected $164.99 from dividend stocks.  Compared to the previous January in 2019, that is a decrease of -5.56% (-$9.72). I'm not happy at all, but on the other hand, taking into account all the above written I still believe the return is amazing.

Disclosure: This article contains affiliate links to mintos.com peer to peer lending and deribit.com options trading websites, by clicking on links on this page and by making investment mintos.com or derbit.com, I might earn affiliate income at no cost to you. Also, I'm not a financial advisor and I don't give you any advice, I'm just sharing my own experience. Investments in stocks, funds, bonds or cryptos are risk investments and you could lose some or all of your money. Do your due diligence before investing in any kind of asset. 

An additional $465.80 was made from options trading. I was trading SPX, Gold futures and of course, regular puts calls on dividend stocks/  As options trading is not a passive form of making money while you are sleeping it wouldn't be fair to include them in dividend income reports. 

Last but not least, last January I traded options on cryptocurrencies using Deribit platform, which resulted in an additional $290.95

When counted all together (dividends + options + crypto options), it seems I have made $921.74 in total last month. That's slightly less than my plan for Q1 2020 (the plan is to make at least $1,200/mo from the market), but I will take as I was pretty cautious last January and did not overtrade.

Effective income yield last January was 2.58% (about 30.96% annually) Which is great. One of my monthly goals is to generate at least 2.5% income yield from a portfolio. As longs it's over that - it's awesome. From dividends + active trading taking 30% year seems quite doable. 

Interest income in January 2020

From the stocks and peer to peer lending I got following income last month:

Total: €148.64 / $164.99

In total there were 12 great companies paying us dividends in January 2020, that's the same amount of companies a year ago in January 2019

As you can see from the table above, the Mintos has slipped to the last place with a negative return,  let me explain -   year ago in January, I made EUR 42.91 from the Mintos platform (Most of my investments there were in Georgian lari), in January 2020, Mintos stopped issuing loans in Georgian lari, all existing loans were bought back and I was left with more than 8,000 GEL. I was left with no other options - either to withdraw to my Georgian bank account or to exchange for other currencies. I did both.

I started to exchange GEL to EUR on the platform and for that, I paid a very hefty commission of about GEL 75 (EUR 23.5), as my GEL Income was just GEL 35, it pushed income to negative. At the very end of the month, I exchanged a small amount of money also to RUB and KZT currencies. Will see. But on overall I see Mintos leaving my investment portfolio in 2020 (it will take time for me to exit)

Mintos.com Review 2020 (36 Month of Investing in Peer to Peer Lending)

It should also be noted that last year in January I got a hefty special dividend from Silvano Fashion Group with more than EUR 50 which I didn't get this year. Now a year later having a small decrease in total dividend income taking into consideration all the above said  (negative return from the Mintos, called away dividend stock and no special dividend) it doesn't feel a bad dividend month anymore.

Monthly income

I've been tracking my journey towards million dollars in a savings account since January 2017. Three years already. The result, so far, looks quite good. Dividends are growing (except when they are not, like in this month)

Monthly dividend Income chart as of January 2020

The cumulative earnings for 2020 now are $164.99  which is exactly 4.58% from my goal of 2020 ($3,600). On average, it would ask me to generate $312.27 every month for the next 11 months to reach my goal. Right, now this goal looks pretty hard, but I will try even harder to get there by the end of the year.

2019 in Review and Financial Goals for 2020

Goals for January 2021

This is my favorite part of the reports - trying to forecast/set goals for the next year. But before setting a goal for 2020, let's see what I forecasted/said a year ago (January 2019)

I have a $220 goal for January 2020.  From today's perspective looks very possible, sure,  will ask to add a few more monthly/quarterly dividend paying stocks.

Damned, I missed my goal. That happens sometimes (as long as it doesn't happen too often, it's OK missing your goals). When setting goals for January 2021 I have a minimum $300 goal from dividend income. It will be probably very hard, as I need to raise my current dividend income by about $140, to get there I plan to use quarterly paying stocks, like NRZ, PNNT, and others.