Main Takeaways

I came back after a two week travel on work related matters and every day of that trip was a emotional roller coaster. Markets up and markets down…sometimes, within the same day. I expected a downturn and planned for it (here)…but, that did not soften the blow much. At the end of August, my portfolio has taken a beating….but so did a lot of people. So, what were my main takeaways this month?

• August is a soft month for dividends…so, not much cushion to soften the blow from the down markets. September is a much better month for dividends…so, looking forward to next month.
  • College fund took a hit
  • Retirement funds took a bigger hit.
  • Last month’s zero gain is looking good now 🙂
• Passive income for August 2015 continued the winning trend vs last year.
  • I compute Passive Income per month as (total passive income in this year) / number of months completed this year.
  • Total passive income is a sum of dividends + capital gains distributions.
  • August Passive Income = (total passive income in this year) / 8 == $53.74 pm.
  • Doing it this way keeps the monthly passive income more realistic because I can instantly know which of my monthly expenses are covered by this amount. I keep a separate tracker for this which I will write about at a later date.
• I did take advantage of the down markets and added to my investment in VDIGX. My cost basis was close to $23 per stock before the market hit a downturn…but I invested about $1500 at an average of $21.50 per stock. This new investment will contribute towards dollar cost averaging my holdings. Yeah for that!