I was eagerly waiting for September dividends to come….it is the third highest grossing quarter after Dec and June. So, what is not to like? But, September has come and gone and there is not much excitement in reporting the numbers. The numbers are not that bad year-over-year, but I guess it is the slow progress towards the goals’ end that has made me a bit less excited. But, I told myself…One step at a time….build the dividend streams and the dividend snowballing will start for sure!

That said, lets look at the numbers for September 2017.

Main Takeaways this month

• Passive Income Stream
  • My passive Income for September 2017 is approximately 31.5% higher than September 2016. The main reason for this increase is Investments in a couple of International funds…..VTMGX (International Developed Markets Index) and VEMAX (Emerging Markets Index).
  • I have tried to diversify away from investing only in US market funds and I am just seeing the fruits of that this year on. Roughly 17% of my total dividends this year have come from International funds. I want to bring this up a bit more to reduce the risk of all dividends coming from the US markets.
• Additional Investments
  • Investments in tax-deferred account (IRA)
    • In July, I sold portions of some funds to capture accumulated capital gains and created a cash fund inside my IRA.
    • In August, I deployed some of the cash in the cash fund to buy two international mutual funds…the US funds have not come down from their super expensive valuations.
    • In September, I continued more of the same and invested in the same funds again.
      • VTIAX: Vanguard Total International Stock Fund
        • Lower expense ratio
        • Covers the entire international market (large, medium and small caps)
      • VIHAX: Vanguard International High Dividend Fund
        • Higher expense ration
        • Covers a portion of the international market only (mainly large caps)
    • The curious reader may ask: why not just invest everything in the cheaper VTIAX?
      • I am following my old rule of risk diversification….in the same class of mutual funds (international market), I always have two funds compete for your money.
    • So, both VTIAX and VIHAX will now compete with each other to make more money for me 🙂