I agree with you that I think they have a huge moat, and even if prices stayed down for a fair while, I still think they can cope. They have seen their fare share of trouble over the last 69 years, and yet their dividend history proves that they have maintained a healthy dividend over the very VERY long-term!

Thanks again for stopping by!

Cheers!

Glad to be a fellow Shareholder of RDS(B)! Like many other oil businesses RDS is an incredibly profitable business with a lot of moat – and it will be far into the future.

If I wasn’t as heavy on energy stocks already, I’d definitely add more Royal Dutch to my portfolio too. Let me know if you decide to take the plunge and buy more shares!

Cheers,
NMW

I nearly did the same! I kept seeing it appear in my ‘dividend growth 7+ yrs’ list, but looking at the payment confused me! I am glad I bought them when I did, they are a company who I’ve bought from many years, and now that they’re on the FTSE350, they fall into many more investors’ radars, so I think that can be a really good thing.

Cheers!

I was nearly about to downgrade JD from the dividend list as their interim payment looked lower this year; but then I saw they did a 4:1 stock split and had adjusted prices for that.

I think their dividend growth is about 10 years and I’ll research that some more this afternoon.

Best wishes,
-DL

Thank you for your really thorough comment! This account setup is a system which looks really logical. It’s clean and simple. I really like and appreciate that when trying to stay organised in every area, not just money. I actually find it really difficult to know what’s going on half the time, because my husband and I do not share accounts, we just transfer money around quite a lot. We have several sub-accounts like ‘car’ and ‘household’, which we transfer set amounts into every month to pay for annual/infrequent expenses like car insurance. It gets a bit confusing at times, and my husband finds it difficult to know exactly where we are each month in the various accounts, because they are linked to my current account, rather than his. I still do not have a good solution for managing all these accounts and sub-accounts…

But your system is really elegant.

And I am looking into decent mutual funds now (indexing ones I guess). If I can find a good dividend growth one, I’ll let you know.

Thanks again for your comment, I really appreciate it.

I went through similar thoughts when I started investing. At one point I was buying stocks based on the month they paid dividends out so I’d have fairly stable income each month but I no longer do this and I wouldn’t recommend dividend payment date as being a criteria for a stock purchase.

I would extend that logic to quarterly vs. bi-annual too, although as NMW pointed out the APY with a quarterly payout could be higher because of compounding. But this is only if you could re-invest the dividends which if they’re low may not be possible, and as you point out new money being added is going to over-power any dividend re-investment compounding.

My original solution to this cash-flow ‘problem’ was to find investment funds that paid out monthly. So I invested in some high-yield bond funds / REIT funds that paid a monthly distribution. I still have a position in VWEHX, but I only hold the REIT fund in my retirement plan as it’s not very tax efficient. I mostly prefer stocks or stock funds now as the dividends are taxed lower in the US.

For partial shares, possibly mutual funds are a solution for you as you can buy those in various amounts. I have shares in VHDYX which is a low cost index of dividend growth stocks and you might find something similar available to you that’s commission-free. Otherwise for stock purchases you’ll need to accumulate the investment amount until it’s high enough to justify the stock purchase commission / fees.

For cash-flow I finally reached a solution I’m happy with simply by separating bank accounts. I now have 4 main bank accounts…”income”, “living expenses”, “savings” and “emergency fund”

The “Income” bank account is where all income is deposited including my pay check and all dividend income. From this account, I transfer a set monthly amount ($3960 – my budget) to the “Living Expenses” account as well as a set amount to my “Savings” account for long term saving goals. My emergency fund is fully funded so I don’t transfer money to it currently.

The amount I can invest each month is any remaining money e.g. Investment Amount = Pay Check + Dividends – Emergency Fund – Savings – Living Expenses.

All living expenses are paid out of the “Living Expenses” account, including all credit cards which are automatically paid in full. This is an online account with a ‘reasonable’ interest rate (0.2% going up to 0.65%) compared to my income account at a standard bank which has 0% interest. I try to keep 3 months worth of living expenses in the living expense account as a minimum balance, so if my income stream stopped I’d have 3 months to plan how to panic.

For dividend income, I simply let any dividends accumulate in the brokerage accounts for the current month and transfer them over at the end of the month – they arrive in my “Income” account the following month when they affect the investment amount.

Cheers,
-DL