I am writing this dividend update in an attempt to compile my quarterly dividend performance for the year.

The theme for this year dividend income updates will be based on my understanding of the advantage of dividend investing and that is to compound dividends for as early as we can, for as long as we live.

Time is our friend for this very same purpose.

While some may argue that dividend is not everything there is to investing, as they can be easily trumped by other factors such as the larger capital loss, dividend has played a very important part in an investor's return over the long run and therefore should not be neglected.

Kyith, in his latest article, summed up quite nicely on how the flexibility and buffer of your dividend income will help you get towards the final designated financial independence. The common consensus argument I often hear is what happens if there are recessions and the companies you own cut their dividends, won't then investors be caught off-guard with the lesser amount of dividends received?

The answer to that is quite simple.

If you are worried about cases like that, it simply means you didn't know your strategy or companies well enough to make that decision. And if that is the reason why you decide to keep a lot of warchest therein, then by the time you figured it out, you would have lost a lot of opportunity costs on the dividends you would have been receiving if you stay invested. Still, if that is what kept you mentally safe, then it's also not wrong to do what you are comfortable with.

Therefore, my answer to that is, if the valuation of the company is good to buy and you have ascertained some margin of safety embedded inside your justification to buy, and it fits into the strategy you are going for, then just keep on buying, and keep getting that dividends every quarterly/semi-annually/annually.

We can't control the other parts we cannot control so don't bother too much about it.

Without further ado, here are the 3rd Quarter Dividend Income that the portfolio will be receiving:

After tabulating the dividends for all my companies, the 3rd quarter dividend income came up to $15,040.

The annual dividend income so far covers 0.7x of the day to day expenses our household is incurring at the moment.

Together with the past dividends received, the portfolio has now accumulated $116,443 worth of dividends and I hope this number will keep on increasing over the next few quarters and years so it will one day become an integral part of my sustained income to live off my day to day expenses.

Thanks for reading.