Wait, More Spreadsheets? Hello, Dividend Growth Portfolio

Dividend Growth Portfolio - The Road Ahead

Tracking the Road Ahead

Just last week I introduced my 2014 Dividend Calendar, a new spreadsheet and page shared to show in a snapshot the dividends I’ve earned, and the dividends I am projecting to earn for the calendar year. It will be rolled forward each year and allow me a nice visual snapshot of each year’s activity, from purchases to dividend increases, and even when I sell a position. Be sure to go check it out and let me know what you think. After loving that little project, I decided to revamp my dividend growth portfolio with Google Docs in a similar manner, as I was getting tired of manually updating tables. Plus, as my portfolio grows, it is harder and harder to see in a snapshot what my portfolio looks like when you have to scroll for days. Just not an effective use of my screen or yours!

The Dividend Growth Portfolio… Revamped

When designing the new dividend growth portfolio spreadsheet, I knew I wanted to present the information in a quick and easy method to allow people to see my investments and what accounts each is held. As I continue to build my no-cost portfolio with Loyal3, being able to show that subset on its own is important. Likewise, knowing which accounts are taxable and easily accessible for early retirement versus those which are tax-deferred is another distinction I find important. All of those details have been taken into consideration and the end result is as follows.

A special hat tip to Dividend Mantra (portfolio) and DivGro (portfolio) as their portfolio pages inspired some of the thought behind mind.

Tab One: ‘DG Holdings’ – Positions, Weights, and Values

Dividend Growth Portfolio - Tab One Positions Weights and Values

The first tab on the spreadsheet, ‘DG Holdings’, is where you can find all of my positions, organized by the account in which they are held. As you can see in the picture above, the following information is included under the headers shown above.

  • Overall cost basis, inclusive of reinvestments and additional purchases of a position
  • Fair market value (FMV), pulled from Google Finance
  • The relative weight of each position, portfolio and account type in relation to my overall portfolio’s value across all accounts
  • Gain/Loss of my positions in both dollars and as a percentage of the cost basis
Tab Two: ‘DG Forward Dividends’ – Dividend, Current Yield and Yield on Cost

Dividend Growth Portfolio - Tab Two Dividend Pmt Annual Dividend Current Yield and YOC

The second tab on the spreadsheet, ‘DG Forward Dividends’, is designed to show my forward 12-month dividends by position, account, and tax type. Using the same organization as the first tab, the second tab includes all of the information shown in the headers above.

  • Dividend Payment is the dividend paid by each position per period. Some of my positions are monthly and the rest are quarterly
  • The annual dividend is the projected forward 12-month dividends annualized based on the number of shares and current dividend rate.
  • Current yield is the forward 12-month dividends divided by the fair market value of each position. This shows my yield if I were to invest an equal amount of money to my current value at today’s prices.
  • Yield on Cost (YOC) is an important metric in the dividend growth community that will grow over time as each position increases their dividends paid.

With that in mind, be sure to jump over to dividend growth portfolio page and check out the new spreadsheet. I will be keeping this spreadsheet updated throughout a month much like my dividend calendar.

Given my latest addition to my online portfolio tracking, what are your thoughts? Do you like this layout better than what I had previously? Let me know!

Flickr: Mark Stevens

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Comments

  1. Looks great. What are you using for the graphs? Is that a plug-in?

    • Most of the graphs you see on the site are simple products of Excel that have been uploaded as media files. I have extensive tracking spreadsheets and most of them generate various visuals to show how whatever investment they are tracking is doing.

  2. It looks so well organized!

  3. W2R,

    Your formatting and table organization is great. Mine look like a muddled mess in comparison :)

    I’ve also neglected to include my non-DGI investments like 401k. I may have to rethink things.

    Best,

    DWC

    • DWC, thank your for the compliments!

      I actually don’t include quite a few investments on this site. Retirement accounts, an investment club, and other random things that don’t fit in with the two subjects I like to talk about, peer to peer lending and dividend growth investing, aren’t worth tracking on the site, but are an active part of my investment picture. If you want to show your net worth or a complete financial picture, those would need to be included, but that is not something I plan on doing on the blog at this point.

      I appreciate you stopping by and commenting! Best of luck with the new site!

  4. Keep them coming. I really enjoy these articles. I am somewhat of a excel sheet fan myself. Recently playing around with some of the features in google sheets. Currently working on a sheet to track my Loyal3 adventures. :)

    • jmbaby, glad you like the articles! Excel is such an awesome tool and is really conducive to DG investments. I’d be interested in what sort of things you plan on tracking for your Loyal3 investments! Keep me posted.

  5. Very well organized and easy to see worksheet you had there. I like it very much.

  6. I’m loving them! They are very squared away! I need a new one to organize all my little buys from Loyal3 to keep up with cost basis a little easier.

    • All the little buys are pretty complicated to keep track of, but I’ve developed a monthly snapshot spreadsheet that captures all of my purchases. We will see going forward what I end up doing in the long-term considering the volume of transactions over time.

  7. I’ll give it a looksee. I’ve been wanting to get my spreadsheet a bit more automatic especially for my Loyal3 portfolio since there’s a lot of small purchases. By the way, just crossed the $2k mark for that portfolio. Really loving the small consistent purchases.

    • Can’t say the spreadsheet is entirely automatic, but it doesn’t require a ton of updating at this point. Just pop in the share total each month for any position that paid a dividend and move on with life. Congrats on crossing the $2k mark with Loyal3, I’m hoping to end the year above the $6k mark, so it should be a nice portfolio to start generating its own momentum in 2015 and beyond.

      Appreciate you stopping by and commenting!

  8. These look really clean and organized. I’m a big fan of Google Docs except every once in a while, there’s an error message when it tries to pull in information automatically. I only have to change the share count and cost basis, everything else is automated. I like the tabbed idea but currently just have one sheet posted. I may make an additional tab for my Motif account as it gets a little larger. Thanks for sharing.

    • I am not a huge fan of Google Docs, but can appreciate some of the functionality. Like yourself, it as easy as updating the share count and cost basis and the rest takes care of itself. My biggest challenges are it isn’t near as robust as Excel for an advanced user and some of options just do not exist. I only have separate tabs to minimize the scrolling a reader has to do. Just one click and they can see everything.

      Thanks for sharing your process and commenting AAI.

  9. WYR,

    Digging the new spreadsheets! Also like how clean it looks, something I need to go back and fix myself for my own spreadsheets. I also like that it’s stocks, cost, market value on one page and then the glorified dividend details on a separate page. Nice job!

    -Lanny

    • Thanks Lanny! I am digging them as well. Pretty easy to see in a snapshot my holdings by account, total value, and of course, what my forward 12-month dividends will be.

      Enjoy your weekend!

  10. Not bad. May I ask why you put your cost basis and FMV in? I don’t put mine because I’m really only concerned with the income my investments produce, not their current value.

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