This is an interesting portfolio with a blend of income and growth, private equity etc.
Until recently, I held a few of the growthier trusts like JGGI, HGT, AGT and FEV.
Iām not sure Iād describe it as a simple approach though that is relative.
You can tell a lot of thought has been put into the allocations to different investment styles, managers, geographies etc.
Hi
The videos I normally watch are Interactive investor, Kepler trust intelligence, QuotedData, Sharesoc which all focus on interviews with investment trust managers.
I watch plenty more for fun, but I like hearing the sales pitch from the horses mouth! Only downside is the temptation to tinker when the seeds of new ideas are planted.
Do we need to pay ongoing fees when having investment trusts? Or is it same as other normal stocks?
And how frequently are they paying dividends?
All fees are included in the share price, no additional cost from the investment companies (ICs). The frequency of payment may varies, I would check the ICās website or the AIC site.
This guide is a good starting point:
Ive got a free coffee 
started using this recently. best app ive used for tracking dividends. has everything you need really. You can also import your transaction history from FT - this took some work to reformat into acceptable data. im suprised its free honestly.
This is the one I use on my Fruit Phone and I think itās brilliant. Huge hooves up from me.
I didnāt know about the import feature! I only started chasing dividends this year so it was easy enough for me to put everything in manually. I got a dividend in my Freetrade account today and was surprised that Divident Tracker had matched it to the penny - it gives me faith in its TTM figures and other bits of the reporting.
I did have this app on my phone but not any more.
As Iām continually buying to top up my investments (not all of them on Freetrade), it became a chore to update the app as well as my own spreadsheets so Iāve continued to stick to the spreadsheets now.
Also, there were a couple of investments of mine (investment trusts) where the dividend yield was incorrect (by miles) and there was no mention that dividends were even paid at all - I flagged several times but it was never updated.
Yeah iāve found one position (Unilever) where the dividend payments are off - I have flagged this.
Issue I have with my spreadsheet is the data scraping very often goes down which is annoying.
For a few months I had at least one renewable trust that still showed a dividend in the predicitions for the next 12 months and the next 10 years despite the trusts declaring that theyād cut the dividends to zero.
It did sort itself out in the end, perhaps it was when the next ex div date came around. I donāt know if this was different to how any other app would handle it to be honest. It didnāt bother me too much.
I donāt think any developer is ever going to match the expectations of someoneās personally crafted spreadsheet masterpiece, especially yours!
Half year update:
I (given no other additions) was expecting Ā£1130 in dividends for 2024 but currently expecting Ā£1273.81 and accounting for approximately 1% growth per month should hopefully end out the year at ~Ā£1350 in dividends for 2024. and should start 2025 expecting ~Ā£1500. (from my monthly additions I factor in a 1% per month gain in dividends in the current year and 2% for the next year as I buy on the ex div day to take advantage of the price drop)
Past and forecast Monthly:
Payments Received:
Had my best ever month (could have been higher had VUSA paid out in the month it was supposed to) in June of Ā£230 dividends paid into the account. Capitals is now currently doing well also, ~1600 in the green.
In terms of dividend growth:
it is growing at the rate of approximately Ā£250 per year, but with compounding it should hopefully increase the rate in coming years. If it is fit to an exponential the line is 798(e^0.231x).
All going to plan, current yield based on my deposits is 5.19% up from 4.5% showing that I had picked some decent payers with increasing dividends. Hopefully that will also increase given time. I suppose I should be able to retire and live off the dividends in ~25 years given other pensions and the state pension as well. Will be looking forward to ~40k joint income without factoring in the state pension without touching the capital, which should be nice enough to live on. Also hopefully the rate of additions will increase as well meaning might be able to push it down to 22 years.
Love seeing your monthly progression, @cuhomebrew and reading about your long term plan.
Increasing rate of additions plus increasing dividends will continue to gradually snowball. 
ISA dividends for June:
[Context - Portfolio size around Ā£70k, been investing since 2015]
A milestone for me as itās the first time Iāve received over Ā£500 in ISA dividends in a single month.
Have yet to receive Freetradeās payment of the TRIG dividend (The Renewables Infrastructure Group) but I received my payment from another broker, so TRIG will appear again in July for the missing payment.
Average yield for the portfolio is now running at around 6.2%.
Progression over the years:
Hope June was a good dividend month for you too!
soon be able to retire !
Thanks for sharing @BlueSonic - Have to say that Iāve never really looked at who my biggest dividend payer is, although I should have the data in my spreadsheets.
If I have time, Iāll see what that looks like - I canāt even think of which investment it could be, perhaps one of my REITS (though unlikely to be SUPR, like you).
I see many of you having investment trust or REIT. Can anyone please explain this ongoing fee? These fees seem quite a lot for me compared to ordinary shares but perhaps Iām wrong. In fact, I do not understand this calculation from FT. I attached SUPR.L for example.
There are two lots of charges here - firstly SUPRās own charges and then Freetradeās charges.
SUPRās charges will be reflected in its share price, itās not a fee or charge which you pay out of your bank account, unlike Freetradeās charges.
So the current share price of SUPR is Ā£0.718 - the charges have already been taken into account in that share price.
If not for its high charges, the share price would likely be higher. However, this stock is generally held as a dividend income stock, not a growth stock, hence Iām not overtly bothered about the charges (although they are high, though not the highest Iāve seen!)
I wouldnāt say soon. Iām looking at normal retirement age here, unless I get some REALLY lucky picks and the investment account takes off massively, but even still Iāll probably keep working to 65-67. Once the pension kicks in for the two of us we should have ~Ā£25k in pensions then whatever the government decided to give us as a State pension (not really banking on it) plus ~Ā£13k in dividends in the ISA. Given we are about to pay off the house might be able to put more into the ISA to increase it faster, but that would make it more like Ā£16k instead of Ā£13k so not a major difference. Unless there is a major inflationary event should be OK even without dipping into the ISA dividends so it could be split for the kids into their ISAs as they grow to hopefully enable them to live a decent life as well.
I see this investment malarky more as a means to create generational wealth, by instilling good habits in the kids then hopefully given they would start earlier (funded by us) they might be able to reap the compounding even more. Ā£10k per year for 10 years at 18 into a S&Shares ISA would give them a decent start on anything they would want to be able to do at 50 (like sort their kids out with a deposit)
Many thanks @weenie ! You mean that we do not pay those ongoing charges?
If you see ācosts and chargesā of each stock, you see the above calculation. Some are very small, e.g., LGEN is Ā£25, but this one is as you can see Ā£524. I donāt understand this.
