My Dividend Investing Goals For 2025
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Overall, 2024 has been another very rewarding year for investors.
The S&P 500 climbed nearly 30% this year—well above the historical average, which is both exciting and concerning. I’m telling you why here.
While I didn’t beat the market in 2024, my portfolio still put on a great show. My main account gained 20.4% and my Roth IRA wasn’t too far behind it with a 20.2% gain—not too shabby.
Thanks to these double-digit gains, my portfolio hit several exciting milestones. We crossed the $70,000 mark, then $80,000, and we even came extremely close to hitting $90,000, which at this rate, we’ll break $90k in no time.
The dividend side of things is also looking great. We should close out the year with just north of $2,800 in dividend income collected—up $600 from last year.
Heading into next year, my projected annual dividend income (PADI) is sitting just north of $3,000, which brings me to my first dividend investing goal for 2025: I’m aiming for a PADI of at least $3,600 by year’s end, or an average of $300 per month in dividends.
Considering I will have only been investing for about six years at that point, reaching that milestone would represent pretty solid progress in a relatively short amount of time. In fact, it’s no time at all in the world of investing.
Next up, my second goal is to increase my weekly contributions to $325 by the end of the year. I started 2024 investing $230 per week and am wrapping up the year at $250 per week, so some progress has been made.
With that said, I’m currently transferring my wife’s brokerage account from Robinhood to Charles Schwab, and once the dust settles from that, I’m going to start contributing $25 per week to her account.
From there, my goal is to gradually increase the contributions so that by the end of 2025, we’re adding $75 per week to her account. This would bring the total contribution rate to my target goal of $325 per week.
To me, this goal feels pretty ambitious and may be a bit of a stretch, but it’s entirely within our control—which is more than I can say for my third goal: reaching a portfolio value of $125,000.
Unlike goal #2, which includes my wife’s account, this one focuses solely on my taxable account and Roth IRA.
If I’m being honest, the initial goal I had in mind was a pretty low-hurdle achievement—hitting six figures—which would have been totally doable with my contributions and reinvested dividends alone, even if the market stayed flat.
But in our most recent episode of The Deep End, Ari challenged me to raise the stakes, and I decided to go for it: $125k by the end of 2025. Hopefully, the market gods will be on my side this upcoming year!
Now finally, my fourth and final dividend investing goal for 2025: reaching 450 shares of SCHD.
As of now, I’m just under 140 shares away. With 60% of my weekly Roth IRA contributions going to SCHD, I should have no problem hitting that goal. Of course, share price fluctuations could throw a wrench in things, but reinvested dividends will surely help the cause.
At any rate, those are all of my dividend investing goals for next year! But enough about me, I want to hear from you: What are your investing goals for 2025? Write to me here and let me know.
And if you want to learn about my BEST and WORST performing dividend stocks of 2024, I’m telling you all about them here.
Dividend Investing Democratized
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IN MY PORTFOLIO 📈
Portfolio performance provided by Snowball Analytics
ICYMI 🎥
Investors NEED To Be Held Accountable - Here's Why | Ep. 2
In the second installment of The Deep End, Ari and I discuss the importance of accountability in investing.
CAREFULLY CURATED 🔍
📺 You Are Not A Stock Market Genius - The Patient Investor's unique twist on Joel Greenblatt's classic You Can Be A Stock Market Genius
🎧 Steady Compounding - A fantastic episode of the Investing For Beginners podcast on the timeless principles for long-term investing success, and why "steady compounding" is better than get-rich-quick schemes.
📚 104% Dividend Yield? - Speaking of get-rich-quick schemes, we should all heed this important lesson from my main man Russ: "Wall Street will always find new ways to sell you complex products with famous names attached. But remember - there’s no free lunch in investing."
SINCE YOU ASKED 💬
"How do you stay motivated when progress is so incremental and changes at a snail's pace?"
- Deepa | Email Submission
Truth be told, motivation comes and goes. If you only did things when you felt motivated, you probably wouldn’t get a whole lot done.
At the end of the day, building a successful dividend portfolio really just comes down to discipline. Lasting wealth is only built through the small and consistent actions you take week after week. And even though progress can feel like it’s being made at a snail’s pace—especially at first—it has to be this way.
You have to make $1 before you can make $10. And you have to make $10 before you can make $1,000.
This idea isn’t exclusive to investing, either. Nothing worthwhile comes easy, and it certainly doesn’t happen fast. You have to do it step-by-step.
As a result, building lasting wealth is meant to be a slow, arduous journey, and that’s one of the biggest reasons so many people never start investing as soon as they should. It’s easier to set up camp at the bottom of the hill than it is to stand up, face the hill, and start walking up it.
The fact that you’ve chosen to take this on—despite how long and tedious it will be—is something you should be proud of. Even though the journey is long and difficult, you’re embarking on it anyway. It's the right thing to do, and you’ll be better off for it.
Plus, the great thing about investing is that it just gets better the longer you stick with it. Your portfolio is growing faster today than it was six months ago—even if you don’t realize it. We have compound interest to thank for that one!
Still, when you’re watching your portfolio every day, it’s easy to feel like nothing is happening. It’s kind of like watching grass grow or watching paint dry.
If you keep staring at it, you won’t notice a difference. But if you step away and give it some time, you’ll come back to realize just how much has changed.
Slowly but surely, that dividend snowball is picking up speed. You just need to stay patient (which is the hardest part) and keep investing, even if you don’t always feel motivated.
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LAST WORD 👋
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