Quarterly Summary · Q2 2026

Q2 2026 Dividend Income: Up 105%, Down 6.5%

The account statements say the quarter more than doubled. The per-share math says my distributions shrank. Both are true.

QUARTERLY · APRIL - JUNE 2026 · 7 MIN READ

Dividend income across both accounts came to $1,488.18 in the second quarter of 2026, against $727.29 a year earlier. That is up 104.6 percent.

Hold my share count from Q2 2025 flat and apply this year's distribution rates to those exact shares, and the same holdings would have paid $680.36. That is down 6.5 percent.

The gap between those two numbers is entirely money I added. This is the first quarter I have measured it, and the result was not what I expected.

My distributions went backwards this quarter. I could not see it, because I bought enough new shares to bury it.

The Quarter

Q2 2026 Dividend Income by the Numbers

Q2 2026 Reported

$1,488.18both accounts

Q2 2025

$727.29same quarter, prior year

Reported Growth

+104.6%up $760.89

Organic Growth

-6.5%2025 shares at 2026 rates

Account	Q2 2026	Reported	Organic
Taxable	$1,403.45	+115.5%	-7.6%
Non-taxable	$84.73	+11.4%	+3.5%
Combined	$1,488.18	+104.6%	-6.5%

Organic = the Q2 2025 share count valued at Q2 2026 per-share distribution rates. Share counts derived by dividing dollars received by per-share distributions for each quarter.

The Split

Where the $760.89 Came From

Three forces moved the number, and only one of them has anything to do with companies paying more.

Source	Amount
New positions bought this year	+$600.90
More shares of funds I already held	+$206.92
Change in per-share distributions	-$46.93
Total increase	+$760.89

Contributions did $807.82 of work. The underlying distributions gave back $46.93 of it. If I had bought nothing at all in the past twelve months, this quarter's check would have been smaller than last year's.

Why I started measuring this

A total that only goes up is not evidence of anything while I am still adding money every month. It will keep rising even if every fund I own quietly cuts its payout, which is roughly what happened here. The reported figure tells me what the portfolio paid. The organic figure tells me what it would pay if I stopped, and that is the version that matters in 2032.

The Drag

International Distributions Fell 21 Percent

One holding explains nearly the whole organic decline. Total International Stock paid $0.257 per share in Q2 2025 and $0.203 in Q2 2026, a drop of 21.0 percent. It was my largest income producer last year, so a cut that size costs real money. On last year's share count it would have paid $74.45 less.

The balanced fund slipped too, down 2.8 percent per share. Between them those two positions did all the damage.

That single holding also explains why my two accounts moved in opposite directions. The non-taxable account owns no international fund at all, just high dividend yield, total market, and the balanced fund. Its organic growth came in at positive 3.5 percent. The taxable account, which carries the entire international position, came in at negative 7.6 percent. Same quarter, same investor, same market, and a 11 point spread produced by one fund's payout schedule.

The caveat I owe you

A single quarter of per-share data is not a trend. International funds shift payment timing between quarters, and European companies in particular concentrate annual distributions in a window that can slide. Some of that 21 percent may reappear in Q3 rather than being lost. I will know by the next update, which is exactly why this becomes a standing line rather than a one-time exercise.

The Bright Side

Most Funds Actually Raised Their Payouts

Strip out international and the picture inverts. High Dividend Yield raised its per-share distribution 12.8 percent. Total Stock Market went up 14.3 percent. The value index fund added 11.8 percent, the growth index fund 7.1 percent, and the intermediate bond fund 6.7 percent. Those are healthy numbers and well ahead of the individual corporate raises I cover most Fridays.

The covered call ETF is worth its own sentence. My share count there moved less than a percent in either direction, making it the only genuine control in the portfolio, and its per-share distribution rose 0.5 percent over twelve months.

Still deciding on this one

Half a percent is what a distribution funded by selling options looks like next to one funded by companies raising payouts. The yield screens beautifully and the payment does not compound. It has now had a full year to prove otherwise and has not.

Context

The First Half, and Ten Years Behind It

Q1 brought $1,150.93 and Q2 brought $1,488.18, putting the first half of 2026 at $2,639.11. Cumulative income since 2015 now stands at $25,493.42.

2025 finished at $7,165.41, a record, and up 59.4 percent on the year. That is almost exactly the 59.5 percent 2024 delivered, two straight years of nearly identical growth. It is also the clearest argument for why I now report a second number. The annual chart has never looked better, and the per-share distributions behind this quarter went backwards.

Year	Dividend Income	Change
2015	$135.10	first year
2016	$149.36	+10.6%
2017	$578.53	+287.3%
2018	$1,560.84	+169.8%
2019	$1,939.37	+24.3%
2020	$2,026.91	+4.5%
2021	$1,010.36	-50.2%
2022	$974.10	-3.6%
2023	$2,818.49	+189.3%
2024	$4,495.84	+59.5%
2025	$7,165.41	+59.4%
2026 H1	$2,639.11	partial year

Wellington capital gains distributions are counted as dividend income throughout, consistent with prior reports.

I sold positions across 2021 and 2022 to cover new expenses, which is the dip. It took until 2023 to get back above where 2020 left off, and those two years together produced less than 2020 did on its own.

Every quarterly update I have published for nine years reported one number. It was the flattering one. From here there are two, and this quarter the second one came back negative.

SOURCES: Vanguard account distribution statements for Q2 2025, Q1 2026, and Q2 2026, both accounts. Per-share distribution rates via Yahoo Finance. Share counts derived by dividing dollars received by per-share distributions, so they reflect an average across each quarter rather than a point-in-time holding. Annual figures 2015 through 2024 from prior reports. Money market settlement fund carried at face value, since a fixed $1 NAV has no meaningful per-share rate. This is a personal portfolio record, not investment advice.