Last year I opened a new trust account with TD Ameritrade. I previously wrote about Using an ETF Screener for Investments with TD Ameritrade and My Process For Selecting Steady Dividend ETFs I wanted to invest in for this account. I made my choices and set up some limit orders and before the end of last summer I had set up my investments, as detailed in the post My 5 Dividend ETF Picks. If you want more background, go ahead and read those articles, but you don’t need to read them to understand the rest of the post.
For a refresher, the five ETFs I invested in this investment portfolio were:
- CSB, the VictoryShares US Small Cap High Dividend Volatility Weighted ETF
- ONEY, the SPDR® Russell 1000® Yield Focus ETF from State Street Global Advisors
- HDV, the iShares Core High Dividend ETF from BlackRock
- SCHD, the Schwab U.S. Dividend Equity ETF
- SPYD, the SPDR® Portfolio S&P 500® High Dividend ETF from State Street Global Advisors
Further, during the summer, I also bought some shares in The Walt Disney Company (ticker DIS). I’d already been tracking the company because one of my son’s has a few shares of it in his (custodial) brokerage account. I began feeling optimistic about the Disney+ platform and wanted a larger level of investment in the company in my own portfolio. Disney is a good company for those who like to combine value and growth in their investments. While not the highest dividend generator for the purposes of this account, it currently has a dividend yield of 1.23%.
At the beginning of October, when Charles Schwab announced they were moving to commission free trading, the price of TD Ameritrade shares (ticker AMTD) dropped 26% and I swooped in and snapped some up. The next day TD Ameritrade announced that they would also offer commission free trading. In mid-November, a planned merger between TD Ameritrade and Charles Schwab was announced. (Is this related to the reason that TD Ameritrade was able to make their announcement the day after Charles Schwab did? Hmm.) Anyway, TD Ameritrade shares are now trading back up at the same levels they were prior to the beginning of these news announcements. AMTD currently has a dividend yield of 2.54%.
Why are dividends important to me for this account? My goal in setting up the account was to use 50% of the money that I gained from dividends each year as charitable contributions for my favorite non-profit organizations, as determined by the amount listed on the 1099-INT tax form for that year. I just received my 1099-INT form for my TD Ameritrade Trust account and the amount of dividends that were earned in 2019 was $992.57. I’m gonna round that up a little, divide it in half, and therefore I will be donating $500 to charity. I’ve decided to donate $50 each to a total of 10 non-profit organizations.
I have selected nine charities already that I will be donating to and I am asking you to help choose the 10th charity. Please put your favorite non-profit organization into the comments on my related YouTube video (shown below). Also, if you haven’t subscribed to my YouTube channel, now is a great time to do so. I will be selecting one of the charities from the comments to donate $50 to. I’m requesting that you limit your selections to nonprofit organizations that are designated 501(c)(3) organizations in the United States, though their outreach can be worldwide. You have until Monday, February 17, 2020 to comment on the video. I will then randomly select from the responses given and I will reveal the winner and the names of all the organizations I am donating to next week.