Do you check your dividends?

[Caduceus]

It's been a long-term habit of mine to check that I actually receive my dividends every quarter, but while it is simple enough to do, it is somewhat tedious, especially for positions that I have automatic re-investment for dividends, because then I have to verify the executed price was reasonable for that day, and that the number of shares received was correct, etc.

How often do you check that you have received the correct amount of dividends, and have there ever been any mistakes? I cannot recall a single mistake ever made with regard to the dividends credited to my account.

By the way, one of the things I've realized after doing a lot of the tedious work is that Vanguard's re-investment price tends to be better 80% of the time. I don't know why this should be the case since clearly Vanguard probably doesn't have a superior trading algorithm to consistently out-perform all other firms on re-investment price.

[Jack FFR1846]

I look every day on Schwab when I'm looking in my account. I don't re-invest them, I pull them out to my checking account so it's pretty easy to see they're there. Takes 5 seconds from the main page. This is a taxable account.


Oh....thanks for this topic. I checked my TDAmeritrade account and had a dividend available to withdraw. Not as familiar with that site so took about 30 seconds.

[PFInterest]

never, and none.

[SQRT]

I have a spreadsheet that forecasts my divs, amounts and dates. I check for them the day they are due and transfer the funds out to spend. Never been a mistake.

[aristotelian]

I have mine set to pay out rather than reinvest in the brokerage account, so I do try to keep track of those and then make purchases when they build up so as to purchase larger lots. In my retirement accounts I have them set to reinvest and don't really look. Never noticed a mistake in either one.

[InvestorNewb]

I check mine every quarter. Only 4 ETFs so it only takes a few minutes but I look forward to it.

Sometimes I notice the amount that I receive is off by 1 or 2 cents maximum.

[mptfan]

Sometimes I notice the amount that I receive is off by 1 or 2 cents maximum.

That sounds like rounding.

[triceratop]

Yes, always, when I am updating my personal accounting ledger I have to verify all transactions.

I notice my IXUS [iShares Total Intl. Stock Market] dividend appeared today, and I invested it in Intermed. Term Treasuries (VGIT) so thank you for the reminder!

[mhc]

never

ignorance is bliss

[livesoft]

Yes always. And I have found mistakes, too.

I use mostly ETFs which go ex-dividend about a week before I receive the actual cash payout gets into my account. For instance, VSS traded $0.823 less starting on the ex-div date of 6/21, but the $0.823 didn't show up until this morning on 6/27 when I could reinvest it. My brokers don't tell me the dollar amount of the impending accrued money, so if I don't calculate it, then all my comparisons to my benchmarks will be off. And since my funds typically pay about 0.5% dividend every quarter, it will look like I'm underperforming the benchmark if I don't calculate the dollar amounts and use them in the benchmark comparisons.

I once received a double-credit for a capital gains distribution which was corrected a day or two later. What happened was the the dividend+cap gains (total distribution) was paid as a dividend and then the cap gains distribution was paid on top of that separately. Of course, I had already (re)invested the entire amount and I had to sell some shares to get cash to pay back the excess to the broker.

And I look at my spouse's paychecks, too. Her company usually makes a few mistakes a year on those. Ignorance is costly.

[F150HD]

How often do you check that you have received the correct amount of dividends, and have there ever been any mistakes?

viewtopic.php?p=3418771

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[House Blend]

It's been a long-term habit of mine to check that I actually receive my dividends every quarter, but while it is simple enough to do, it is somewhat tedious, especially for positions that I have automatic re-investment for dividends, because then I have to verify the executed price was reasonable for that day, and that the number of shares received was correct, etc.

Yes. Especially in taxable, I keep a very close eye on them, mostly because (a) they affect current year taxes and tax planning, and (b) the quarterly distribution schedule dictates four of the dates when I will make new investments.

However, I do not auto-reinvest in taxable, so there is less to check.

In tax-advantaged, I usually take a look at some point after the fact, just to confirm that they were credited and look roughly correct. Same as I would any other transaction in tax-advantaged.

With bond funds that accrue dividends without affecting NAV you can't expect to independently nail down the correct dividend to within a penny--you are adding up a months worth of daily dividends each subject to half penny round off errors. If you buy or sell shares in mid-month, that adds additional potential for error if you try to prorate the effect on the dividend.

How often do you check that you have received the correct amount of dividends, and have there ever been any mistakes?

I *have* seen weird mistakes over the years. Here's a post of mine from last year about a cap gains distribution from a Vanguard fund that was credited to my TIAA account twice, and then silently corrected two months later.
viewtopic.php?p=3061960#p3061960

See also recent active threads here in which Vanguard seems to have reported some stale prices for dividend reinvestments. The reported prices were not what was used internally--the actual share counts transacted were correct.

[Ron]

I see them as they are issued during a daily Quicken update of my/our FIDO/VG accounts.

- Ron

[jdb]

Also never and none. Trust Vanguard to do it right. And I don't balance our checkbook either but that is another topic.

[Helo80]

No. If I'm getting screwed, it's my own fault. I assume the SEC and this being all financial stuff, it's heavily regulated and the software transactions are heavily tested in dev environments.

[LeeInTN]

Never, ever - Until yesterday.

Why yesterday? We use dividends for living expenses and didn't want to wait until the bank checking acct statement arrived this time around, as we were running a relatively low checking balance and wanted to see the amounts that were auto-deposited.

[JaneyLH]

Also never and none. Trust Vanguard to do it right. And I don't balance our checkbook either but that is another topic.

+1, +1

From what others have written it seems that when dividend mistakes occur they are auto corrected. I don't rely on dividends to pay the bills so it doesn't bother me if there is a time lag.