Enter your portfolio value and average yield to see your annual, quarterly, and monthly dividend income — and how much you'd need to reach an income goal. Free, no signup.
Annual income
$4,000
Per quarter
$1,000
Per month
$333
To earn $1,000/month at 4% yield, you'd need
$300,000
invested.
Dividend income is the cash your holdings pay you over a year. You can work it out from the top down — total portfolio value multiplied by its average yield — or from the bottom up, adding the dividends from each position. Both give the same answer; the top-down version is faster when you own a fund or a broad basket.
Annual Dividend Income = Portfolio Value × Dividend Yield
Position by position, it is shares multiplied by the annual dividend each share pays:
Annual Income = Shares Owned × Annual Dividend Per Share
Divide the annual figure by 12 for monthly income or by 4 for quarterly. To go the other direction and find the capital an income goal requires, flip the first formula:
Portfolio Needed = Annual Income Goal ÷ Dividend Yield
Say you hold $60,000 in a dividend ETF with a 3.5% trailing distribution yield.
Going the other way: to reach $500 a month — $6,000 a year — at that same 3.5% yield you would need $6,000 ÷ 0.035 = $171,429 invested.
Nothing changes for funds — an ETF's distributions are just the pooled dividends of everything it holds, passed through to you. Enter the ETF position's market value and the fund's distribution yield. Two details are worth watching: most equity ETFs distribute quarterly rather than monthly, so income arrives in four lumps, and the trailing yield reflects the last twelve months of payments while the SEC 30-day yield estimates the next twelve. For a portfolio mixing several funds and stocks, weight each holding's yield by its dollar share to get the blended yield to type in.
The number the calculator returns is pre-tax and pre-growth. In a taxable account, qualified dividends are taxed at long-term capital-gains rates, so plan on keeping somewhat less than the headline figure; in a Roth IRA you keep all of it. It also assumes the yield holds steady — in practice a portfolio of dividend growers should pay a little more each year without you adding money, while a portfolio built around unusually high yields is more likely to see a cut. A diversified dividend portfolio realistically yields 3–5%, so treat any plan that depends on 8%+ as carrying real risk to the income itself, not just to the share price.
Multiply your portfolio value by its average dividend yield. A $100,000 portfolio at a 4% yield produces $4,000 a year — about $333 a month. Divide the annual figure by 12 for monthly or by 4 for quarterly income.
It depends on yield. At a 4% average yield you need $300,000 ($1,000 × 12 ÷ 0.04). At 5% you need $240,000; at 3% you need $400,000. Use the income-goal field above to solve for your own target.
A diversified dividend portfolio typically yields 3–5%. Chasing much higher yields (8%+) usually means taking on more risk of a dividend cut. Sustainable yield from quality companies beats an unsustainable headline number.
In a taxable account, most dividends from U.S. stocks are 'qualified' and taxed at lower long-term capital-gains rates. Holding dividend stocks in a Roth IRA or 401(k) can defer or eliminate that tax.
The same way as a stock, using the fund instead of a single company: multiply the amount you hold by the ETF's trailing 12-month distribution yield. $25,000 in an ETF distributing 3.2% produces about $800 a year. Use the trailing distribution yield rather than the SEC 30-day yield if you want to reflect what the fund actually paid, and remember distributions vary quarter to quarter as the underlying holdings change their dividends.
Yes. Enter the value of your ETF position as the portfolio value and the fund's distribution yield as the yield — the math is identical whether the yield comes from one stock, a basket of them, or a dividend ETF. For a mixed portfolio, blend the yields: weight each holding's yield by its share of the total and enter the combined figure.