In my first year, I earned €22.70 in dividends. In my second year, that number jumped to over €534. A 2,254% increase. And I was a 22-year-old ICT student doing this with internship money.
This post covers everything that happened in year two: the dividends that rolled in, the shift in strategy that accelerated my income, and the honest mistakes I made along the way. If year one was about proving the system works, year two was about discovering what happens when you start feeding the flywheel with real money.
The Context — A Student Investor With a New Income Stream
My first year of investing was funded by savings. Year two was different: I started an internship alongside my ICT bachelor’s program, which gave me a regular income for the first time. The question was what to do with it.
Most of my peers were spending their internship money on going out, clothes, and gadgets. I did some of that too — I’m not a monk. But I decided to channel a significant portion into my dividend portfolio. I was 22 years old and had already seen what even a small portfolio could produce. I wanted to find out what happened when I scaled it up.
Over the course of 2022, I invested approximately €2,500 in new positions — including Shell, Aegon, Heijmans, SBM Offshore, NN Group, and my first US stocks — while continuing to hold everything from year one. By the end of the year, my total portfolio was worth around €9,169 — a modest amount by most standards, but meaningful for a student building from zero.
The Dividend Explosion — From €22 to €534
Year one produced two dividend payments, both from KPN, totaling €22.70.
Year two produced dividends from eight different companies across nearly every month from March through August. Watching my brokerage account light up with payment notifications throughout the year — instead of just twice — was a completely different experience.
Here’s every dividend payment I received in 2022, in the order they arrived:
March — My first Shell dividend landed: $24.48. This was from the 102 shares I’d bought in January, and it arrived barely two months later. Shell would go on to pay me four times during 2022 — a quarterly payer that delivered income like clockwork.
April — The floodgates opened. Three companies paid me in a single month:
Randstad: €41.61
KPN: €45.50
Ahold Delhaize: €36.40
April was the first time I experienced what a diversified dividend portfolio actually feels like in practice. Three separate payments arriving within weeks of each other, from three completely different sectors — staffing, telecom, and grocery retail. This is what an income supply chain looks like when it’s working: multiple suppliers delivering at different times, so your cash flow is never dependent on a single source.
May — The heaviest month of the year. Three more payments:
ING Group: €41.00
PostNL: €78.08
ING Group (again): €23.20
Yes, ING paid twice in May — a regular dividend and a separate distribution. Combined with PostNL’s payout, May alone delivered over €142 in dividend income. That’s more than my entire first year earned in total — arriving in a single month.
June — Shell’s second quarterly payment: $25.50. Steady, predictable, almost boring. Exactly what you want from a dividend.
July — A small payment from Aegon: €2.79. Not much, but it was my first dividend from a position I’d built specifically for income — a sign that my newer, yield-focused purchases were starting to contribute. (Aegon would later merge its Dutch operations with ASR Nederland, which turned out to be one of the more interesting consolidation stories in Dutch insurance.)
August — Three more payments closed out the dividend season:
KPN: €24.00
ING Group: €17.00
PostNL: €37.94
Full year total: approximately €534
From €22.70 to €534 in one year. The portfolio wasn’t even that much larger — it grew from roughly €6,800 to €9,200 in invested capital. The dividend income grew by over 2,200% because I went from one paying company to eight, and because I’d had a full calendar year of holding positions rather than buying them halfway through the year.
What Drove the Jump
The massive year-over-year increase wasn’t magic. Three specific things caused it:
More companies paying me. In year one, only KPN was in my portfolio long enough to pay a dividend. In year two, eight companies paid me. Diversification isn’t just about reducing risk — it’s about creating multiple income streams that pay at different times throughout the year.
A full year of holding. Most of my year-one purchases were made in October 2021, meaning they’d only been held for a couple of months by year-end. In 2022, those same positions had a full 12 months to generate dividends. The income didn’t grow because the stocks performed better — it grew because I held them longer.
Deliberately choosing higher-yield investments. In year two, I started investing in companies specifically for their dividend income: Shell (energy, quarterly payer, high yield), Ares Capital and Main Street Capital (US business development companies with frequent dividends), and additions to existing positions. I was no longer buying passively — I was building an income machine.
The Shift That Changed My Thinking
Year one taught me that dividends are real. Year two taught me something more nuanced: not all dividends are created equal.
I started paying attention to dividend yield, but I also learned that yield alone isn’t the full story. PostNL was one of my highest-yielding positions, and it delivered €116 in dividends that year — impressive for the position size. But the company’s business was under structural pressure from declining mail volumes, and I began to wonder whether that high yield was a reward or a warning sign.
This was my first real encounter with what I’d later explore in depth in my analysis of dividend red flags. A high yield that exists because the share price has been falling might not be a gift — it might be the market telling you the dividend is at risk. I didn’t sell PostNL in year two, but the seed of that understanding was planted.
Meanwhile, quieter positions like Ahold Delhaize (€36.40 in dividends) and KPN (€69.50 across two payments) delivered less dramatic income but from far more stable businesses. The grocery company and the telecom company weren’t exciting, but their dividends felt solid in a way that PostNL’s didn’t. This is the difference between a defensive income holding and a high-yield gamble — a distinction I’ve since come to consider one of the most important in dividend investing.
Venturing Into the US Market
Year two also marked my first step into international investing. I bought small positions in Ares Capital and Main Street Capital — two US-based business development companies (BDCs) that pay high dividends funded by lending to mid-sized businesses.
The income from these positions was tiny in year two (just a few euros combined) because I bought late in the year with small amounts. But the experience taught me something important about international dividend investing: withholding tax is real and it hurts.
When a US company pays you a dividend as a Dutch investor, the US government withholds 15% before you receive it (assuming you’ve filed the right tax forms). This means your effective yield is lower than the headline number. For a 7% yielding BDC, you’re actually getting about 6% after US withholding — before your own Dutch taxes.
This is the kind of lesson you only learn by doing. Reading about withholding tax is abstract. Seeing a chunk deducted from your first international dividend payment makes it concrete and permanent in your memory. It’s also exactly why Dutch-listed dividend stocks — like KPN, Ahold Delhaize, ING, and NN Group — have a structural advantage for Netherlands-based investors. No foreign withholding tax friction means the full dividend arrives in your account.
The Numbers in Context
Total invested capital (end of year 2): ~€9,200
Total dividends received in 2022: ~€534
Yield on invested capital: approximately 5.8%
That 5.8% yield on cost was strong — meaningfully above what a savings account or bond fund would have delivered. And unlike interest from a savings account, this yield had the potential to grow each year as companies raised their dividends. NN Group, for example, follows a progressive dividend policy designed to increase the payout every year, and KPN had similar ambitions for annual dividend growth.
Cumulative dividends received (years 1 + 2): approximately €557
I’d gotten back roughly 8% of my total invested capital as dividends in under two years, while still owning all the shares. The portfolio value itself was up about 3.4% (€301 in price gains), but honestly, I cared less about that. The dividend income was the metric I tracked — because that’s the number that eventually replaces your salary.
What I Learned in Year Two
Diversification Creates Income Smoothing
Going from one dividend payer to eight transformed the experience. Instead of waiting months between payments, I received income almost every month during the spring and summer. This “income smoothing” effect — having multiple companies paying at different times — made the portfolio feel like a real income source rather than an occasional bonus. It’s the same principle behind building redundancy into any system: if one company skips or delays a payment, the others keep the income flowing.
The Power of a Full Calendar Year
Most of the income jump from year one to year two came simply from holding positions for a full year. Time in the market — not timing the market — is what generates dividend income. Every month you delay starting is a month of dividends you’ll never receive.
High Yield Deserves Extra Scrutiny
The excitement of high-yield positions (PostNL, Shell) was real, but year two planted the first doubts about whether high yield always means good value. Some of my highest-yielding positions would later prove to be the most problematic. If you’re tempted by a yield above 6–7%, it’s worth running through the red flags checklist before committing — is the yield high because the company is genuinely generous, or because the share price has been falling?
International Investing Adds Complexity
US dividend stocks offered access to companies and structures (like BDCs) that don’t exist on the Dutch market. But withholding tax, currency conversion, and different payment schedules added friction. For Dutch investors building a dividend portfolio, there’s a strong case for starting with the home market — companies like KPN, Ahold Delhaize, ING, NN Group, and ASR — before venturing internationally.
Using Active Income to Fund Passive Income
Channeling internship earnings into dividend stocks felt like building a bridge between my working life and my financial future. Every euro I invested from my internship was a euro that would keep paying me dividends long after the internship ended. That mental reframe — from spending income to planting income — was the most important shift of the year.
Where This Was Heading
At the end of year two, my portfolio was producing roughly €45/month in dividends on average. Not life-changing. Not even bill-paying yet. But the trajectory was clear: I’d gone from €1.89/month (year one) to €45/month (year two), and I was still in the early phase of the compounding curve.
What I couldn’t see yet — but what the numbers were already pointing toward — was that year three would push past €700, and the years after that would accelerate further. The flywheel that felt painfully slow in year one was starting to spin.
€534 was still a small number in the grand scheme of things. But it was 23 times larger than year one. And year three would prove that the acceleration was just beginning.
Read the next chapter: My Third Year of Dividend Investing — €719.67 Received
Read how it started: My First Year of Dividend Investing — €22.70 Received
