A June ex-date does not make a July payment a June cash receipt.
SCHD's June 26, 2024 ex-date had a July 1 payable date. For an assumed 100 eligible pre-split shares, $0.8241 per share gives $82.41 nominal gross. Expressed in December 2024 dollars, July CPI gives about $82.689032; June CPI gives about $82.785098. Their unrounded difference is about $0.096066, or $0.10 to cents. Under our cash-receipt convention we select July; the difference is a month-selection effect, not a fee or another dividend.
The 2025 payable-month worksheet uses events whose ex-date and payable date happen to share a month. This earlier event is a useful counterexample: copying the ex-date month would silently select a different index. We examine only this payment, not a complete 2024 portfolio.
Keep both dates in the source row
The issuer table lists ex-date June 26, record date June 26 and payable date July 1, 2024, with total distribution $0.8241 per share. Its split notice places the three-for-one split later, effective October 10, 2024. Our 100-share assumption therefore uses the same pre-split unit as that historical payout row.
The BLS CUUR0000SA0 monthly series gives June 2024 index 314.175, July 314.540 and December 315.605. It is all-items CPI-U, U.S. city average, not seasonally adjusted, on the 1982–84 = 100 reference scale. We choose December 2024 as the money comparison base.
| View | Source date | CPI month | CPI | Dec2024 dollars |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ex-month alternative | 2024-06-26 | 2024-06 | 314.175 | 82.785098 |
| Payable-month convention | 2024-07-01 | 2024-07 | 314.540 | 82.689032 |
Change the month, hold the cash constant
Start with nominal cash C = 100 × 0.8241 = $82.41. Under the payable-month rule, the converted value is 82.41 × 315.605/314.540 = about 82.689032 December-2024 dollars. Under an explicitly different ex-month rule, it is 82.41 × 315.605/314.175 = about 82.785098. Both calculations start from the same nominal receipt and share count.
The method gap is 82.41 × 315.605 × (1/314.175 − 1/314.540), about 0.096066 baseline dollars. It is positive here because June's denominator is smaller. This is not evidence that the fund withheld cash or that the investor earned a return between the two dates. It measures what changes when one column supplies the month key instead of the other.
Download the source inputs and declared changes · Download exact comparisons and boundary outputs
Test the midnight month boundary without rewriting history
A separately labeled synthetic case moves the payable date to June 30 while keeping the cash and ex-date fixed. Both month keys then select June and the method gap is exactly zero. Moving that synthetic date to July 1 switches only the payable-month denominator to July. These test dates illustrate the join boundary; June 30 is not presented as SCHD's actual payable date for this event.
A second synthetic case puts both dates in July and also yields zero difference. The code derives a year-month key from each valid ISO date. It does not infer a date from the position of a row, a file name or the date the data was downloaded. An invalid calendar date is rejected rather than assigned to the nearest month.
Keep the share basis consistent
The same economic unit can be re-expressed for checking as 300 shares at 0.8241/3 = $0.2747 per share. The product remains $82.41, so both CPI conversions and their difference are unchanged. That equivalent representation is arithmetic, not a claim that 300 shares were actually held on the June 2024 ex-date.
Combining 300 equivalent post-split shares with the original pre-split $0.8241 would produce $247.23, three times the intended cash. The fixture therefore carries matching holding-basis and payout-basis labels and rejects a mismatched pair. It does not automatically multiply historical cash by the later split ratio.
Zero and missing inputs remain different
Zero assumed shares with valid dates and indices yields zero nominal cash, zero in both converted views and a zero method gap. If July CPI is missing, the June-based view can still be calculated but the payable-month view and comparison remain unknown. If June CPI is missing, the reverse is true. Neither available value is silently reused for the missing month.
A missing base index prevents both real-value calculations. Missing shares or dates stays unknown, while negative shares, a nonpositive index or an unsupported series is invalid. The test suite also halves the assumed holding: cash and both converted amounts must halve together, while their month keys remain unchanged. Exact fractions are independently checked against Decimal arithmetic before display rounding.
Which month should another analysis use?
State its purpose and convention explicitly. This page values a dated cash receipt using its payable month. A study organized by ex-date can retain that field, but it must label the resulting month selection rather than call it the same cash-timing calculation. The comparison does not establish a universal accounting or tax rule.
Monthly CPI does not give a daily price level for June 26 or July 1, and it is not an individual household's spending index. The exercise is retrospective, uses a chosen money base and excludes trades, taxes, fees and reinvestment. It says nothing about future payouts or a real account's deposit timing.
Evidence and scope
Issuer event, split notice and BLS monthly values read October 31, 2026. Shares, money base and alternative test dates are declared assumptions. A public inflation-and-dividend question supplies reader context, not numerical inputs. The independently calculated month-crossing comparison and basis/unknown tests extend the prior four-event join within the freshly read three-site sample; no whole-web uniqueness claim is made.