Dividend Income – August 2015 update

Thank you for dropping by. It’s that time of the month where I share my favourite post of the month – our monthly dividend income. The reason for loving dividends so much is because once we own shares of these dividend paying businesses, we get paid regardless of what we are doing. We get paid when we’re on vacation, when we’re driving, when we’re working at our 9-5 jobs, when we’re taking a shower, or when we’re on eating dinner, it doesn’t matter what we’re doing, the money will just keep coming in. On top of that, most of these dividend paying companies raise their dividend payouts every year so our dividend income can keep up with the inflation and possibly beat it! No wonder I’m so happy like Dilbert and Wally in the above picture, having a celebration!

It’s amazing to see so many fellow bloggers utilizing the dividend growth investment approach. And it’s wonderful seeing these bloggers listing their dividend incomes each month and encouraging each other along the journey towards financial independence. This is why I love the personal finance/FI blogosphere.

Dividends Received

Without further ado, Here’s a list of stocks that we received dividends in August 2015:

Apple (AAPL)
Pure Industrial REIT (AAR.UN)
Bank of Montreal (BMO.TO)
Chorus Aviation (CHR.B)
Corus Entertainment (CJR.B)
Canadian Oil Sand (COS.TO)
Dream Office REIT (D.UN)
Dream Global REIT (DRG.UN)
Energyplus Corp (ERF.TO)
General Mills (GIS)
H&R REIT (HR.UN)
Inter Pipeline (IPL.TO)
KEG Income Trust (KEG.UN)
Kinder Morgan (KMI)
Liquor Store (LIQ.TO)
National Bank (NA.TO)
Omega Healthcare (OHI)
Procter & Gamble (PG)
RioCan REIT (REI.UN)
Royal Bank (RY.TO)
AT&T (T)
Vodafone (VOD)
Verizon (VZ)

In August we received a total of $927.24 in dividends from 23 companies with $338.57 in US currency and $588.67 in Canadian currency. It’s amazing to see that we broke the $900 mark for the second time this year! We also happened to received over $900 in dividend income for the second month in a row! Woohoo! I’m pretty excited about this awesome progress. Please note we use a 1 to 1 currency rate approach, so we do not convert the dividends received in US currency into Canadian currency. We’re doing this to keep the math simple and avoid fluctuations in dividend income over time due to changes in the currency rate.

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We invest US stocks in our RRSP’s to avoid the 15% withholding tax. Most of the dividend stocks that we own are in tax-deferred accounts like RRSP and TFSA. We do hold some dividend stocks in regular accounts and we do not taken taxes into account when reporting dividends received in these accounts. Having said that, all the dividend stocks that we hold in our regular accounts are designated as eligible dividend so the tax rate will be minimum. Please consult to a tax expert when it comes to tax strategies.

Dividend Growth

Compared to dividend income from August 2014, we saw a 10% YOY growth. A pretty solid growth but we can certainly improve on this number. However, considering that we are receiving a significant amount of dividends already, having a significant amount of growth every month ma get tougher and tougher. For example, if we were to receive $1,000 per month in dividend, to get a 50% YOY growth means we’d need to get additional $500 per month the year after. This means that we need to inject new capital of $200,000 in our dividend portfolio ($500 multiply by 12 then dividend by 3% of estimated dividend yield). It would be a piece of cake if we can make millions of dollar each year like Bill Gates but we don’t, so having 50% YOY growth rate may not be feasible moving forward.

When compared to dividends received by end of August 2014, we see a growth rate of 19.9%. I’d be pretty happy if we can end 2015 with a roughly 25% annual dividend growth rate compared to end of 2014. We’ll have to wait and see if we can achieve this number or not.

 

Moving Forward 

It’s nice to see that we’ve been averaging roughly $800 of dividend income each month. This kind of predictability is great, especially during market volatility like we’re seeing recently. Our portfolio can be down but we will receive the dividends nonetheless. As long as we don’t sell any shares in our portfolio, and we typically don’t, we are guaranteed to receive dividends. This is the beauty of dividend!

So far this year we’ve received a total of $6,649.84 in dividend income. Pretty awesome considering that’s roughly $184.72 of income per week that we do not need to spend any time actively working to earn it. At $20/hour that means we saved up 9 hours each week. That’s 9 hours we can use to enjoy life. If we keep up this kind of weekly dividend rate, we should be getting close to $10,000 in total dividends for 2015. Receiving a 5 digit annual dividend income will be a huge milestone!

Thank you for reading and for your continued support. How was your August dividend income?

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27 thoughts on “Dividend Income – August 2015 update”

  1. Amazing result for August. Almost $1k in income from such a wide variety or sources. Happy to see RY being one of your contributors for the month. I still like the large Canadian banks but have to admit that many industrial names are looking quite as good with CAT and EMR topping my list. Thanks for sharing.

    Reply
  2. Tawcan,

    WHOA WHOA WHOA!!! Heck yes! Almost the glory $1K mark eh?!?! That is incredible, so many companies and well deserved. Great growth YOY and you’ll keep having that going forward, pumped for you Tawcan!

    -Lanny

    Reply
  3. Great work! I recall we’re averaging close to $925 per month in dividend income. With our plans to max out the TFSA in 2016, hopefully with the new limit (?), we should cross the $1,000 per month barrier. Fingers crossed. We need to save more to get there.

    Our long-term goal is to earn about $30k per year in dividend income. That combined with other assets in our life we’ll be able to walk away from the workplace. Hopefully no later than age 55.

    I might have asked you this before, do you own any ETFs?

    Keep up the great saving, investing and reinvesting.
    Mark

    Reply
    • Hi Mark,

      That’s pretty awesome monthly average. Hopefully we’ll get to that amount soon. We definitely hope that the TFSA limit will stay the same. Hitting the $1k per month mark will be a major milestone.

      We own some ETF’s and plan to add more ETF’s to allow us to get more exposures to international stocks. Canadian stocks are simply too focused on financial and energy sectors.

      Reply
    • Hi Dan,

      Dream REIT has come down quite a bit in price, we’re down quite a bit at this price. The low price does allow us to DRIP shares each month at a lower price and take advantage of dollar cost average. I believe in the long run the stock will turn around.

      Reply
  4. Hi Tawcan,

    I’ve just started following your blog and it’s great to see such fantastic dividend figures coming out. I’ve only been investing for around a year myself and so far I’ve stuck to the “vanilla” index funds however you and the many other dividend income investors out there are really getting me thinking…

    Keep up the good work 🙂

    Reply
    • Hi FIbrarian,

      Thanks for commenting. Nothing wrong with investing in index funds. The important thing is that you’re investing with your money.

      Reply
      • Just like Fibrarian, I am thinking more and more about the DGI path. The predictability of dividends is really nice.

        2 thoughts:
        how much time does it take to follow and select these dividend stocks?
        how to deal with the double taxation that I suffer from living in Belgium?

        Reply
        • Hi Ambertree,

          It takes me a very little time to select these dividend stocks. I basically took a look at a bunch ETF’s and see what their top holdings are and buy these stocks. Essentially making my own ETF. Not sure how to deal with double taxation situation in Belgium but you might want to check out No More Waffles’ blog since he’s in Belgium. https://nomorewaffles.com/

          Reply
  5. Tawcan,

    Killing it, my friend. Straight killing it! 🙂

    Looks like you focus on some higher-yield plays there. I’ve been delving into stocks with somewhat low yields over the last year or so. I might be shifting that strategy a little bit moving forward here so as to make a nice, strong run at financial independence. Do you know the overall yield of your portfolio? I’m guessing it’s well north of 4%?

    Keep it up. You’re on pace for a great year.

    Cheers!

    Reply
    • Hi Jason,

      I guess a lot of the stocks that we hold pay out monthly dividends. We hold quite a few lower yield stocks with higher growth. Canadian stocks seem to have slightly higher yield compared to their counter US parts. Our overall yield is north of 4%. 🙂

      Reply
  6. Nice job Tawcan. Pretty wicked month crossing over 900. Keep it up and you’ll reach greater heights. No doubt about it. Just a matter of time. Keep it up my friend.

    Reply
  7. Awesome! $900+ is phenomenal! Especially since August is a slower month, at least for US companies. I’m looking forward to September finishing up because it’ll be a great month for my own dividends. Although August was solid too! Keep up the great work!

    Reply
    • Hi JC,

      Thanks. Receiving dividend income is always great. September typically is the slower month for us but we’ll have to see what happens this year.

      Reply

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