Welcome to another monthly dividend income update.
I always enjoy writing the December dividend income update because it gives me a chance to not only show how we did for the last month of the year, but also allows me to summarize how we did for that entire year.
A quick reminder on our investing philosophy – we invest in both individual dividend stocks and index ETFs. This is our way to have the “best” of both worlds. Individual dividend stocks allow me to sharpen my brain as a DIY investor and learn more about the different companies. These individual dividend stocks also provide a predictable and regular income stream. On the other hand, index ETFs allow us to diversify across different segments and geographically at low cost. Index ETFs also allow us to track the performance of the different indices.
For the most part, December was relatively quiet. Mrs. T and I went to Tofino for a kids-free long weekend, where we enjoyed excellent food and walked along the different beaches. We also spent a lot of time talking about our lives and future plans. We definitely have to give thanks to my parents for looking after both kids so we could get away for three days.
Due to my company’s two-week shutdown and taking additional time off, I was off for almost 2.5 weeks. Just before Christmas, we went to Vancouver and watched Home Alone with the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra playing the music. This was something we had done a few times with the kids and it was always an enjoyable experience.
Of course, we had a lot of hygge and took it easy throughout the holidays.
We hosted the Christmas dinner and as usual, enjoyed a delicious meal.
Dividend Income – December 2025
In December, we received dividends from the following companies:
- Alimentation Couche-Tard (ATD.TO)
- Brookfield Asset Management (BAM.TO)
- Brookfield Renewable Corp (BEPC.TO)
- BlackRock (BLK)
- Brookfield Corporation (BN.TO)
- Canadian National Railway (CNR.TO)
- Enbridge (ENB.TO)
- Fortis (FTS.TO)
- Alphabet (GOOGL)
- Granite REIT (GRT.UN)
- Hydro One (H.TO)
- Intact Financial (IFC.TO)
- Coca-Cola (KO)
- McDonald’s (MCD)
- Manulife Financial (MFC.TO)
- Invesco NASDAQ 100 (QQQM)
- SmartCentres REIT (SRU.UN)
- Visa (V)
- Waste Management (WM)
The 18 dividend paycheques added up to $4,840.75. I was hoping to end December with over $5,000 in dividend income but that obviously didn’t happen. Despite that, it was still a very solid way to wrap up the year.
Compared to December 2024, we saw a YoY g growth of 8.20%.
Dividend Hikes
In December, the following companies announced dividend hikes:
- The Bank of Montreal increased its dividend payout by 2.5% to $1.67 per share
- CIBC increased its dividend payout by 10.3% to $1.07 per share
- Enbridge increased its dividend payout by 2.9% to $0.97 per share
- National Bank increased its dividend payout by 5.1% to $1.24 per share
- Royal Bank increased its dividend payout by 6.5% to $1.64 per share
- TD increased its dividend payout by 2.9% to $1.08 per share
We were very happy to see all these dividend hikes, especially from the Canadian banks. It was too bad that the Bank of Nova Scotia didn’t raise its dividend payout. Oh well!
These dividend hikes increased our forward annual dividend by $1,589.88. At a 4% dividend yield, that’s equivalent to adding $39,747 of new capital. Gotta love our forward annual dividend income growing by itself without us doing a thing.
This is why organic dividend growth is so important!
Dividend Reinvestment Plans
At the time of writing, we are reinvesting 100% of our dividend income. To do that, we enroll in dividend reinvestment plans (DRIP) whenever we are eligible. But since Wealthsimple, Questrade, and recently TD have all introduced fractional DRIP, we no longer need to worry about whether we have received sufficient dividends to cover one share.
Note: It’s unclear to me whether TD and Questrade support fractional DRIP for all securities. I believe both discount brokers only support fractional DRIP on certain securities but I will need to confirm.
- Sign up for Wealthsimple using my referral code and get $25 referral bonus.
- Sign up for Questrade using my referral code and get up to $250 referral bonus.
At some point this year, we will probably end up turning off DRIP in our RRSPs and taxable accounts so we can start accumulating cash. For now, we plan to drip whenever we can.
In December, we dripped the following shares:
- 2 shares of BAM.TO
- 3.81184 shares of BEPC.TO
- 0.0688 shares of BLK
- 0.77905 shares of BN.TO
- 1.51059 shares of CNR.TO
- 36.2568 shares of ENB.TO
- 3 shares of FTS.TO
- 0.061 shares of GOOGL
- 0.4791 shares of GRT.UN
- 1.8577 shares of KO
- 9.0869 shares of MFC.TO
- 0.2219 shares of QQQM
- 7 shares of SRU.UN
- 0.0677 shares of V
- 0.174 shares of WM
In total, 66.3754 shares were dripped automatically and $4,289.70 was reinvested right away. More importantly, by dripping shares, we increased our forward annual dividend income by $200.23.
Stock Transactions
Originally, I expected a very quiet December on the stock transaction front but I was completely wrong!
At the end of November and early December, several things happened:
- I sold all the vested company RSUs (Restricted Stock Units) and transferred the money to my taxable account
- I sold 449 Telus shares for capital loss harvesting to offset some of the capital gains from selling my company’s vested RSUs
- I initiated a transfer of my work’s RRSP from Sunlife to Wealthsimple
The Sunlife RRSP transfer amount ended up being much higher than I anticipated, because somehow Sunlife liquidated both the employer and employee portions of my work’s RRSP. In the past, whenever I initiated a transfer, I was only able to move the employee portion (i.e. the employer’s portion was locked). I’m not sure what happened exactly, as I did the transfer via Wealthsimple correctly, so I guess it was a mistake on Sunlife’s part…
Anyway, with the money available, we went on a bit of a shopping spree and purchased the following:
- 209.1612 shares of Canadian Natural Resources
- 237.4119 shares of Capital Power Corp
- 482.9243 shares of iShares Ex-Canada International ETF, XAW
- 176.7788 shares of Emera
- 135.2082 shares of Power Corp
- 78.5607 shares of CIBC
- 40.9298 shares of TD
In total, just over $86k was deployed and increased our forward annual dividend income by $2,086.74.
Dividend Scorecard – December 2025
Here’s our dividend scorecard for December:
I was very pleased with how we did in December, especially with the total dividends added. This will boost our 2026 annual dividend income significantly.
2025 Summary
Each year for the December dividend income report, I tried to summarize what we did for the past year and give readers a summary of the past year.
2025 Organic Dividend Growth and DRIP.
As our dividend income gets bigger, we need to rely on organic dividend growth and DRIP to grow our forward annual dividend. As mentioned earlier, we plan to stop dripping in our RRSPs and taxable accounts at some point this year, so organic dividend growth will become even more important.
In 2025, we added $5,861.35 in forward annual dividend income via organic dividend growth and DRIP. Below is the monthly breakdown:
I started tracking these two parameters more closely in 2022 and here’s the performance since then:
| Year | DRIP $ | Organic Dividend Growth $ | Total $ | YoY increase % |
| 2022 | $1,450.21 | $2,367.36 | $3,817.57 | N/A |
| 2023 | $2,104.99 | $2,401.14 | $4,596.13 | 20.4% |
| 2024 | $2,617.28 | $3,511.07 | $6,128.35 | 34.1% |
| 2025 | $2,615.69 | $3,245.66 | $5,861.35 | -4.4% |
It’s tough to see a decrease in 2025 compared to 2024. Considering fractional DRIP, I would have thought the number would be higher in 2025 compared to 2024.
Since we can’t control whether and how much companies increase their dividend payout each year. All we can do is to continue investing in stocks that are consistently increasing their dividend payout year over year.
2025 Stock Transaction Summary
We were extremely busy on the stock transaction front throughout 2025. Fortunately, with Wealthsimple supporting commission-free trading and Questrade rolling out this feature mid-2025, we didn’t spend too much on trading commissions.
Sold
- 24.5392 shares of Canadian Tire (closed position)
- 65.8851 shares of Target (closed position)
- 17.341 shares of Qualcomm (closed position)
- 55.8848 shares of PepsiCo (closed position)
- 182.8591 shares of SouthBow (closed position)
- 95.9405 shares Procter & Gamble (closed position)
- 449 shares of Telus (tax loss harvesting)
Bought
- 8 shares of Brookfield Asset Management
- 312.6023 shares of Brookfield Corporation
- 110.0217 shares of CIBC
- 545.2696 shares of Canadian Natural Resources
- 73.375 shares of Canadian National Railway
- 562.6984 shares of Capital Power Corp
- 176.7788 shares of Emera
- 10 shares of Fortis
- 8.4666 shares of Alphabet
- 65 shares of National Bank
- 135.2082 shares of Power Corp
- 46.825 shares of QQQM
- 4 shares of Royal Bank
- 10 shares of Telus
- 137.9298 shares of TD
- 28.9423 shares of TC Energy Corp
- 4.223 shares of Visa
- 676.4012 shares of XAW
We closed six positions in 2025, reducing the total of individual holdings to 37. Ideally, I would like to continue reducing this number this year.
As you could see, we continue to add more shares of XAW as a goal to increase our international exposure. We also added quite a bit of Brookfield Corporation, as we believe it will continue to do well long term.
Looking back, I think it was probably a mistake to add 10 shares of Telus. I also believe moving forward, we need to be careful with adding too many shares of Canadian Natural Resources since the stock price can easily be influenced by crude price (we saw that with the capture of Venezuelan president Maduro).
Capital Power Corp was doing quite well in 2025 before the share price tanked. However, I believe over the long term, the company should continue to do well as the demand for power will only increase in the future. Having said that, we need to be careful with buying too much Capital Power Corp and falling into a potential yield trap.
One thing I do regret a bit is not buying more GOOGL when the price was below $180 and of course, TD when the price was below $80. Oh well, that is life….
2025 Total Dividend Income
In 2025, we received a total of $64,838.27 in dividend income, significantly exceeding our goal of $60,000. It’s pretty wild to think that back in 2011, we received a total of $675.21 in dividends. In 2025, our lowest dividend month in February ($3,365.95) was almost five times of the 2011 total amount.
We sure have come a long way!
Compared to 2024, we saw a YoY increase of 12.93%. I was quite pleased to see a number above 10%, considering we are facing the law of the big numbers already.
When I look at our dividend income projection from January 2025, we are ahead of the projection. It’s very comforting to see that we are increasing our dividend income faster than I previously anticipated/projected.
2025 Dividend Income Breakdown
Long time readers will remember that each year we max out both TFSAs and RRSPs. Once both of these accounts are maxed out, we then start investing in taxable accounts. We focus on registered accounts first, so dividends received in TFSAs and RRSPs are either tax-free or tax-deferred. For non-registered accounts, we only invest in Canadian companies that pay eligible dividends to take advantage of the favourable tax treatment that dividends get compared to regular income.
Our 2025 dividend income breakdown is as follows:
| Accounts | $ Amount | % |
| RRSP | $17,511.89 | 27.0% |
| TFSA | $15,893.11 | 24.5% |
| Taxable | $31,433.46 | 48.5% |
So 48.5% of our dividend income is taxable and the majority of it is either tax-free or tax-deferred.
If we break down the dividend income further into mine and Mrs. T’s:
| Accounts | $ Amount | % |
| Mrs. T’s RRSP | $8,156.15 | 12.6% |
| Tawcan RRSP | $9,355.74 | 14.4% |
| Mrs. T’s TFSA | $6,730.47 | 10.4% |
| Tawcan TFSA | $9,162.64 | 14.1% |
| Mrs T’s Taxable | $10,753.31 | 16.6% |
| Tawcan Taxable | $20,680.15 | 31.9% |
In other words, Mrs. T’s accounts produce 39.5% of our dividend income and mine accounts produce 60.5% of our dividend income. Roughly a 40-60 breakdown.
2025 Dividend Portfolio Performance
To be as transparent as possible, I have shared our historical portfolio performance. The yearly performance data helps me to keep track of our returns and is also a way to keep myself accountable. If you look at our historical performance, you’ll see that some years we beat the TSX and S&P500 and some years we didn’t. That is the nature of picking stocks – some years you will do better, some years you won’t. If you are doing DIY investing like us and you end up losing to the indices consistently, then I believe you’re better off keeping your life simple by investing in one of the all-in-one ETFs.
How do I calculate our yearly portfolio returns? I keep the calculation relatively straightforward. Each year, we record our net worth at the beginning of January. With all the numbers available, I would calculate the difference in our dividend portfolio (i.e. RRSPs, TFSAs, and taxable accounts) between this and last January. I would subtract any new contributions made throughout the year to calculate the portfolio return, excluding contributions.
Here’s our dividend portfolio return in 2025 compared to the major indices and all-equity ETFs:
- Dividend Portfolio: +25.23%
- S&P500: +16.65%
- NASDAQ: +20.54%
- TSX: +27.37%
- VEQT: +18.59%
- XEQT: +18.30%
- XAW: +14.43%
Looking at our dividend portfolio, the +25.23% return was mostly due to the likes of Canadian Banks, Alphabet, Brookfield Corporation, XAW, QQQM, and TC Energy Corp. But some stocks like Telus, BCE, Waste Connections, and Canadian National Railway dragged down our return.
| Year | Portfolio return excluding contributions | TSX return | S&P return |
| 2012 | +8.67% | +4.0% | +13.41% |
| 2013 | +33.04% | +9.55% | +29.6% |
| 2014 | +24.08% | +7.42% | +11.39% |
| 2015 | -5.97% | -11.07% | -0.73% |
| 2016 | +19.62% | +17.51% | +9.54% |
| 2017 | +12.33% | +6.03% | +19.42% |
| 2018 | -2.38% | -11.64% | -6.24% |
| 2019 | +11.32% | +19.13% | +28.88% |
| 2020 | +3.2% | +2.17% | +16.26% |
| 2021 | +32.8% | +21.74% | +26.89% |
| 2022 | -5.4% | -8.66% | -19.44% |
| 2023 | +10.48% | +7.79% | +24.73% |
| 2024 | +30.4% | +17.99% | +23.31% |
| 2025 | +25.23% | +27.37% | +16.65% |
The last time the TSX outperformed the S&P500 was in 2016. I suspect the S&P 500 may perform a bit better than the TSX in 2026.
It’s pretty amazing to see a portfolio return above 25%! That’s way above the long term stock market return of 8%. Would such an amazing return continue this year? I have no idea. All I know is we need to continue executing our long term investing strategy by increasing our savings gap, investing saved-up money regularly, ignoring the noise, and repeating that process.
Financial Independence Journey Progress
In 2025, our dividend income covered 120.9% of our Necessities account (i.e. core spending). By Necessities, I meant expenses like the following:
- Groceries
- Property tax
- Mortgage
- Household expenses
- House & car insurance
- Health
- Utilities
- Car gas & maintenance cost
- Clothes & shoes
- Internet & cellphones
Since 2022, our dividend income has been able to cover all of our core expenses. Outside of the Necessities account, we have other spending accounts like Play, Give, and Long Term Savings for Spending. The Play account includes things like dining out, wellness (i.e. massages, facials, etc), movies & entertainment, and hobbies. The Give account includes expenses like gifts and charitable donations. Finally, the Long Term Savings for Spending account includes expenses like vacations, RESPs, large purchases, and business expenses.
Our dividend income wasn’t able to cover 100% of our total expenses but it was close. Having said that, some of these expenses are somewhat discretionary (like vacations, eating out, etc) so we can reduce or cut if really necessary. It’s nice to know that we are getting closer and closer towards our goal of living off dividends one day.
Summary & Looking Ahead
As you can imagine, we are getting closer and closer to reaching financial independence via dividend income. We have come a long way since we started this journey back in 2011.
At $64,838.46 of dividend income for the whole year, this is equivalent to:
- $177.64 per day or $7.40 per hour
- $1,246.89 per working week or $31.17 per hour
It’s pretty amazing that our dividend income is producing such hourly rates without us having to lift a finger. Furthermore, thanks to dividend income coming in regularly, we don’t feel pressured or stressed whenever there’s a market correction. We simply collect dividends and wait for the market to recover. There’s a lot to be said about the psychology behind dividend growth investing.
We have crushed our $60,000 dividend income goal in 2025 and are ahead of our dividend income projection that I did back in January 2025 by a year. So where does that leave us?
Based on the new data and calculator, below is my best estimate. As you can see, our goal for this year is $72,000 in dividends. In the old projection, we wouldn’t reach this level until past 2028. Needless to say, we are making excellent progress.
Thanks everyone for following along on our journey. Here’s to a great 2026!
Have you bought any Intact lately being at 52 week lows? My wife wants to start a position in Intact I just don’t know if it’s the right time.
Hi Bob,
Great year end summary, and Tofino looks great!
Why did you stop DRIPping in your RRSP’s? I can see stopping in the non-reg accounts to build flexible cash reserves but RRSP’s are a more long term.
Thank you James. We didn’t stop dripping in our RRSPs. We do plan to stop dripping in RRSPs and taxable accounts in the future so we can accumulate cash. We’re planning to withdraw from our RRSPs, hence for building up cash. Hope that makes sense.
Hi Bob, just checking with you how you try to minimize currency exchange fees when you’re buying US stocks especially in Wealthsimple where you have to pay up to 1.5% per transaction especially for smaller accounts. To avoid these currency exchange fees all together one must exchange over $100,000 Canadian. So was wondering if you have a trick up your sleeve or you just deal with the exchange fees in Wealthsimple? I’m aware of Norbert’s Gambit through Questrade which I have tried and works perfectly. Thanks
We have used Norbert’s Gambit through Questrade in the past. In recent times, we haven’t made any currency conversions. Basically just use the USD from dividends or USD from US stock sales. Wealthsimple will support Norbert’s Gambit soon.
I enjoy reading your blog Mr T. Thanks.
I am curious to know your thoughts on automatic drip investing, vs manual collecting the dividends and using them to invest in targeted dividend stocks on your buy list that are currently selling at a lower price resulting in a higher yield, essentially following a “Beat the TSX” or “Dogs of the Dow” approach. Drip investing can occur at all time highs on a stock giving you a lower yield for $ invested via drip vs manual approach.
Is it that you are looking for the most autonomous approach so that you “earn money in your sleep”?
Congrats on a great 2025.
Thank you!
We enrolled in automatic drip investing because years ago buying shares cost money so auto drip was our way to save money. Nowadays, with so many free commission trade available, it’s a coin flop between automatic drip and manually reinvesting dividends. I’d say the latter case simply takes a little more time.
How do you define organic dividend growth?
Dividend payout increase from stocks that we hold.
Great year end summary Tawcan. You inspire me to do better. Am I reading correctly just on stocks and ETF’s your 2025 growth is 27%? Is your portfolio mostly growth stocks and ETF with low dividends income? what’s your average dividend growth overall? I would like to understand how you balance your growth vs dividends pay (if you can provide ratio that would also help).
Thanks Ravi. Return was just north of 25%. We have a mix of growth stocks and ETFs with low dividend yield and high yield dividend stocks. In 2025 we were able to grew dividend organically by $3,245.66. On the other hand, DRIP increased our forward annual dividend by $2,615.69 so out of the $5,861.35 increase in forward annual dividends, organic dividend growth accounted for about 55%.
Congrats! Have you considered trading options to juice your passive income? That plus dividends was a game changer for me.
Thanks CJ. We thought about it but that means a lot more work on our side… plus option trading is a bit of speculation IMO, not something we want to get into.
thanks for sharing,
Would it be possible to give your breakdown of how many stocks you have in each account? I have a similar situation to you, where i am looking to lower the amount of companies i invest in BUT still have diversification across sectors. I currently have 40 stocks (10 in my TFSA, 10 in Mrs. TFSA, and 20 in our non-registered account). I’m hesitant to go much lower than 8-10 in my TFSA. Curious as to what others are doing.
That might be something we may share in the future but we treat our portfolio as one across the different account so it doesn’t really matter how many holdings we have in the different accounts, if that makes sense.
Chuckled to see very similar dividend reinvestment numbers comparing my portfolio to yours
(ENB,FTS,MFC) I’m continuing to hold CTC.A and wondered why you sold your position?
BTW…lovely pictures of Tofino, and I’m noting the name of the restaurant. We plan to visit relatives in
Parksville and will tentatively spend at least a night in Tofino. May I ask where you stayed there?
Congrats on your investing successes!
Very cool! I just decided to reinvest the money elsewhere. Never enjoyed going to a Canadian Tire store so I’m not as enticed to hold that stock. 🙂
Tofino was amazing. We thought Shelter was a better place to eat then Wolf in the Fog because Shelter had a more intimate dining experience. We stayed at an Airbnb.
thanks for the tip!
I never liked shopping in a CT store but have found it useful to preorder items for pick up.
I also like their Mastercard as it provides CAA style road assistance for free.
Congratulations, Bob! It’s great to see the progress you’ve made over the years. Please continue your excellent work and keep us updated.
Thank you Daniel, appreciate it.
“How do I calculate our yearly portfolio returns? I keep the calculation relatively straightforward. Each year, we record our net worth at the beginning of January. With all the numbers available, I would calculate the difference in our dividend portfolio (i.e. RRSPs, TFSAs, and taxable accounts) between this and last January. I would subtract any new contributions made throughout the year to calculate the portfolio return, excluding contributions. ”
Wouldn’t that include dividends from the new contributions? Isn’t it more accurate to calculate how many # of each stocks you have at the start of year the total, look up the total return of the same # of stocks at the end of the year and add them up?
Right, that’s true but that’d require a bit more math and time to track. Since we track our net worth every quarter and how much new contributions we make each yea, that’s an easier calculation for us. 🙂
Just to add, dividends received from the new contributions wouldn’t make that much of a differences in turns of return. Even if the dividends are say 4% yield, since it’s capture throughout the year, the overall affect would be relatively small. Having said that, you did raise a good point.
What a great year Bob! Congrats. Just a matter of time before 100% of you expenses are covered. What a feeling.
Good luck in 2026
Chuck
Thank you very much Chuck.
Hi,
In your next update, would you be able to share what your diversification chart looks like and how much exposure do you have per category. Would be a good baseline to calibrate diversification on audience’s side.
Thanks, I’ll see what I can do.
Nice year end summary. I am guessing that, because of the Danish Christmas decoration and eating hygge that Mrs Tawcan is from Denmark? My Uncle was from Denmark, his family still lives there around Copenhagen. Unfortunately he passed away just before Covid at the ripe age of 98. His brother is still going back home.
I am curious why you hold 3 different Brookfield companies. $BAM, $BN and also $BEPC? Soon you will be able to live off your dividends. Keep posting and showing us your results. I enjoy reading your articles
Correct, Mrs. T is from Denmark. 🙂
We own 3 different Brookfield companies because they operate differently. I guess BAM and BN are relatively close but BAM has a higher yield. BEPC is renewable so not related to BAM and BN.