If you haven’t noticed, I’ve been using the same picture in our monthly dividend income update posts for the last few months. I love seeing how happy Dilbert and Willy are in this picture. I think this picture is perfect as it exemplifies the beauty of dividends – doing nothing and still getting paid. This is the best type of income. Every month when I tallying up our monthly dividend income, I always feel grateful and very fortunate that we are able to build a sizable dividend portfolio that pays a significant amount of money each month.
Another reason why I like dividend income so much is because eligible dividends are taxed at a much lower rate than active incomes. Thanks to how we structured our dividend portfolio, most of the dividends that we receive are in tax-sheltered accounts, so we don’t even pay taxes at all. The latest rumour is that the Harper government may raise the TFSA contribution limit to $10,000 next year (apparently the announcement will come in this spring). If this is true, this will be super awesome for us. Having a $10,000 TFSA contribution limit means that we will be able to put $20,000 aside each year and have this amount grow tax free. The dividends received inside the TFSA will be tax free as well. 🙂
In February we were very fortunate to be able to initiate a few purchases to add $312.13 in our forward looking annual dividend. With the recent market drops, we’re definitely looking to initiate a few more purchases. I’m working on our income tax filings and looks like we’ll get some money back. Our plan is to reinvest the refunds and also transfer whatever money that we’ve saved into the RRSP. For some reason I always get so excited around tax season because it allows us to re-examine our investment plan, tweak it, and make it even better.
Here’s a list of stocks that we received dividends in February 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)
Energyplus Corp (ERF.TO)
General Mills (GIS)
H&R REIT (HR.UN)
KEG Income Trust (KEG.UN)
Kinder Morgan (KMI)
Liquor Store (LIQ.TO)
National Bank (NA.TO)
Omega Healthcare (OHI)
Procter & Gamble (PG)
Potash (POT.TO)
RioCan REIT (REI.UN)
Royal Bank (RY.TO)
AT&T (T)
Vodafone (VOD)
Verizon (VZ)
In February we received a total of $867.64 in dividend! This is an increase of 38% compared to February 2014.
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Please note, when it comes to monthly dividend income, I do not differentiate US and Canadian currencies. To keep the math simple, I’m using a 1 to 1 currency rate when it comes to dividend income received in US currency. This may not be accurate but it keeps life simple.
It’s nice to see that we received more dividends from US companies this month. Back in January we only received dividend from one US company. One of my goals this year is to further diversify our dividend portfolio so we have more international exposures. One of the ways is by buying index ETF’s that focus on international companies, another way is to buy ADR (American Depositary Receipt) stocks.
So far in 2015 we have received a total of $1,490.49 in dividends. That’s an increase of 35.27% compared to the first two months of 2014. It’s exciting and assuring at the same time to see such awesome growth. It shows that we’re definitely on the right track and making some excellent progress!
Looking forward, I expect our March’s dividend income to be slightly below our March 2014’s dividend income. We had an abnormally high dividend amount last March because we received some special dividend payouts. Although the March dividend amount will be slightly lower, if we look at the dividend income from a quarterly basis, our Q1 2015 dividend income will look quite impressive compared to Q1 2014.
I can’t believe that we’re already in the 3rd month of 2015. Time sure flies when you’re having fun!
