Dividend Income – Feb 2018 Update

We are back from our Maui vacation. Boy it felt good to know that we saved ourselves over $10,000 for this particular trip through very simple travel hacks. It was my first time to Maui and this tropical island was absolutely amazing! It’s such a beautiful island with so much to do. It was a much needed vacation and our family had a blast.

Here are a few pictures I snapped with my cellphone:

Beautiful sunset
wild turtles!
At the hotel resort

I promise that I will write a complete trip report later with more fabulous pictures.

While we were vacationing on Maui, our dividend portfolio was generating money for us. I love receiving money for doing absolutely nothing at all!

 

February Dividend Income

In February 2018 we received dividend income from the following companies:

  • Apple (AAPL)
  • Pure Industrial REIT (AAR.UN)
  • AbbView (ABV)
  • Bank of Montreal (BMO.TO)
  • Dream Office REIT (D.UN)
  • Dream Global REIT (DRG.UN)
  • Dream Industrial REIT (DIR.UN)
  • Emera (EMA.TO)
  • Enbridge Income Trust (ENF.TO)
  • General Mills (GIS)
  • H&R REIT (HR.UN)
  • Inter Pipeline (IPL.TO)
  • KEG Income Trust (KEG.UN)
  • National Bank (NA.TO)
  • Nutrien Ltd (NTR.TO)… from Potash shares
  • Omega Healthcare (OHI)
  • Procter & Gamble (PG)
  • Prairiesky Royalty (PSK.TO)
  • RioCan (REI.UN)
  • Royal Bank (RY.TO)
  • Sabra Health Care (SBRA)
  • Starbucks (SBUX)
  • SmartCentres REIT (SRU.UN)
  • AT&T (T)
  • Vodafone (VOD)
  • Verizon (VZ)

We received a total of 26 paycheques in February 2018 that added up to $1,352.06. This is the highest monthly dividend income we have ever received since we started investing in dividend growth stocks. Woohoo! It’s nice that we broke this record in January 2018 then again in February. Here’s to breaking the record again in March!

Out of the $1,352.06 received, $351.55 was in USD and $1,000.51 was in CAD. This was roughly a 30-70 split between dividend received from US and Canadian dollars.

Please note, we use a 1 to 1 currency rate approach. Therefore, we do not convert dividends received in USD to CAD. We are ignoring exchange rate to keep the math simple. This is our way to avoid fluctuations in dividend income over time due to changes in the exchange rate.

The top 5 dividend payouts in February 2018 were Bank of Montreal, National Bank, Royal Bank, Omega Healthcare, and Emera. Dividend payouts from these 5 companies accounted for 57.7% of our February dividend income, or $780.58.

 

Dividend Income Breakdown

We hold our dividend stocks in taxable accounts, RRSPs, and TFSAs. Every year, we maximize tax-advantaged accounts first before investing in taxable accounts.

We do this so we can be as tax efficient as possible. Why pay extra taxes when we can avoid them by utilizing these tax-advantaged accounts? It seems like a no brainer to me. This is why I am always shocked to hear people who are investing using taxable accounts when they have tons of RRSP and/or TFSA contribution rooms left.

For February 2018 dividend income, here’s the breakdown of the different accounts:

  • Taxable: $409.24 or 22.5%
  • RRSPs: $638.5 or 47.2%
  • TFSAs: $409.24 or 30.3%

Effectively, only 22.5% of our February dividend income was taxable. We constructed our taxable accounts so we only receive from stocks that pay out eligible dividend income.

 

Dividend Growth

Compared to February 2017, we saw a respectable YOY growth of 11.87%. While it wasn’t as good as the 17.04% YOY growth that we saw in January, I was still quite happy to see an above 10% number.

Dividend Increases

In February, a number of stocks that we own in our portfolio announced dividend increase:

  • Manulife raised its dividend by 7.32% to $0.22 per share.
  • Suncor raised its dividend by 12.50% to $0.36 per share.
  • BCE raised its dividend by 5.23% to $0.755 per share.
  • Intact Financial raised its dividend by 9.37% to $0.70 per share.
  • RioCan raised its dividend by 2.13% to $0.12 per share.
  • TransCanada Corp raised its dividend by 10.4% to $0.69 per share.
  • Coco-Cola raised its dividend by 5.41% to $0.39 per share.
  • AbbView raised its dividend by 35% to 0.96 per share.
  • Waste Management raised its dividend by 9.41% to $0.465 per share.
  • Walmart raised its dividend by 1.96% to $0.52 per share.
  • Magna International raised its dividend by 20% to $0.33 per share.
  • CIBC raised its dividend by 2.31% to $1.33 per share.
  • Royal Bank raised its dividend by 3.3% to $0.94 per share.
  • Bank of Nova Scotia raised its dividend by 3.80% to $0.82 per share.
  • PrairieSky Royaltyraised its dividend by 4% to $0.0625 per share.
  • Canadian Natural Resources raised its dividend by 21.82% to $0.335 per share.
  • TD raised its dividend by 11.67% to $0.67 per share.

Wow, February was a particular good month for dividend increases. I was very pleased to see so many companies decided to increase their dividend payout. Hurray!

These announcements have increased our annual dividend income by $430.34!!!

Damn! That’s like adding $14,344.67 of fresh capital into our dividend portfolio if the dividend yield was 3%.

Pretty awesome if you were to ask me!

 

Dividend Stock Transaction

Although many stocks we own raised dividend payout in February, we were busy on the purchase front as well. We purchase the following dividend stocks in February.

  • Purchased 57 shares of Enbridge (ENB.TO)
  • Purchased 36 shares of TD (TD.TO)
  • Purchased 20 shares of Bank of Nova Scotia (BNS.TO)
  • Purchased 50 shares of Emera (EMA.TO)

These purchases increased our annual dividend income by $371.70. 

Basically we took advantage of the market volatility in February to add some shares to our existing positions. Gotta love that both TD and BNS raised their dividend payout in the same month as our purchases.

 

Conclusion

With 2 months down, we have received $2,692.89 in dividend income already. We have already received more in dividend income than what we received in 2012 and close to 50% of what we received in 2013. The dividend snowball is definitely getting bigger and bigger.

Dear readers, how was your February dividend income?

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37 thoughts on “Dividend Income – Feb 2018 Update”

  1. Good job Bob! I just saw you mentioned (with a picture of course) in a Moneysense article and your dividends at that time was $12K, now you’re at $14K, great job!

    Does your wife give any input to the companies you guys hold in your portfolio or is it mainly your analysis?

    Reply
  2. You remain going strong Bob! And the growth keeps going up, great to see and a fantastic example of how DGI works. Glad we share many of the same companies 🙂

    Reply
  3. BAaaaaammmmmmm!

    That is just sweet! We all got rewarded with a bunch of dividend raises in February but it like you had a position in every company! That is awesome seeing such a massive increase to your forward dividends just by dividends alone. Congrats on your new record as well! Im sure we will be saying that every month now though……

    Hahah keep it up

    Btw nice pics

    Reply
  4. It’s so impressive how fast your dividend income is growing. It’s even more impressive considering you have an one income family and two small kids. With two young kids myself, I was always surprised how expensive to raise them. My confidence increased when looking at the numbers from people like you and other DGI investors. Thanks for your great postings.

    Reply
      • You are right. There are different ways to raise kids. It’s not like they have to take piano lessons, neither new bedroom furniture. Even when they do, nothing wrong with Ikea. I planned to buy Ikea and my kids said none of the beds they really like so I bought from other place with price at least double the Ikea ones. I guess I am the kind of parents tending to spoil the kids a bit, LOL.

        We are a double income family and without any debt, we are living off basically on one income and save the other. Maybe that’s why I am not tight enough on my budget. But I figure we are not doing too bad with 50% savings rate so it might be OK.

        Reply
  5. Awesome stuff Bob! Over $1,350 in dividends received and a new record to go with it. I imagine there’s plenty more personal bests coming as the year moves forward. Love seeing all those dividend increases for you too. That’s awesome that in February alone your forward dividends grew by over $400 from dividend increases. Great stuff man and keep it up!

    Reply
  6. Great photo’s Bob. The turtles look like they’re impersonating rocks. And awesome to break your dividend record for the second time this year. That’s pretty damn good.

    Reply
  7. Assuming you are doing it right(and you are); having some taxable investment income is a good thing – means your TFSA, Wife’s TFSA, RRSP & Wifes RRSP are maxed out…..well done my man!

    I love seeing how fast the year over year growth is coming. 23.11 in 2011 to over 1300 this year…amazing.

    Keep it up.

    Reply
    • Yup, we max out our TFSA and RRSP every yera before we start contributing in taxable accounts.

      Our growth has been pretty amazing, very happy with that.

      Reply
  8. As you stated… at work or at play those dividends keep rolling in. Nice to know that you have an income even while in Maui. Solid total for the month with a nice year over year gain. As always, I like seeing some names in common paying us for the month. Keep feeding that dividend beast!

    Reply
  9. Nice job, so with all the purchases and dividend raises you saw your forward income increase by over $800! That’s awesome. Looks like we’re making similar purchases, I’m thinking of beefing up those same positions more soon too.

    Reply
  10. I bought a new set of shares in February and earned $189 in dividend income 🙂

    “We hold our dividend stocks in taxable accounts, RRSPs, and TFSAs. Every year, we maximize tax-advantaged accounts first before investing in taxable accounts.”

    THIS is the thing I haven’t fixed yet, and need to fix this year! I have all my dividend stocks in a taxable account while my IRAs are in index funds. I haven’t figured out the right approach to changing them over yet, though. I assume that you started out investing the tax efficient way?

    Reply
  11. I’ve started to consider dividend investing a lot more lately. I currently only have one dividend stock, and it’s a very small one that was a gift from my parents a long time ago, but I do like to see how much it spits out compared to how much was initially invested.

    Reply
  12. Great job! You’re doing very well with your dividend income. Our dividend is stagnating a bit because I haven’t reinvested lately. I’m hoping for a correction soon so I can buy some more shares. I’ve been putting extra money into real estate crowdfunding. That’s working out very well, but it’s still early yet. They need to prove that they are a good long term investment.

    Reply

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