Dividend Income – Jan 2016 update

Wow it’s hard to believe that January 2016 is behind us. Where did the time go? It felt like we were celebrating Christmas and New Year’s just the other day. I guess that’s why people say time flies when you’re having fun. 🙂 Mrs. T and I have been busy getting ready for Baby T2.0’s arrival. Since we are planning for a home birth (we had a home birth with Baby T1.0 too), there are a few things that we need to prepare still. It’s hard to imagine that pretty soon we’ll have two little ones in our household. Both of us are very excited and can’t wait to meet Baby T2.0. Although a mixed baby, Baby T1.0 had blond hair and blue eyes when he was born (he still has blond hair and greenish eyes). I was pretty surprised when I met him for the first time as I was expecting the typical dark hair, brown eyes mixed baby look. So, I’m very curious what Baby T2.0 will look like. Blonde hair and brown eyes? Or dark hair and blue eyes? Genetics is absolutely fascinating. You’d think my Asian genes would overpower Mrs. T’s Vikings Caucasian genes.

Anyway, let’s get back to the topic of the post shall we? For those of you that are new to this site, each month I provide an update on our dividend income and our dividend growth. We love dividend income because it’s money that we receive for doing absolutely nothing as all. We can be sitting on the beach, drinking piña colada and our money is working hard for us instead. Gotta love that.

Dividend Income
In January, we received dividend from the following companies:

Pure Industrial REIT (AAR.UN)
Agrium (AGU.TO)
BCE (BCE.TO)
Bank of Nova Scotia (BNS.TO)
Corus Entertainment (CJR.B)
CIBC (CM.TO)
Dream Office REIT (D.UN)
Dream Global REIT (DRG.UN)
EnergyPlus Corp (ERF.TO)
General Electric (GE)
H&R REIT (HR.UN)
Husky Energy (HSE.TO)
Inter Pipeline (IPL.TO)
KEG Income Trust (KEG.UN)
Liquor Store (LIQ.TO)
Rogers (RCI.B)
RioCan REIT (REI.UN)
Telus (T.TO)
TranCanada Corp (TRP.TO)
Domtar Corp (UFS.TO)
Vanguard All-World Ex Canada (VXC.TO)
Wal-Mart (WMT)

In January we received a total of $852.02 in dividend income from 22 companies. Of the $852.02 received, $75.89 was in US dollar and $776.13 was in Canadian dollar. It’s interesting to note that we received very little from US stocks this past month. This is perhaps something we need to focus more and try to get more dividend income in US dollar in the future. Please note, we use a 1 to 1 currency rate approach, so we do not convert the dividends received in US dollar into Canadian currency. Reason for doing this is to keep the math simple and avoid fluctuations.

Given our 2016 dividend goal of $13,000, we’re slightly behind on our progress. However, looking at our dividend history, January is typically a slow month for us. It will be interesting to see what February holds for us. We definitely need to continue saving and investing.

Dividend Income Jan 2016

Dividend Growth
Compared to January 2015, we saw a YOY growth of 36.79%. Considering that we’re aiming for a 30% YOY growth in our annual dividend income this year, the 36% growth is nice to see. For those of you that are new, our dividend growth is contributed by three things – investing fresh capital, purchasing of additional shares through dividend reinvesting plan (DRIP), and increasing of individual stock’s organic dividend payout each year. We see DRIP as a very effective way to utilize the power of compound interest. Since we use discount brokers like TD and Questrade, we can only enroll in synthetic DRIP, meaning only full stock shares are purchased instead of partial shares. Because of this, we need to ensure that dividend received is equal or more than the stock price. I’m extremely pleased to see that enrolling in DRIP allowed us to purchase additional 15 shares of dividend paying stocks in January and increase our annual dividend income by $27.

Unfortunately in January we saw a few dividend cuts. Husky Energy suspended its dividends, and both Potash and ConocoPhillips cut their dividend payments. Life is not so great for the energy and agriculture companies. The tough macro economics in these sectors reminds us why sector diversification is so important. We plan to add more consumer staple stocks as well as more index ETF’s.

Moving Forward
So far in 2016 we received a total of $852.02 in dividend income. We need to be averaging $1,083.33 to reach our annual dividend goal of $13,000 in 2016. We’re slightly behind but I’m not too worried. After all we just added ~$17,000 in our dividend portfolio with multiple rounds of purchases. We’re hoping to continue these purchases to take advantage of the market drop.

Dear readers, how was your January dividend income?

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30 thoughts on “Dividend Income – Jan 2016 update”

  1. That is a great month in terms of dividends and the increase! Canadian dollars or US dollars, its still pretty awesome.

    There are a few stories floating around out there about some twins that have parents of different races, and the twins themselves show completely different features, where one takes after each parent. Personally, one of my brothers has darker olive skin and of his two daughters one looks like she is straight out of the Mediterranean Sea the other looks like she is Northern European. Crazy things happen in genetics!

    – Gremlin

    Reply
  2. Dang, that is IMPRESSIVE.

    Can’t wait to hear about the new arrival! Also, fascinating – you don’t have any blonde light eyed ancestors lurking in the family tree yourself do you? (I think it’d be awesome if any future babies of mine got his blue eyes but I know that’s incredibly unlikely)

    Reply
    • Hi eemusings,

      Thanks!

      Nope I don’t have any blonde light eyed ancestors as far as I know but knowing that Taiwan was occupied by the Portuguese a long long time ago, you never know. 🙂

      Reply
  3. Hey Tawcan,

    Congrats on another successful month of receiving some nice dividends. You’ll be sipping that pina colada before you know it at this rate. Quick question, what made you invest in Domtar? I very briefly looked at it but I see paper becoming less and less of a necessity, just looking for your input.

    Regards,
    DB

    Reply
    • Hi Dividend Beginner,

      I don’t see paper becoming less and less of a necessity. I’ve read a study that people are actually printing things more nowadays. The printers at work certainly get their shares of workout every day.

      Reply
  4. You’re so close to your monthly dividend goals! I hope you can get even closer during the current downturn! We are dedicated index investors, so have paid less attention to dividends, and certainly have never bought stock for dividend purposes. But I recently realized that we should start tracking the dividend income that we get from our funds, so that we have a clearer sense of what kind of income we can expect from our holdings in retirement vs. having to sell shares. So there’s some rethinking ahead. 🙂

    Reply
    • We’ll probably be busy buying more stocks over the next little while. Hoping for the downturn to continue.

      We invest in some index funds too and we definitely track the dividend income from these funds. It’s a good idea.

      Reply
  5. Almost $900 is an excellent amount! For me, that would equal a slightly larger than normal amount of cash to make a new purchase, and you got that all for doing ‘nothing’!

    January’s dividend income for me broke a new record in dividend income, received almost $230! Unlike you though, the first month of a quarter is currently almost double my other two months. I am trying to even them out some though to create consistency of my passive income stream. I also need to enact some sDRIPs!

    Reply
  6. Awesome month of dividends in a ‘low’ month, Tawcan! Can’t wait to see what a good month looks like!

    When my nephew was born, with black hair and brown eyes, my brother-in-law (who is Scottish/Caucasian) declared, “I have a Chinese baby!” At age 8 however, it’s looking like he’s already showing signs that he will take after the Western side of his heritage height-wise (all over 6ft).

    Reply
    • We’re excited to see what a good month will look like. 🙂

      It’s definitely a good thing that your nephew is taking after the Western side of thing height wise.

      Reply
  7. You have truly come a long way. It is really motivating to see progress of other likeminded investors.

    Keep up the good work.

    Reply
  8. Awesome totals for a “slow” month and look forward to reaching those figures in the coming years myself. You have a nice long list of companies paying you in January with BNS of course a staple for every fan of the Canadian banking system. Look forward to reading how baby T2 comes out. Thanks for sharing.

    Reply
  9. Wow, you guys are really steaming ahead with another $17000 invested! The drip also is starting to payoff by the looks of things. It is a bit of slow start if you want to get $13,000, but as you noted, January is a bit slower judging by your plot.

    Not sure if it is a myth or science, but are most kids not born with blue or grey eyes, which changes within the first year to their final colour? So it will be a surprise a bit longer 😉

    Reply
    • Hi Team CF,

      We’re working hard to reach our goal. 🙂

      99% of the Asian babies are born with brown eyes. Most of the mixed people I know have brown eyes and dark hair so I was taken back slightly when Baby T1.0 was born with blond hair and blue eyes. His eye colour has changed slightly but he’s still very blond. We’ll see what happens once he grows up.

      Reply
      • Did some digging last night and found the following on babies’ initial eye colour:

        While only 1 in 5 Caucasian adults have blue eyes in the United States, most are born blue-eyed. Their irises change from blue to hazel or brown during infancy. Why?

        “It has to do with the amount of melanin they’re born with and how that melanin increases after birth,” said Norman Saffra, Chairman of Ophthalmology at Maimonedes Medical Center in Brooklyn, N.Y.

        Melanin, Saffra explained, is a pigment, and the more you have of it in your eyes, hair and skin, the darker they are, and thus the more sunlight they reflect. A small deposit of melanin in the irises — the muscular rings around the pupils — makes them appear blue, while a medium amount makes them green or hazel, and a lot of it makes the irises brown.

        Babies aren’t born with all the melanin they are destined to have. “The maturation process continues post-utero,” “Eye color isn’t set until 2 years of age.”

        Though some babies of non-white ethnicities also have blue eyes at birth which then brown over time, the effect is far less common than with Caucasian babies. “Darkly-pigmented individuals usually have brown-eyed babies, because the babies have more pigment to start out with,” Saffra said.

        Pretty good chance your T2.0 will have blue eyes at birth!

        Reply
        • Wow that’s a lot of good info. Interesting to see that eye colour isn’t set until 2 years of age. I suppose Baby T1.0’s eye color is probably set then.

          As far as I know in order to have blue eyes and blonde hair both parents must have recessive genes. I can see that with Mrs. T (she has blonde hair), but not sure how that works with my Asian background.

          Reply
  10. The dividend numbers you report are again incredible. Job well done.

    On the genetics sides of things, it is indeed amazing to see how a baby is a mix of tbe parents. We even see elements that skip a genertation, like the blue eyes from our youngest. We also look at the kids to see whos legs, fingers, toes,… They have. It is well diversified.

    At

    Reply
    • Hi ambertreeleaves,

      It’s definitely amazing stuff, this is coming from someone that didn’t take any biology courses through high school.

      Reply
  11. Keep it up Tawcan. You and the wifey will reach Financial Independence in no time. What’s the rush right? Have fun enjoying the wonderful journey and Keep it up! I wish you the best. Cheers my friends.

    Reply
  12. There’s lots of great news in this update. Over $850 for a slower paying month as well as 36%!!! YoY growth. And adding 15 shares of dividend growers and $27 to your dividend income from reinvestment alone is awesome. I expect to hear of a lot more dividend cuts in the O&G space especially. Until someone blinks oil is likely to stay low. All the best for February and congrats again on Baby T2.0! Every time I read that the Terminator comes to mind.

    Reply
  13. $852 and 36% YoY growth?! Great progress Tawcan. Always love seeing everyone’s income rising and working towards FI.
    Keep up the great work!

    R2R

    Reply
    • Hi Nicola,

      Covers about 40-45% of our monthly necessity expenses. These expenses do not include things like savings for vacation, eating out, educational courses, and etc. Very cool that you’ll get your first dividend payment ever.

      Reply

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