Dividend Income – June 2025 Update

Wow, it’s hard to believe that 2025 is already half over. What happened to the time? 

For those of you who are new to this blog, I have been posting monthly dividend income updates to keep us accountable. We also use these regular updates to demonstrate that it is possible to build up a sizable portfolio that would allow us to live off dividends one day. 

Overall, June was a busy month. We took the Cubs and Beavers camping and taught many useful life lessons to them.

Along with another fellow Scouter, the two of us were officially appointed as the co-commissioners for our Scout group at our year-end BBQ. I’m the “inward” co-commissioner responsible for the youth Scouting programs and Scouter development. I have a lot of ideas in my head and I think it will be a busy year starting in September.  

Kid 2.0 got hooked on making different types of bread and treats all by herself after watching a few Master Class lessons.

With summer in full swing, Mrs. T and I were busy in our backyard garden throughout June.

I’m sure all of us will be busy with the backyard garden throughout the summer and the fall. 

Dividend Income – June 2025

Back to dividend income. In June, we received pay cheques from the following companies:

• Brookfield Asset Management (BAM.TO)
• BlackRock (BLK)
• Brookfield Renewable Corp (BEPC.TO)
• 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)
• McDonald’s (MCD)
• Manulife Financial (MFC.TO)
• PepsiCo (PEP)
• Qualcomm (QCOM)
• SmartCentres REIT (SRU.UN)
• Target (TGT)
• Visa (V)
• Waste Management (WM)
• iShares Core MSCI AC World ex Canada index ETF (XAW)
• Invesco Nasdaq 100 ETF (QQQM)

The 21 dividend pay cheques added up to $5,753.42.

A quarter ago (March), we received $4,623.21 in dividends, so it was nice to see a boost of over $1,000 in June. The increase was mostly due to the bi-annual distribution from XAW.

Compared to June 2024, we saw a YoY increase of 14.29%. A very respectable number since we only saw a YoY increase of 6% last month. 

After six months, we are averaging a YoY increase of 14.75%. A very impressive number considering that our dividend income is already quite sizable. While we rely on new capital, dividend reinvestment plans, and organic dividend growth to increase our dividend income, the key contributing factor to this 14.75% YoY growth rate has been the regular investment of new capital. 

Dividend Hikes 

After a busy month in May when our forward annual dividend income increased by $663.80, June was a very quiet month by comparison. In June, only one company announced a dividend hike – Target. With a payout increase of 1.2%, the announcement increased our forward annual dividend by $5.27.

Dividend Reinvestment Plans 

With TD and Questrade, we enroll in dividend reinvestment plans whenever we’re eligible. With Wealthsimple Trade, we are enrolled in fractional dividend reinvestment plans so all the dividends are reinvested. 

We enroll in DRIP so we are reinvesting as many dividends as possible automatically and taking advantage of the power of compound interest. We then invest the remaining dividends later. 

Oddly enough, despite having fractional drip enabled in Wealthsimple Trade, a few USD dividend payments were not automatically reinvested (PepsiCo for example). I’m not sure if that was a system glitch or not but since there’s no trading commission with Wealthsimple, I could easily buy more shares myself, or reinvest the money elsewhere.

In June, we dripped the following shares: 

• 1 share of BAM.TO
• 3.474 shares of BEPC.TO
• 0.105 shares of BN.TO
• 0.452 shares of CNR.TO
• 36.363 shares of ENB.TO
• 3 shares of FTS.TO
• 0.096 share of GOOGL 
• 0.533 shares of GRT.UN
• 0.274 shares of MCD
• 10.116 shares of MFC.TO
• 0..074 shares of QQQM
• 6 shares of SRU.UN
• 0.773 shares of TGT
• 0.047 shares of V
• 22.365 shares of XAW

In total, 84.672 shares were automatically dripped and $4,698.81 out of the $5,753.42 were re-invested, giving us a DRIP ratio of 81.7%.

More importantly, we increased our forward annual dividend by $206.43.

Stock Transactions

Staying true to what I wrote in last month’s dividend update, we only use new capital to buy more shares of XAW and nothing else.

We added 107.4769 shares of XAW throughout June to allow us to capture XAW’s June distribution. A total of $4,865 was invested as a result.

These purchases added $81.47 toward our annual dividend income. 

Dividend Scorecard

Here’s our dividend scorecard for June:

It was nice to see a DRIP ratio of above 80% (last month was below 80%). It was slightly disappointing to see such a low dollar amount from dividend hikes but that’s not something we can control. Therefore, I wouldn’t worry too much about it. I am pleased to see that we were able to increase our forward annual dividend by $293.17. At a 4% yield, that’s equivalent to adding $7,329.25 of new cash. 

Some random thoughts on the market and our portfolio

I have been writing these random thoughts on the market and our portfolio somewhat regularly in these monthly dividend updates. I hope they provide some useful insights of how we’re thinking. I’d love to hear from you what you think and get your feedback.

If you have ignored the news completely and only compared the stock indices from the beginning of this year to early July, you’ll probably conclude that the market is performing quite well from the chart below. 

If we extrapolate the returns until the end of the year, all stock indices would return better than the historical long term return of 8% (simply multiply the returns in the chart below by two). If this keeps up, it would be one of the better performing years. 

When we look at the Canadian Banks, TD led the way with its amazing +32.88% YTD performance. Amazingly, Royal Bank, CIBC, Bank of Montreal, and National Bank are all close to their 52-week highs. The only disappointment was Bank of Nova Scotia with a -3.02% YTD return and nowhere close to its 52-week high (this seems to be the story for BNS for many years). 

What have I learned from these charts above? More than ever, it is important to ignore all the noises, especially when the key US key policy maker is extremely irrational. Short term, there will always be volatilities, but when you ignore these volatilities and focus on the long term, you’ll do just fine.

In my opinion, I think in the last few years, the stock market volatilities have been amplified due to the following key contributing factors:

1. It is easier than ever to open up a trading account via discount online brokers. You no longer have to fill out pages of files or send them off and wait for weeks before approval.
2. It is easier than ever to fund these trading accounts. You can transfer money from your bank to the discount broker and use the money immediately. There’s no longer a multi-day wait time. 
3. Fractional trading means it is easier to invest in companies regardless of how much money you have or how much the stock share price is.
4. Free commission trading. Many years ago, it used to cost $29.99 or higher per trade. Many of the Canadian banks still charge upward of $10 per trade. But many discount brokers like Questrade, Wealthsimple, Robinhood, Interactive Brokers, Webull, and etc all offer free commission trades. Because there’s no longer a “cost” associated with trades, investors are more likely to buy and sell based on the daily news. This then in terms magnifies the daily ups and downs. Retail investors can now influence the market (think of MEME stocks).

It’s important to ignore all the noise! As I mentioned countless times on this blog – time in the market is far more important than timing the market!

When Mrs. T and I were doing our quarterly net worth update on July 1st, I was pleasantly surprised by how well our liquid net worth was doing. 

Year to date 2025, our liquid net worth returned +7.05%. While this slightly underperformed compared to the TSX YTD performance of +9.33%, it is still quite solid. 

What surprised me was our liquid net worth return from July 2024 to July 2025, a +29.5% increase!!! Obviously, this isn’t an apples-to-apples comparison since liquid net worth includes cash too, but since we don’t keep around that much cash, most of the performance came from our investment portfolio.

I was really flabbergasted by such a great return and when I stepped back and looked at it from the high level, I could attribute it to the following key factors:

1. Our relatively high savings rate
2. We max out TFSA and RRSP every year
3. We regularly contribute new capital and purchase new shares regardless of how well or poorly the market is doing
4. We reinvest 100% our dividends

It’s amazing how well you can do by following a very simple and straightforward investing strategy! 

Summary – Dividend Income June 2025 Update

With half a year in the books, we have received $33,199.84 in dividend income and averaging $5,533.31 per month. 

As mentioned earlier, we can’t extrapolate the 2025 total dividend income simply by multiplying $33,199.84 by two because the BCE dividend cut. However, I think we should be able to reach between $63,000 and $64,000 in dividends by the end of the year. That would mean us beating our annual dividend goal of $60,000! 

To put things in perspective, $33,199.84 after six months is equivalent to:

• $183.42 per day or $7.64 per hour that our dividend portfolio is generating for us
• $1,229.62 per working week or $30.74 hourly wage after 27 working weeks

As some readers have pointed out, we are definitely getting extremely close to our cross point – where our dividend income exceeds our expenses. We are extremely grateful for where we are financially and we remind ourselves to provide a helping hand to those in need whenever we can. Most importantly, stay humble and grounded.

Dear readers, how was your June dividend income?