Spring is here and that means A LOT OF RAIN in Vancouver. Thanks to daylight saving kicking in, spring also means longer daylight in the evenings when I get back from work. This is one of the things why I like spring so much. With all the snows that we got in Vancouver this winter & early spring, cherry trees are just blossoming. I’m looking forward to seeing all the beautiful cherry blossoms around town.
A few weeks ago we purchased a small green house (6×8 feet). The greenhouse arrived a few days ago so we have been busy setting it up in the garden. Mrs. T can’t wait to start planting some tomatoes, bell peppers, and other produce. Hopefully we will be even more self-sustained this year when it comes to produce, herbs, and veggies.
March Dividend Income
In March 2017 we received dividend income from the following companies:
- Pure Industrial REIT (AAR.UN)
- Brookfield Renewable (BEP.UN)
- BP plc (BP)
- Care Capital Properties (CCP)
- Corus Entertainment (CJR.B)
- Canadian National Railway (CNR.TO)
- ConocoPhillips (COP)
- Chevron (CVX)
- Dream Office REIT (D.UN)
- Dream Global REIT (DRG.UN)
- Dream Industrial REIT (DIR.UN)
- Enbrdige (ENB.TO)
- Evertz Technologies (ET.TO)
- H&R REIT (HR.UN)
- High Liner Foods (HLF.TO)
- Intact Financial (IFC.TO)
- Intel (INTC)
- Inter Pipeline (IPL.TO)
- Johnson & Johnson (JNJ)
- KEG Income Trust (KEG.UN)
- McDonald’s (MCD)
- Manulife Financial (MFC.TO)
- Magna International (MG.TO)
- MCAN Mortgage Corp (MKP.TO)
- Prairiesky Royalty (PSK.TO)
- Qualcomm (QCOM)
- Royal Dutch Shell (RDS.B)
- RioCan REIT (REI.UN)
- Saputo (SAP.TO)
- Smart REIT (SRU.UN)
- Suncor (SU.TO)
- Target (TGT)
- Unilever plc (UL)
- Visa (V)
- Ventas (VTR)
- Vanguard Can All Cap (VCN)
- WestJet (WJA.TO)
- Waste Management (WM)
- Exco Technologies (XTC.TO)
In March 2017 we received a total of $1,171.92 in dividend income from 39 companies. Wow I can’t believe our March dividend income was that diversified. Once again we were very close to reaching the $1,200 per month milestone, only $28.08 short. There’s always next month right? 🙂
Out of the $1,171.92 dividend income received in March, $327.23 was in USD while $844.69 was in CAD. This was roughly an 20-80 split between USD dividend and CAD dividend. Please note, we use a 1 to 1 currency rate approach. Therefore, 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 in dividend income over time due to changes in the exchange rate.
Top 5 dividend payouts were Suncor, Manulife Financial, Intac Financial, Enbridge, and Chevron. The top 5 dividend payouts account for 33.7% of the monthly dividend income. As you can see, this month’s dividend income came from many different sources and the dividend income was very well diversified. This is really great to see. Why? Because this means if one companies decides to reduce or freeze dividend (god forbid!), our dividend income wouldn’t reduce significantly.
Dividend Growth
Compared to March 2016 we saw a YOY growth of 23%. It’s great to see this number above 20%. Our effort of saving money so we can add fresh capital to purchase more dividend stocks definitely have paid off.
Dividend Increases
In March a number of companies that we own in our dividend portfolio announced dividend increases:
- Canadian Natural Resources raised dividend by 10% to $0.275 per share.
- TD raised dividend by 9.09% to $0.60 per share.
- Qualcomm raised dividend by 7.55% to $0.57 per share.
- Magna International raised dividend by 10% to $0.275 (US) per share.
- Intel raised dividend by 4.81% to $0.2725 per share.
All these raises have increased our annual dividend income by $68.12.
Dividend Stock Purchases
In March we made a few purchases to add new dividend stocks to our dividend portfolio. We added
- 120 shares of Hydro One (H.TO)
- 10 shares of Canadian Tire (CTC.A)
You can read more about these purchases here. Since beginning of 2017 we have deployed over $18,000 in new capital. We plan to continue deploying cash to add more dividend stocks.
If you are new to dividend growth investing, you might want to check out the Dividend FAQ that I have put together.
Conclusion and Moving Forward
So far in 2017 we have received a total of $3,475.84 in dividend income. Given our dividend goal of $15,000, we are slightly behind on progress. We should be at $3,750 by end of March, meaning we are about 7.3% behind progress. We definitely have some work to do to make up this difference moving ahead.
Dear readers, how was your March dividend income?
Congrats on another fine month Tawcan. I love that you bought a greenhouse. It’s a great way for your kids to enjoy growing healthy food, and hopefully eating more veggies. :-). I’ve been thinking of getting a greenhouse. Please upload more photos as your garden grows.
Thanks Investment Hunting. Will definitely post more pictures of the greenhouse and plants inside.
Great update as always Bob. Your income is the most consistent out of all the blogs I follow and I really like the result you’ve managed to achieve (even if unintentional).
Really nice job, I hope you’re both proud of what you’ve built and building. Plus, nice greenhouse!
Mr DDU
Thanks, yeah the stable monthly dividend income was certainly not intentional.
It’s nice that you are consistently generating $1,000+ a month now! That’s a great target to achieve!
What’s your grand total amount your shooting for?
Sam
Hi Sam,
Thanks, we are hoping to reach ~$40k per year in dividend income to cover our living expenses.
Thank you for sharing the info! Mr. FAF and I haven’t invested in any mutual funds yet. So far we’ve been really focused on paying off our mortgage. It’s great to see what a good portfolio looks like so that we can decide on ours in the future. 🙂
Paying off your mortgage is a really good idea assuming the rate is higher than the return you can get from investing in equities.
Hi Bob, I’m wondering if you can generally recommend any high yield dividend paying stocks that you like at the moment. I’m currently looking at Altagas with a 6.77% yield, but just curious if you have looked at any others recently yourself. Keep up the good work blogging!
I haven’t looked at Altagas but I’m a bit concerned when a utility company pays such high yield when there’s ability to pay the distributions. We did get burned on a few similar high yield utility stocks like Energy Plus. For high yield stocks I like REITs in general but interest rate hikes might cause some price turbulence. Brookfield Renewable Energy and Algonquin Power & Utilities Corp might be worth looking into.
Great progress on the dividend growth. It’s great to see those strong double digit YOY percent increases. Good luck with the greenhouse too – looks like fun! There’s nothing better than fresh grown tomatoes.
Thanks, fresh tomatoes are so awesome. 🙂
I think you’re super smart for investing more in Canadian companies right now. As the exchange rate isn’t good. Once the Canadian starts to appreciate again, you’d automatically get an additional 20-30% gain. More bang for your buck! Moreover, just get the US dollars and use it to buy Canadian companies… LOL 🙂 an automatically gain from the front end, and another gain from the back end. It’s great time to move North. haha!
I’m going to wait till the CAN dollar is stronger before I start buying US stocks again.
Congrats, I’m sure with the continued growth and reinvestment you will achieve the $15k this year. I had a very good month in March, I received $1,848.54 in dividends and $4,265.17 in option sales in the month. My goal for this year is to achieve $6k per month between dividends and option sales.
Amazing progress on your dividend and option income. Impressive!
Nice income report, always great to see other dividend investors crushing it! You mentioned you were a little behind on your goal, but that’s still pretty awesome!
PS. That little greenhouse looks awesome! As someone who usually only cooks frozen meals, having some fresh vegetables sounds pretty great. Goodluck!
Thanks Wallet Squirrel. I’m not too concerned being behind on our goal, the goal was a very ambitious one to being with.
“Since beginning of 2017 we have deployed over $18,000 in new capital. We plan to continue deploying cash to add more dividend stocks.”
That’s a LOT of cash 🙂 Well done.
I hope to publish my dividend income update for March in another week. I think we’re averaging about $1,200 per month now. Onwards and upwards!
Mark
And the winning streak continues! Well done Tawcan.
Thanks Team CF!
Damn. That´s just crazy. 39 companies in one month! Don´t think I have seen something like this before. Well done!
I’m very happy getting pay cheques from 39 companies. 🙂
I
My dividend income is minuscule because I invest in index ETFs. So far 2017 I’m up 15%, although I have been flat for the past few weeks.
Up 15% in 2017 is pretty awesome result regardless. Congrats.
No dividends for me (I’m nothing but consistent, at least for now!) but that’s another great month. Are there months in the US/CAN that typically pay out more than others across the market? PS. the green house looks great…have you got any plans to harvest the rain water? (I noticed there were droplets and maybe damp soil outside, thought if it rained often enough that would be pretty neat).
The highest we got from US payout are months that’s about 30-70 split. We own more CAN dividend stocks so it makes sense that we receive more in CAN currency.
The droplets on the greenhouse windows were from condensation, it’s really warm in there compare to outside temperature. But good idea on harvest the rain water, will have to look into that.
Crazy dividend growth man! Way to go I wish my dividend income looked like that!
Thanks it has taken a few years to get to this point. I’m sure you’ll get to this point soon. 🙂
great numbers and nice growth over last 6 years,looks like 1200 will be new record for you.
Yup 1200 will be new record, hoping to break this milestone soon. 🙂
Congrats on keeping your income over 1000 for three months running. Hope the rest of the year goes well for you. And yes to the green house, how very exciting!
Thank you, hoping to hit 1200 month over month soon. 🙂
Tawcan –
Your top 5 at 33% actually isn’t too bad to be honest, I’ve seen some where it’s quite more than that. Growth rate is huge AND 12 months straight of > 4 digits. Nice job Tawcan, proof is in your pudding my friend.
-Lanny
Thanks Lanny, very happy to see the YOY growth rate to be above 20%.
Another inspirational update as always. You have a very diverse number of companies paying you in March. Way to keep that passive income stream diversified. I see $1200 coming down the line soon enough. Great total income and great year over year increase too. Keep up the good work.
Thanks DivHut. It’s nice to see the passive income growing every month. 🙂
excellent growth again in DGI income! and the 1200 is looking at you…!
On the garden front, I just added 4 meters of raspberry to our garden. I will enjoy these eveng walks to these plants and pick a few, just for the taste of it. And it is a great learning opportunity for the kids. They need to give wtare, and soon, add protection for the birds.
Wow 4 meters of raspberry, amazing stuff! We just expanded our strawberry area so we should be getting even more strawberries this year. Looking forward to that.
Rock on Tawcan! That is great. I was close to the $1k mark so I bet you were very excited to almost cross the $1200 mark. Enjoying following your journey and best of luck with the greenhouse,
Passive Income Dude
Hi Dan,
We were close on the $1200 mark the last few months. So the excitement is decreasing slightly. We know we will hit this milestone later this year.
Over 1000 a month for 12 straight months that is one heck of an accomplishment. With additions and reinvestments you will hit 15,000
Thanks Doug, hitting $15k this year would be pretty awesome for sure.
Congrats on some very nice dividend growth Tawcan!
I’m also ahead by about 20% this year despite being super-lazy about deploying additional capital. Hopefully this year I can meet my overall goal of increasing our dividend income by 10% to hit $52k.
Very nice looking greenhouse there. Your climate is pretty similar to ours. One thing I’ve found from years of experience gardening up here is that the soil temp is really important. Many things won’t grow well until the soil warms up enough. Sometimes keeping plans in pots is the best way to do that.
$52k would be pretty awesome. If we were at that point we’d be totally financially independent. Hopefully we can get to that point in less than 10 years time.
Thanks we’re looking forward to growing things in the greenhouse. Need to get a thermometer to monitor the greenhouse temperature. Good call on the soil temperature, we were getting frost just the other day too and that killed some herbs we had in the garden. 🙁
Keeping the plants in pots and/or above ground will help stop them from getting frost bite until they are more established. I hope you can get the soil warm enough in your climate. I am from Australia where the soil is always warm! Cheers
We’ve been planting in pots inside and transferring them outside once weather’s a bit warmer. It just happened to get cold unexpectedly the other day. 🙁