Dividend Income – March 2024 Update

Hey everyone, welcome to another monthly dividend income report.

March started with a surprise. One night when we looked out before bedtime, we were surprised to see a light layer of snow on the ground! 

We then had a few days of snow on and off. Since it had been a bad season for skiing, snow in March was very appreciated by many skiers and snowboarders. Hopefully, a bit of spring snow will prevent us from having water supply issues in the summer.

Like February, March was pretty low key. Mrs. T and I spent a lot of time playing Bananagrams in the morning when we had coffee then again when we had our after lunch coffee. Thanks to Bananagrams we got to practice our spelling. For some odd reason, I’d always end up with a few I’s and O’s at the end, making it very challenging to use up all the tiles.  

Kid 2.0 has been very interested in science lately so she was experimenting with making jello using different kitchen materials. Given that she didn’t use any sugar at all, I was pleasantly surprised at how delicious these jellos were.  

As part of her community project for the Beavers North Star badge, Kid 2.0 decided to make six dresses using old clothes. She’d then donate these dresses to the local shelter for less fortunate kids. She drew the dress designs on paper first, then with some help from Mrs. T, she’d use the sewing machine to make the dresses. Both Mrs. T and I were very impressed.

Both kids have been practicing aerial silks yoga at a local yoga studio. Mrs. T and I were invited to sit in the last class. It was really neat to see what both kids could do while hanging in the air. 

For me, I spent a lot of time giving our cat belly rubs. Both kids also were “decorating” the cat.

Dividend Income – March 2024

Back to dividend income… in March, we received dividends from the following stocks:

• Brookfield Asset Management (BAM.TO)
• BlackRock (BLK)
• Brookfield Renewable Energy Corp (BEPC.TO)
• Brookfield Corporation (BN.TO)
• Canadian National Railway (CNR.TO)
• Canadian Tire (CTC.A)
• Enbridge (ENB.TO)
• Fortis (FTS.TO)
• Granite REIT (GRT.UN)
• Hydro One (H.TO)
• Intact Financial (IFC.TO)
• Johnson & Johnson (JNJ)
• McDonald’s (MCD)
• Manulife Financial (MFC.TO)
• Magna International (MG.TO)
• Qualcomm (QCOM)
• SmartCentres REIT (SRU.UN)
• Target (TGT)
• Visa (V)
• Waste Connections (WCN.TO)
• Waste Management (WM)

The 21 dividend payments added to a total of $4,136.26. It was an excellent month considering this amount was able to cover over 100% of our total expenses in March.

Compared to March 2023, we saw a YoY growth of 11.2%. Many readers have been asking what’s contributing to our YoY growth. To be more transparent, here’s a quick YoY increase breakdown and what contributed to the increases:

Ticker	YoY Increase	Comments
BAM	19.3%	Dividend hike + DRIP
BLK	2%	Dividend hike
BEPC	8.8%	Dividend hike  + DRIP
BN	14.30%	Dividend hike
CNR	7.0%	Dividend hike + new capital
CTC.A	1.5%	Dividend hike
ENB	22.3%	Dividend hike + DRIP + new capital
FTS	7.5%	Dividend hike + DRIP
GRT.UN	1.3%	DRIP
H	7.6%	Dividend hike + DRIP
IFC	10%	Dividend hike
JNJ	5.3%	Dividend hike
MCD	9.9%	Dividend hike
MFC	15.6%	Dividend hike + DRIP
MG	0.55%	Dividend hike
QCOM	6.70%	Dividend hike
SRU.UN	7%	DRIP
TGT	1.90%	Dividend hike
V	58.90%	Dividend hike
WCN	9.60%	Dividend hike
WM	7.10%	Dividend hike

In March 2023, we received dividends from Suncor and Metro. We didn’t receive dividends from these two companies in March 2024 because we closed these positions previously.

Enbridge contributed to about 60% of the overall YoY dividend income growth. We added some new Enbridge shares last year but most of the dividend growth came from the DRIP and dividend hike (Enbridge board raised dividend payout by 3.3%). 

Manulife contributed to about 9% of the overall YoY dividend growth. Since we didn’t purchase any more Manulife shares, the dividend growth came from the DRIP and dividend hike (Manulife board raised dividend payout by 9.6%). 

The rest of the holdings contributed to 31% of the overall YoY dividend growth. With the exception of Visa (we purchased a few more shares via new capital), all the dividend growth came from dividend hikes and DRIP. 

Dividend Hikes 

Compared to February, it was a relatively quiet month in terms of dividend hikes. Only two holdings in our dividend portfolio increased dividend payout.

• Power Corp (POW.TO) raised its dividend payout by 7.1% to $0.5625 per share.
• Qualcomm (QCOM) raised its dividend payout by 6.25% to $0.85 per share.

These two dividend hikes increased our forward annual dividend income by $71.95. It’s not a lot of money but I’ll take a smaller raise than nothing at all. At a 4% dividend yield, this is equivalent to adding $1,798.75 new cash into our dividend portfolio. 

Dividend Reinvestment Plans (DRIP)

We try to enroll in DRIP whenever we are eligible. Once we enroll in DRIP, this allows us to dollar cost average over time – when share prices are low, we can DRIP more shares, when share prices are high, we don’t DRIP as many shares, or no DRIP at all. 

Over the years we have dripped a lot of shares and utilized DRIP’s to increase our forward annual dividend income.

I think enrolling in DRIP works very well for us, because it leaves out the mental and emotional aspects of investing for us.

In March we dripped the following shares:

• 1 share of Brookfield Asset Management
• 4 shares of Brookfield Renewable Energy Corp
• 24 shares of Enbridge
• 4 shares of Fortis
• 10 shares of Manulife
• 7 shares of SmartCentres REIT

In total we reinvested $2,008.41 right away and added 50 more shares. More importantly, we added $133.43 toward our forward annual dividend income.

Stock Transactions

In March we did a small amount of house cleaning by selling 10 shares of Canadian Tire in Mrs. T’s RRSP. Given that Canadian Tire has struggled in the past year, we plan to eventually close out this position entirely and reinvest the money elsewhere.

With the proceeds from the 10 shares of Canadian Tire and money saved up, we added the following shares:

• 130 shares of TC Energy Corp (TRP.TO)
• 128 shares of iShares ex-Canada international index ETF (XAW.TO)

In total just over $12,000 was deployed. Please note, not all of it is from new capital. About $1,400 was from selling CTC.A shares and some portion of the money was from dividends received.

These two purchases added about $520 toward our forward annual dividend income.

After three months in 2024, we added just over $38,000 in our dividend portfolio. Most of that money came from TFSA and RRSP savings from last year and some came from the sale of Metro, Suncor, and Canadian Tire shares. 

Thanks to our seven-figure dividend portfolio, we generate a large sum of dividends each month. Right now, about 55% is re-invested via DRIP and the money not reinvested right away is deposited in our accounts. Whenever we accumulate over $1,000 in one of the accounts, we then purchase additional shares ($1k to keep the commission cost less than 1% of the overall transaction cost). When we have money saved up, we also transfer the savings into our investment accounts to purchase more shares. 

Some readers will remember that we usually make most of our purchases in the first half of the year and then in the second half of the year we go into savings mode and save money for TFSA and RRSP contributions for the beginning of the following year. We will most likely adopt the same approach this year. 

Our investment strategy comes down to three basic ideas – earn, save, and invest. There’s no fancy strategies involved!

Dividend Scorecard March 2024

Here’s our dividend scorecard from March 2024:

Not only did we receive over $4,100 in dividend income, we also added over $700 toward our forward annual dividend income. I am very pleased with our progress.

Dividend Income – March 2024 Summary

After three months, we have received a total of $14,335.80 in dividend income. Mrs. T and I are very grateful that our dividend portfolio is working hard for us so we don’t have to. 

I continue to be amazed at how much progress we have made over the years. Back in 2017 we received $14,834.38 for the entire year. In 7 years we managed to get close to that annual total after only three months. 

It makes me wonder what our dividend income will be like 7 years from now in 2031. Maybe we will get to the same level as Reader B’s $360k dividend income per year at some point? 

One can dream right?