Dividend Income – March 2025 Update

Welcome to another monthly dividend income update. After our financial epiphany in 2011, we got very serious with dividend growth investing. Since then, we have grown our dividend portfolio from basically nothing to over seven figures. It’s pretty amazing what happens to your portfolio value when you take advantage of time in the market and the power of compounding. 

We keep our investing strategy very simple and straightforward by following these simple ideas: 

• Max out TFSA contributions every year
• Max out RRSP contributions every year
• Invest in taxable accounts when both TFSA and RRSP are maxed out
• TFSA: Canadian dividend stocks and REITs 
• RRSP: US dividend stocks and Canadian dividend stocks 
• Taxable: Canadian dividend stocks only. No REITS and no income trusts to take advantage of preferential tax treatment on eligible dividends.

I spent two weeks in Europe attending trade shows and spending one weekend in Munich. My trip was full of surprises with an unplanned stop in Montreal for one night. Although it was neat to have a two-week business trip in Europe, it was nice to be back home and to be able to enjoy the spring weather in Vancouver.

The curling season ended at the end of March. Our team in the novice league finished the season in first place with only one loss. During the championship tournament, we beat the 4th-ranked team in our first game and then went onto play the 2nd-ranked team in the final. Despite leading earlier in the game, we missed a number of critical shots later in the game. We were down by one and had the “hammer” (final stone) in the 8th end.

Before the skips threw their last two rocks, we were sitting comfortably with two stones in the house as shot and 2nd stone (i.e. 2 points). With the last stone, the other team’s skip took out our 2nd stone. Our skip just had to throw a nose hit to that stone for us to win the game. Unfortunately, our skip’s stone hit and rolled out too far, resulting in us having to go into an extra end. In the extra end, disaster struck and we again missed a number of shots, causing us to lose the game. It was a tough loss and took me a few days to get over it. 

https://twitter.com/Tawcan/status/1903844852275769467

Meanwhile, the men’s team that I spared consistently since January was in the men’s B league final and beat the other team. I didn’t get to play that final game (the 5th player played) but I was happy to have the chance to play with more experienced players and gained valuable experience. 

Curling season starts again in September. The current plan is to curl on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday with different curlers. Between going to the gym, curling, and Scouts, Mrs. T jokingly said she may never see me in the house…ha!

March meant nicer weather in Vancouver with flowers blooming in the yard. It also meant that Mrs. T and I have both started spending more time clearing out weeds in the garden. 

Dividend Income – March 2025

In March, we received dividends from the following companies:

• Brookfield Asset Management (BAM.TO)
• BlackRock (BLK)
• Brookfield Renewable Energy 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 (MFC.TO)
• PepsiCo (PEP)
• Qualcomm (QCOM)
• SmartCentres REIT (SRU.UN)
• Target (TGT)
• Visa (V)
• Waste Connections (WCN.TO)
• Waste Management (WM)
• Invesco QQQM (QQQM)

These 21 payments added up to $4,623.21. After a “quiet” month in February, it’s nice to see a monthly dividend income of over $4,500. 

As you can see from the list of companies, most of the dividends came from the Canadian side of the border. Due to the poor US exchange rates, we haven’t converted CAD to USD for stock purchases in recent months.

Compared to March 2024, we saw a YoY growth of 11.77%, a very respectable number. 

Since the Brookfield stocks pay dividends in USD and then the amount gets converted to CAD, it is challenging to accurately project how much dividend we’ll receive. Perhaps we need to see if our discount brokers (Questrade, TD, and Wealthsimple) can deposit the dividends in USD rather than CAD. 

Dividend Hikes

Dividend hikes are important because they are one of the three driving forces behind our dividend income growth. When we do live off dividends, our dividend income needs to continue to grow and keep up with inflation (or hopefully, exceed it). We will be relying on organic dividend hikes to do that for us.

In March, the following companies announced dividend hikes:

• Canadian Natural Resources (CNQ.TO) raised its dividend payout by 4.4% to $0.5875 per share
• Power Corp (POW.TO) raised its dividend payout by 8.9% to $0.6125 per share
• Qualcomm (QCOM) raised its dividend payout by 4.7% to $0.89 per share

Our forward annual dividend income increased by $160.43 as a result of these three dividend hikes. 

Dividend Reinvestment Plans 

To keep our dividend portfolio more or less on autopilot, we enroll in dividend reinvestment plans whenever we are eligible. By reinvesting dividends, we can take advantage of dollar cost averaging. 

For shares we hold in TD and Questrade, we are doing synthetic DRIPs, meaning the dividend amount received must be higher than the share price to drip one or more shares. For Wealthsimple, we simply turn on fractional DRIP so 100% of the dividend amount is reinvested into fractional shares. 

As a result, our DRIP ratio, dollar amount reinvested divided by dividend income, has been on an increasing trajectory ever since we moved my TFSA and RRSP from Questrade to Wealthsimple. 

In March, we dripped the following shares:

• 2 shares of Brookfield Asset Management
• 4.688 shares of Brookfield Renewable Energy Corp
• 0.077 shares of BlackRock
• 0.197 shares of Brookfield Corp
• 0.466 shares of Canadian National Railway
• 37.493 shares of Enbridge
• 3 shares of Fortis
• 0.097 shares of Alphabet
• 0.537 shares of Granite REIT
• 0.267 shares of McDonald’s
• 9.737 shares of Manulife 
• 0.503 shares of PepsiCo
• 0.093 shares of Qualcomm
• 0.087 shares of QQQM
• 6 shares of SmartCentres REIT
• 0.63 shares of Target
• 0.086 shares of Waste Connections
• 0.164 shares of Waste Management

A total of 66.17 shares were dripped and $3,966 out of the $4,623.21 was reinvested immediately. Most importantly, we increased our forward annual dividend by $201.47 thanks to enrolling in DRIP.

Stock Transactions

Amid tariff uncertainties, the North American indices have been very volatile in March as you can see from below.  

We tried to ignore all the noises throughout March and continued our simple long-term strategy:

• Earn money
• Living below our means
• Invest the difference 

We were busy in March on the purchase front and bought the following:

• 12 shares of iShares ex-Canada all country ETF (XAW)
• 48 shares of National Bank (NA.TO)
• 107 shares of Capital Power Corp (CPX.TO)

Just over $11,000 worth of capital was deployed with these purchases, which allowed us to add $506.57 toward our forward annual dividend income. 

Even after the April 2nd “Liberation Day” announcement, a lot of questions and uncertainties remain. Would other countries retaliate with more tariffs? Would the tariffs get suspended? Was this a negotiation tactic? Will the tariffs lead to inflation and then ultimately to a global recession? Unfortunately, nobody knows, so we’ll have to see how things unfold.

I believe that starting a global trade war isn’t a good idea. In the end, consumers will get hurt in their wallets and a global trade war will cause inflation and the unemployment rate to go up and potentially cause recessions. If uncertainties remain, I expect the volatility to continue for many months. 

As DIY investors, it’s extremely important that we don’t get scared and make irrational decisions. Remember that when there’s blood on the street, that usually provides good buy opportunities for long-term investors. That’s exactly what we plan to do – continue to buy stocks that we own and dollar cost average. 

Dividend Scorecard 

Here’s our scorecard for March 2025.

Overall, a very solid month. I am quite pleased to see that we added over $850 toward our forward annual dividend income. In case you’re wondering, that’s equivalent to adding over $21,700 of new capital, assuming a 4% yield.  

Tariffs tariffs tariffs 

The talk of the town in the last few weeks has been tariffs. I briefly mentioned tariffs earlier and here’s a great video by Joseph Carlson providing some insights. Take a look if you haven’t; he brought up some excellent points.

At the time of writing (April 4), the stock market tanked for two days straight since the Liberation Day announcement. I have no idea whether the trend will continue or not, but it’s important to remember the following:

• Short-term volatility is completely normal. 
• When you zoom out, it’s actually not too bad. We’re basically back to the late 2023 level

• Corrections here and there are a good thing for the market
• The market tends to go up over the long term

My view? Companies will continue to operate and find ways to minimize the tariff impacts. As long term investors, this provides a good opportunity to buy well-run and profitable companies at discounted prices.

I can’t help but remember what happened in 2020. During the COVID-19 market downturn, at one point, our portfolio lost around $250k. We are not quite at that level yet, but if the market continues to trend down, I would not be surprised to see our portfolio value drop by more than that amount. 

Since we’re still in the accumulation phase, a short term stock market drop is actually very much welcomed. If I look at our stock transactions between 2020 and 2021, we were able to pick up some stocks at a deep discount:

• Bank of Montreal at $77.63
• CIBC at $37.81
• National Bank at $65.54
• Royal Bank at $84.60
• XAW at $28.25
• Enbridge at $40.95
• AbbVie at $104.33
• Apple at $132.96

Of course, not all of our trades during that time frame came out positive but overall, we made many excellent purchases to take advantage of the discounted prices. 

Therefore, if you’re still in the accumulation phase, the market drops are an excellent opportunity to buy at a discounted price. The critical thing is continue to generate extra cash so you can continue to add new capital into your investment portfolio. 

On the other hand, if you’re planning to retire soon, it might be worth it to get your ducks in order and perhaps consider work for a little bit longer to build up your cash buffer.

And if you retired recently, more than ever, it’s important to have some cash buffer so you don’t have to dip into your investment when the market is in a downward spiral. 

We can’t control the market, so why worry and feel stressed out about it? The market is cyclical, there are ups and there are downs. But over the long term, the market has a tendency to go up. 

Things will work out, ignore the noises, and more importantly, don’t make irrational emotional decisions that you will regret down the road. 

The beauty of dividend income, I believe, is that it prevents us from making these irrational emotional decisions. Investing is super simple on paper but in reality, psychology plays a huge part of your investment success. 

Summary – Dividend Income March 2025 Update

After three months, we have received $16,276.71 in dividends or $5,425.57 per month on average. If we keep up this monthly average we’d end up the year with over $65,000 in dividends, beating our goal of $60,000. 

Is it likely for this average to continue? Looking at our historical trend, I believe our monthly average will start to decline but we should be able to achieve our annual dividend goal. 

It’s very nice to see that we went from $10,159.55 in Q1 2022 to $11,921.82 in Q1 2023 to $14,335.80 in Q1 2024 to $16,271.27 in Q1 2025, with the quarterly stick getting higher and higher. 

Year	Amount	YoY % increase
2022	$10,159.55	n/a
2023	$11,921.82	17.3%
2024	$14,335.80	20.2%
2025	$16,276.21	13.5%

To put numbers in perspective, $16,276.21 after three months is equivalent to:

• $180.85 per day or $7.55 per hour that our dividend portfolio is generating, regardless of what we’re doing
• $1,162.59 per week or $29.06 hourly wage after 14 working weeks

At the time of writing, we are close to maxing out our 2025 RRSP contribution room (non-work portion since I get matching contributions through work’s RRSP). Once we max out RRSP, the next step is to start contributing to non-registered accounts.

Remember, don’t freak out about the market. As investors, it’s a good thing to have to deal with some adversity. You will come out as a better investor having gone through some adversity.

Happy investing everyone!