Dividend Income – September 2025 Update

Welcome to another month of dividend income update.

It’s hard to believe that Q3 is already in the books and we are in the last quarter of 2025. Where did the time go?

For those of you who are new, we have been posting these monthly dividend income updates since this blog was born in July 2014, over 11 years ago. The intention for these updates is to demonstrate that it is possible to build up a sizable dividend portfolio over time that will eventually produce sufficient dividend income to cover our expenses. 

We started investing in individual dividend stocks. Over time, we realized that it was not possible to own everything. We also realized that by investing in individual dividend stocks, we were not as diversified as we would like to be. Therefore, we started investing in low-fee passive index ETFs.

At the time of writing, we own 38 individual dividend stocks and 2 index ETFs. We would like to reduce the individual holding number to 30 eventually, but I’ll admit it’s extremely difficult to close out positions.

In case you’re wondering, you can find our holding details here. A quick summary of the stocks and ETFs we hold:

• Apple (AAPL)
• AbbVie (ABBV)
• Alimentation Couche-Tard (ATD.TO)
• Brookfield Asset Management (BAM.TO)
• BCE Inc (BCE.TO)
• Brookfield Renewable Corp (BEPC.TO)
• BlackRock (BLK)
• Bank of Montreal (BMO.TO)
• Brookfield Corporation (BN.TO)
• Bank of Nova Scotia (BNS.TO)
• CIBC (CM.TO)
• Canadian Natural Resources (CNQ.TO)
• Canadian National Railway (CNR.TO)
• Costco (COST)
• Capital Power Corp (CPX.TO)
• Emera (EMA.TO)
• Enbridge (ENB.TO)
• Fortis (FTS.TO)
• Alphabet (GOOGL)
• Granite REIT (GRT.UN)
• Hydro One (H.TO)
• Intact Financial (IFC.TO)
• Coca-Cola (KO)
• McDonald’s (MCD)
• Manulife Financial (MFC.TO)
• National Bank (NA.TO)
• Power Corp (POW.TO)
• Procter & Gamble (PG)
• Royal Bank (RY.TO)
• SmartCentres REIT (SRU.UN)
• Telus (T.TO)
• TC Energy Corp (TRP.TO)
• Visa (V)
• VICI Properties (VICI)
• Waste Connections (WCN.TO)
• Waste Management (WM)
• Walmart (WMT)
• iShares Core MSCI AC World ex-Canada Index ETF (XAW.TO)
• Invesco NASDAQ-100 (QQQM)

We invest more or less 100% in equities. The only exception is that we own a small percentage of bonds via my work’s RRSP. 

Why invest 100% in equities? Isn’t that risky, especially when we are getting closer and closer to reaching financial independence?

With decades ahead of us, we are investing for the long term. The long-term historical return of the stock market is around 10% annually before inflation. If one holds a high percentage of bonds, this return starts to drop significantly. Furthermore, in the low-interest rate environment, I don’t believe bonds will create much of a “real” return. By holding stable dividend income-producing stocks like Fortis, Emera, TD, and Royal Bank, we are essentially creating our own bonds (i.e. the so-called “bond proxy”)

As we move closer toward living off dividends, we plan to increase our cash reserves so we have 90% stocks and 10% cash/cash equivalent in terms of our liquid net worth asset mix. So if our net worth is $1 million, that would be $900k in stocks and $100k in cash/cash equivalent. 

In September, Mrs. T, along with three other local artists, were busy with an art gallery show. Mrs. T displayed her pottery pieces and sold quite a few of them. Overall, it was a very successful show.

Between Mrs. T’s art gallery, me working from the office three days a week, kids’ different activities, birthday parties, kids’ play dates, and only one car for our household, we had to figure out the logistics daily. It took a lot of planning and coordination but we managed to get to places all with only one car!

September meant harvest time for our backyard garden, so we harvested a lot of apples, beets, potatoes, fennel, tomatoes, and cucumbers and enjoyed the fruit (and produce) of our labour. Fresh fruits and produce from the garden tasted delicious!

A good friend of mine came back to Vancouver from Australia for his brother’s wedding in September. To take advantage of his visit, a few of us decided to have a guys’ weekend backcountry camp. After a lot of emails back and forth and some last-minute changes, we decided to check out Semaphore Lakes north of Pemberton. 

All of us used to do a lot of backcountry trips in our 20s and early 30s. Now in our early 40s, we decided we would take it easy and not do anything hardcore (i.e. stupid) for the three-day trip. We explored the lakes, went up to the Train Glacier, and explored an Ice Cave. When we weren’t hiking and exploring, we sat by the lake, talked, and hung out. 

It was great to catch up with the guys and we had to thank all of our wives for taking care of the kids so we could have fun for three days. 

Dividend Income – September 2025

Back to dividend income. In September, we received dividend payments from the following companies:

• Alimentation Couche-Tard (ATD.TO)
• 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)
• SmartCentres REIT (SRU.UN)
• Visa (V)
• Waste Management (WM)
• Walmart (WMT)
• Invesco NASDAQ-100 (QQQM)

The 19 dividend payments added to $4,639.87. 

Compared to September 2024, we saw a YoY increase of 7.9% which is the third lowest YoY growth so far this year. It’s not the end of the world since we have had some very high YoY growth in other months (like January, April, and August). However, it would be nice to get these “lower” months closer to a 10% YoY rate. 

Month	2024	2025	YOY %
Jan	$7,050.48	$8,287.55	17.55%
Feb	$3,149.06	$3,365.95	6.89%
Mar	$4,136.26	$4,623.21	11.77%
Apri	$6,239.65	$7,646.60	22.55%
May	$3,323.66	$3,523.11	6.00%
Jun	$5,034.01	$5,753.42	14.29%
Jul	$6,361.63	$7,035.76	10.60%
Aug	$3,450.05	$3,947.55	14.42%
Sep	$4,300.08	$4,639.87	7.90%

This is definitely something to work on, but we don’t want to start buying dividend stocks purely based on when they pay dividends. I believe if we did that, we could get into trouble. We want to purchase dividend stocks based on the quality of the company, not when they pay dividends.

Dividend Hikes

When it came to dividend hikes, it had been very quiet on that front for the last few months. September was just as quiet, with only one company announcing a dividend payout increase – Emera announced a dividend payout increase of 1%, from $0.725 per share to $0.7325 per share.

This announcement increased our forward annual dividend income by $7.48. A very small amount, so hopefully we’ll see more substantial dividend hikes before the year wraps up.

Dividend Reinvestment Plans

While we are still in the accumulating phase, we enable dividend reinvestment plans whenever we are eligible. The idea is that we would reinvest dividends right away for additional shares and allowing us to compound more quickly

As mentioned in the early retirement planning post recently, we plan to turn off DRIP probably in the middle of next year, so we can start building up a cash reserve before we start withdrawing money from our accounts. By not dripping and building up a cash reserve instead, we wouldn’t need to tap into dividends received right away, giving us a small margin of safety. 

For now, we are dripping whenever we can. We are enrolled in synthetic DRIPs with TD and Questrade, dripping one or more full shares at each dividend payout and the leftover cash is deposited in our accounts. We are enrolled in fractional DRIP with Wealthsimple Trade, where all dividends received are reinvested right away.

In September, we dripped the following shares:

• 1 share of BAM.TO
• 3.413 shares of BEPC.TO
• 0.0656 share of BLK
• 0.2255 shares of BN.TO
• 1.5051 shares of CNR.TO
• 36.3129 shares of ENB.TO
• 3 shares of FTS.TO
• 0.0743 shares of GOOGL
• 0.4906 shares of GRT.UN
• 0.2695 shares of MCD
• 9.9107 shares of MFC.TO
• 0.1247 shares of QQQM
• 6 shares of SRU.UN
• 0.0566 shares of V
• 0.1719 shares of WM
• 0.1609 shares of WMT

In total, we dripped 62.7814 shares and reinvested $4,000.53 out of the $4,639.87 received. More importantly, we were able to increase our forward annual dividend income by $190.75.

It’s neat to see that we have increased our forward annual dividend income by over $2,000 so far this year via DRIP. By combining both DRIP and dividend hikes, we have increased our forward annual dividend income by over $3,500. At a 4% dividend yield, this is equivalent to investing over $87,500 in new capital. This is the perfect demonstration of why DRIP and dividend hikes are so powerful in growing dividend income.

Month	DRIP	Div growth	Total
Jan	430.21	$75.43	$505.64
Feb	$103.60	$455.08	$558.68
Mar	$201.47	$160.43	$361.90
Apri	$356.45	$63.70	$420.15
May	$107.45	$663.80	$771.25
Jun	$206.43	$5.27	$211.70
Jul	$325.46	$43.70	$369.16
Aug	$114.38	$0.00	$114.38
Sep	$190.75	$7.48	$198.23
Total	$2,036.20	$1,474.89	$3,511.09

Stock Transactions

Sharp-eyed readers probably noticed that our total number of individual dividend stocks went down from 39 to 38 at the beginning of the post. This is because we decided to close out South Bow (SOBO.TO). After hitting the ex-dividend date, we sold all the shares across the different accounts and reinvested the money elsewhere. 

South Bow has a very high yield of around 7%. Because SOBO was a relatively small position in our dividend portfolio (one of the bottom three in terms of percentage), we believed it was better to close it out and reinvest the money in other stocks that we already own. We wanted to simplify our dividend portfolio and reduce the number of holdings to 30 in the future. 

With the money from SOBO and some money saved up, we purchased the following stocks:

• 7.1677 shares of Canadian Natural Resources (CNQ.TO)
• 50 shares of Capital Power (CPX.TO)
• 89.0984 shares of Brookfield Corporation (BN.TO)
• 28.9423 shares of TC Energy (TRP.TO)

All these transactions resulted in a decrease of $60.39 in forward annual dividend income. It’s never ideal to see a decrease in forward annual dividend income. However, I strongly believe long-term, we are better off because of the following reasons:

1. CNQ is still relatively cheap, I believe both the share price and dividend will continue to rise for years to come
2. CPX has done well in the last five years, with the stock share price finally hitting a 52-week high. I like how the company recently grew its generation capacity by ~2.2GW by acquiring various assets in the US. The growth in the US should enhance CPX’s asset positioning and commercial optimization in the future. 
3. BN announced a three-for-two stock split. In the past, we have done very well by purchasing stocks before a share split (NA, TSLA, AAPL, and CM, to name a few). We believe BN will continue to follow this trend. It made sense to purchase some shares to take advantage of the share split.
4. Our SOBO shares came from the spinoff of TC Energy’s liquid pipeline business. After the split, TC Energy became a natural gas and energy solutions company. Since we already own Enbridge, we thought it would make sense to focus our holdings in TC Energy instead. 

Dividends aren’t everything. Investors need to consider both dividend income and share price appreciation. By closing out South Bow and investing money in the other four companies, I believe we will be able to have a higher total return.

In theory, this sounds great, but will it work out? I honestly have no idea. Looking back at our stock transaction history, we closed out Johnson and Johnson last year and the stock has returned over 26% since. Fortunately, we reinvested the JNJ money into GOOGL and QQQ, which have returned 36% and 26%, respectively. So we did OK. But we don’t always come out on the winning side on every transaction…

It’s easy to look back at the historical transaction and kick yourself for the bad moves or missing out on huge opportunities. But hindsight is always 20-20. 

The thing is, as an investor, you can’t second-guess yourself and keep looking back at your historical decisions. Yes, you can look back and learn from mistakes you made, but don’t overthink and get frustrated. If you do, you will lose sleep over every single investment decision you make. It’s best to make the decision, move on, and look forward!

Dividend Scorecard

Here’s our dividend scorecard for September:

Overall, a solid month despite a decrease in dividend income from our stock transactions.

Random Thoughts

The market has been on an upward trajectory for many months. It’s quite mindblowing that many new investors have not seen a sustained bear market. The most recent US and Canadian bear market was from January 3, 2022 to October 12, 2022, which only lasted 282 days. In comparison, the financial crisis bear market went from October 9, 2007 to March 9, 2009 and the dot com bear market went from March 2020 to October 2022. The great depression bear market lasted considerably longer. 

In the midst of this continued bull market, it’s vital to remember that our portfolio is performing well not because we are genius investors, it’s simply due to the market conditions. (A rising tide lifts all ships). More than ever, it’s important to stay in the market (i.e. time in the market) rather than timing the market.

By staying in the market, you can ride out the day-to-day, month-to-month volatilities and take the long term gain. Think back to April when Liberation Day happened, the market went for a nose dive. Imagine if you were to sell out that day and stayed out of the market until now, boy oh boy, you’d have lost a significant amount of gain. On the flip side, if you were to continuously add new capital regardless of how the market was doing, you would have been on a nice ride! So it’s important to tune out the day-to-day noises.

You probably have heard people declaring that “stocks are expensive” or “the market is too expensive,” but what does that mean exactly?

Take stock A and B, for example. Stock A is $10,000 per share and Stock B is $5 per share. Can you declare that Stock A is ridiculously expensive? 

Unfortunately, many people believe that when a stock reaches a certain price, it makes that stock expensive. What many people fail to do is look at the company valuation and the underlying metrics. 

What if I tell you that Stock A has a PE ratio of 10 and a PEG (PE to growth) ratio of 0.75, while Stock B has a PE ratio of 55 and a PEG ratio of 2? Does Stock A still look expensive?

I think not. 

The company’s profit, revenue and EBITA (Earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization) don’t typically stay flat. They tend to increase over time. Therefore, it only makes sense for the stock price to increase over time as well. The real question is how fast does the stock price increase in relation to the company’s profit, revenue, EBITA, and other financial metrics. 

Summary – Dividend income September 2025 Update

After three quarters, we received a total of $48,823.02 in dividend income or a nine-month average of $5,424.78 per month.

It’s pretty neat that we are very close to hitting our total dividend income in 2023. In fact, by the middle of October, we should exceed the $50,189.07 received in 2023. The dividend snowball is definitely compounding, getting bigger and faster. 

To put things in perspective, $48,823.02 after nine months is equivalent to:

• $178.84 per day or $7.45 per hour that our dividend portfolio is generating for us, regardless of what we’re doing
• $1,220.58 per week or $30.51 per hour working wage after 40 weeks

How was your September dividend income?