April 2023 Dividend Income Update

So, what’s my goal after the $35,000 in annual dividend income?

I plan to ease off the throttle a bit- it’s not to say that I am going to completely STOP increasing my dividend income but I won’t be reaching for such aggressive targets. The annual dividend income is like my “UBI” or Universal Basic Income to fund the reinvesting.

I just finished completing my taxes and although it’s great having dividend income, I don’t need the income right now since I’m working.

Basically, unlike other dividend investors, I don’t plan to keep amassing $60,000 annually in dividend income just yet. Since I’m working part-time and I believe I plan to work part time probably until I am 50 (or even 55- I just love my benefits too much…), I don’t need so much income (and more importantly, income tax, hah) right now.

Income splitting won’t work for my scenario.

Enough pontification about my portfolio. Here’s my April dividend income update!

April 2023 Dividend Income Update

My one year target goal is at least $35,000 annually of dividend income (definitely not a big deal if I don’t get this, my main goal is a 7 figure portfolio), or about a $1,000,000 dividend/ investment portfolio with a conservative 3.5% dividend yield.

For one of my 2023 personal finance resolutions, I am aiming for $35,000 in dividend income.

Here’s my March 2023 Dividend Income Update if you want to look at my dividend portfolio from last month.  The forward annual yield at that time was $30,550.

A few notes: I leave the US dividends received/ estimated as a 1:1 US and CAD dollar exchange to keep thing simple.

My April 2023 Forward Dividend Income is $30,883 and this is a 1.1% increase from last month, or a $333 increase in annual dividend income.

My “hourly rate” is now $3.52 whether I’m eating or sleeping or cleaning my stove.

Or the rate is $14.85/hour if I was working a 40 hour work week. I’m almost at BC’s minimum wage of $15.65 per hour but now I have a bit more to go since the minimum wage got increased to $16.65/hr on April 1.

Talk about passive income!

Here’s my screenshot chart from Wealthica below on my 12 month performance relative to the S&P/TSX and S&P500 (-2.09 % over 12 months).

I am beating the market (both the S&P500 and S&P/TSX) but it’s not anything to be proud of since I am still negative.

To get to this page, log into Wealthica and click on “add-ons” then click on “Performance Report” in the drop down box. You’ll be able to see how your portfolio compares to the S&P/TSX and the S&P 500 (but it doesn’t include the dividends).

My April 2022 forward dividend income was $24,590 and my April 2023 forward dividend income is $30,883 so my YoY increase is around 25.5%.

Here’s how my forward dividend yield looks like compared to the last few years. The snowball is rolling rolling rolling.

You can read my Wealthica review here if you’re interested in it– it’s free to sign up for!

I love it as it works especially well with my Questrade accounts because of the API access and the graphing capabilities of Wealthica are much better than what you would just get with Questrade.

Passiv also gives you very detailed information about your dividend income and Passiv Elite is free for Questrade users.You can even see your time-weighted returns for the past 12 months or year to date. It also breaks down exactly how many dividends you received from with companies or ETFs month by month into a pretty colour coded format.

You can sign up for a free Passiv Elite account here to look at your dividends received.

If you prefer your own spreadsheet instead, and you’re interested in getting your own dividend income spreadsheet tracker, sign up for a free download here.

DIVIDENDS RECEIVED

I like tracking upcoming payments and ex-dividend dates using the Dividend Pro App. I just renewed for another year and they increased the price, it’s now $15.50 or so for a year but I think it’s worth it so I can keep myself updated regarding dividend payments and changes.

Wealthica has a free add-on called “Income Investor Lite” and you can choose to see the Income Calendar, Dividend Holdings, and Upcoming Payments with a subscription of $9.99/year.

It shows you an income chart of the last 12 months of payments and the forward 12 months of payments expected.

I like it because you don’t have to manually update any holdings when you make changes to the number of shares you own etc. however, I don’t like that you can’t see it on the phone (and it’s just on desk top). I’ll stick to Dividend Pro for now.

Here are the companies and ETFs that paid dividends in April 2023.

It was an above average dividend payout month.

• Telus (T.TO)
• BMO Laddered Preferred Shares (ZPR)
• Vanguard ex-Canada ETF (VXC.TO)
• Altria (MO)
• Riocan Real Estate Investment Trust (REI.UN)
• Toronto Dominion Bank (TD.TO)
• iShares S&P/TSX Capped REIT (XRE.TO)

DIVIDEND PORTFOLIO CHANGES

I didn’t add that much in April.

Dividend increases:

• iShares S&P/TSX Capped REIT (XRE.TO) increased their monthly distribution by 1.75% to $0.058 per month.

Here’s what I added to the investment portfolio.

• Picked up more Telus (T.TO) to make an even number
• Bought more shares of Toronto Dominion Bank (TD.TO)
• Added to my Vanguard Total Stock Market ETF (VTI)

Here are some of my favourite five Canadian dividend stocks if you’re interested.

How did your April investing go?

Do you have a dividend income target?