August 2023 Dividend Income Update

I’m itching to clean up my portfolio some more to clean it up further.

In total I have 26 holdings including ETFs.

I may take out the ZPR preferred shares and the XIC ETF (iShares Core S&P/TSX Capped Composite Index ETF).

This month there were a lot of expenses. It’s nice to have cash flow (thanks to the dividend income) to be able to still invest despite all the expenses.

I got a new MacBook Air that is a larger size than what I’m currently using, I’m planning to get a new iPhone (my current one is an iPhone 8), and I booked a trip with my mom for next year.

It’s been difficult to watch my parents get older and hear about the poor health and some deaths of my aunts and uncles. I still have this existential crisis feeling like I’m running out of time to spend with my parents while they are in good health… but hopefully this trip will help pacify that feeling a little bit.

I think that money is meant to be spent to create memories. I had more trouble spending $1700 on a laptop than $3000+ on a trip.

Our lives are about the relationships and memories with the ones we love.

No one thinks about the prestige they had and the affluence they experienced on their death bed. No one thinks about their Mercedes, or the looks they got when they were driving their Porsche on their death bed. No one asks to hold their Louis Vuitton bag one more time. The secret to a meaningful life is meaningful relationships.

I want to be 89 (if I live that long and am in good health) and have my children still want to go on vacation with me. I think that would be quite an honour.

We often think of not living a life of regret, and sure that can mean seizing the day and accomplishing amazing things but it can also mean taking the time to nurture those relationships that might have been a bit neglected due to other life responsibilities, or even time.

Anyway, on that note…

Here’s my August dividend income update!

August 2023 Dividend Income Update

My goal for 2023 is at least $35,000 annually of dividend income (definitely not a big deal if I don’t get this, my main goal was a 7 figure portfolio), or about a $1,000,000 dividend/ investment portfolio with a conservative 3.5% dividend yield.

Don’t think I will hit the $35,000 per year goal won’t be attainable but at least I’ll be in the ballpark range area.

Here’s my July 2023 Dividend Income Update if you want to look at my dividend portfolio from last month.  The forward annual yield at that time was $31,908.

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

My August 2023 Forward Dividend Income is $32,176 and this is a 0.84% increase from last month, or a $268 increase in annual dividend income.

My “hourly rate” is now $3.67 whether I’m eating or sleeping or cleaning my stove.

Or the rate is $15.47/hour if I was working a 40 hour work week. I have a bit more to go to make minimum wage in passive dividend income since the minimum wage got increased to $16.75/hr on June 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 (14.34% over 12 months compared to the S&P500 which is 15.55% and the S&P/TSX which is 7.63%).

I’m not beating the S&P500 anymore, but am still beating the S&P/TSX. This is why you shouldn’t have 100% in Canadian equities which is called “home bias”.

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).

Personally, I think it’s not a bad idea to keep track of how your portfolio compares to the benchmark indices, because if you have 75 different Canadian dividend paying companies and your return over the years is only 4% compounded annually then you might want to think about changing your investment strategy.

Comparing my own portfolio to the benchmark (and being appalled at the measly return) is what prompted me to switch to at least 50% of my portfolio in ETFs a few years ago and since then my portfolio has been doing better total growth-wise.

My August 2022 forward dividend income was $26,168 and my August 2023 forward dividend income is $32,176 so my YoY increase is around 23%.

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.

This month there was a bit of a glitch in the Dividend Pro App where they didn’t update $VXC’s July distribution (which is my largest holding). So I emailed and they quickly replied back and updated the app.

Wealthica also 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.

You can do a free trial of the upgraded income investor lite (no credit card needed) for seven days.

The upgraded version has an income calendar showing you the upcoming payments.

Also it shows you the dividends paid (in total), and forward yearly dividends expected including the current dividend yield and your yield on cost (in the paid version).

The free version shows you an income chart of the last 12 months of payments and the forward 12 months of payments expected, however the forward 12 months doesn’t seem accurate.

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).

Therefore, I’ll stick to Dividend Pro for now.

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

It was a below average dividend payout month.

• Bank of Montreal (BMO.TO)
• Power Corporation of Canada (POW.TO)
• Verizon Inc. (VZ)
• National Bank (NA.TO)
• BMO Laddered Preferred Shares (ZPR)
• Riocan Real Estate Investment Trust (REI.UN)
• iShares S&P/TSX Capped REIT (XRE.TO)

DIVIDEND PORTFOLIO CHANGES

Here is what I added to the portfolio in August:

Nothing exciting at all, just added to the ETFs

• Added Vanguard Total Stock Market ETF (VTI)
• Added Vanguard ex-Canada ETF (VXC.TO)
• Altria (MO) increased the dividend by 4.26% from $0.94 a quarter to $0.98 per quarter

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

How did your August investing go?