December 2021 Dividend Income Update

Happy New Year!

I hope you had a restful New Year’s weekend and like many personal finance enthusiasts, perhaps you were staying up light doing your net worth calculations to see how far you’ve come from the beginning of 2021 to the end of 2021.

Everything else Omicron looks bleak so why not look at your investment portfolio that doesn’t look so bleak (if you’ve been investing in the market this year) to make yourself feel better, am I right?

GENYMONEY.CA DIVIDEND INCOME UPDATE

If you’re curious about my liquid net worth, subscribe and you’ll get the report with net worth numbers tomorrow.

Liquid Independence talked about being a Liquid Millionaire in Q1 of 2022. I like the sound of that. It might be very realistic for me as well in 2022 (but not Q1) provided the market doesn’t crash.

My long-term target 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.

My personal finance resolution for 2021 was to get $20,000 in forward dividend yield and this was completed in August 2021.

Here’s my November 2021 Dividend Income Update if you want to look at my dividend portfolio happenings from last month.  The forward annual yield at that time was $22,892.

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

My December 2021 Forward Dividend Income is $23,499 and this is a 2.7% increase from last month, or a $607 increase.

Here’s my September 2021 screenshot chart from Wealthica below on my 12 month trailing performance relative to S&P/TSX and S&P500. Amazingly, to my surprise, my returns are close to S&P500 returns (this wasn’t the case earlier in the year).

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 Decmeber 2020 forward dividend income was $16,992, my December 2021 forward dividend income is $23,499 so my YoY increase is around 38%.

Here’s how my forward dividend yield looks like in 2021 compared to 2020 and 2019.

This post may contain affiliate links.  Please see genymoney.ca’s disclaimer for more information.

Related: 10 Income Producing Assets to Achieve Financial Freedom

This chart shows my forward dividend income. For my actual dividend income received, I just check my Wealthica account really quickly and it takes 1 minute to do, as part of the income add-on (which is free). You just click on the add-on section, then click on income, and toggle the dates to what you are looking to review.

I use Wealthica (it’s like the Canadian version of Personal Capital) to see my dividend income added up for the month because it automatically converts USD to CAD for me, no more calculating it manually (though that’s always fun).

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 Questrade.

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

DIVIDENDS RECEIVED:

I received dividends and distributions from the following companies and ETFs in November that I used to buy more dividend producing companies from my dividend garden.

I like tracking upcoming payments and ex-dividend dates using the Dividend Predictor App. I think it’s worth the $1 a month or so.

The increase this month is because of all the updated payout changes to the payments of the ETFs I have (VXC, VXUS, and VEE), I use this app to track my trailing 12 month yield for ETFs.

I don’t normally drip and would rather use that cash to invest manually, but I do have a Questrade DRIP set up for Sunlife (from a while ago) when dividends are paid.

Here are the companies and ETFs that paid dividends in December 2021. It was an average month of dividend payments.

• Fortis (FTS.TO)
• Walgreens Boots Alliance (WBA)
• Manulife Financial (MFC.TO)
• Vanguard Total International Stock Index Fund ETF (VXUS)
• Suncor (SU.TO)
• Vanguard Real Estate Index Fund ETF (VNQ)
• Vanguard Total Stock Market ETF (VTI)
• Sunlife Financial (SLF.TO)
• iShares S&P/TSX Capped REIT Index ETF (XRE.TO)
• Riocan Real Estate Investment Trust (REI-UN.TO)
• BMO Laddered Preferred Share ETF (ZPR.TO)

DIVIDEND PORTFOLIO CHANGES

This update wasn’t as exciting as the previous month where there were dividend increases of over 20% for some of the big Canadian banks in my investment portfolio.

Here are some of the portfolio changes last month:

• Vanguard Global All Cap ex-Canada ETF (VXC.TO) announced their distribution of $0.256299 per share to be paid out in January 2022. This is an increase of 14.7% from the previous quarter’s distribution. For my ETF ‘forward yield’ I look at the 12 months trailing yield.
• Vanguard Emerging Market ETF (VEE.TO) announced their distribution of $0.30973, this is an increase of 4.63% from the previous quarter.
• I bought a few more Vanguard Emerging Market ETF (VEE.TO).
• Vanguard Total International Stock ETF (VXUS) announced their distribution of $0.9412 per share, this is an increase of 164% compared to the previous quarter (the distributions for VXUS vary quite widely over the year)
• Vanguard REIT ETF (VNQ) also increased their yield by 60.29% compared to last quarter.
• Vanguard Total Stock Market ETF also increased their yield by 18.64% compared to last quarter.
• Dripped one share of Sunlife (SLF.TO)

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

You can get $50 of free trades (each is typically $4.95/trade) with Questrade if you purchase within 30 days of account opening.  The $50 free doesn’t include ETFs as those are free to purchase anyways (but not free to sell).

I love using Questrade because it’s free to buy ETFs (well there are ECN fees but we’re talking pennies and nickels here) and this allows me to dollar cost average to take the emotion (and guessing) out of investing.  Here are some of the other Questrade fees.

My forward dividend income is $23,499. Which means that I am making $2.68/hour (any hour not just working hours), or $11.28/hr if I worked 40 hours a week.

On average, this is over $1950 a month in dividend income. This is $50 more a month from last month.

Small habits and actions over time get you to where you want to go, it really is true.

Passive dividend income is the best form of passive income.

That’s my dividend income update, thanks for reading!

For more inspiration, follow these Canadian dividend investing blogs or read these dividend investing books.