December 2022 Dividend Income Update

Well, November was great and December was rough for the investment portfolio. I kept looking forward to a Santa rally but that didn’t happen.

On January 1 2023 instead of watching Ryan Seacrest on TV (well we don’t have cable anyway) I contributed to my TFSA at 12:20am. The year before I contributed in the morning but I thought I should have a head start given the poor returns of 2022.

With that I already went off to a bad start of my other new years resolution of going to bed before 12:00am, though, haha!

I hit my 2022 investment portfolio target in December but then later in the month, I think I went down $10K in one day, lol. So we’ll see how it turns out later this year. I’ll continue to do my hybrid investing (individual equities around 50% and ETFs around 50%) and dollar cost average.

December 2022 Dividend Income Update

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

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 November 2022 Dividend Income Update if you want to look at my dividend portfolio from last month.  The forward annual yield at that time was $28,072.

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 2022 Forward Dividend Income is $28,794 and this is a 2.6% increase from last month, or $722 increase in annual dividend income.

My “hourly rate” is now $3.29 whether I’m eating or sleeping or cleaning my stove.

Or the rate is $13.84/hour if I was working a 40 hour work week.

Talk about passive income!

Here’s my 2022 screenshot chart from Wealthica below on my 12 month performance relative to the S&P/TSX and S&P500 (down 6.6% 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 still have paper losses haha.

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 December 2021 forward dividend income was $23,499 and my December 2022 forward dividend income is $28,794 so my YoY increase is around 22.5%.

Here’s how my forward dividend yield looks like in 2022 compared to the last few years.

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.

Here are the companies and ETFs that paid dividends in December 2022.

It was an average payout month.

• Manulife Financial (MFC.TO) (A reminder to clean my stove)
• Suncor Energy (SU.TO)
• Fortis (FTS.TO)
• Sunlife Financial (SLF.TO)
• Walgreens (WBA)
• Vanguard Total Stock Market ETF (VTI)
• Vanguard Total International Stock Market ETF (VXUS)
• Vanguard REIT ETF (VNQ)
• Riocan REIT (REI.UN.TO)
• LVMUY (LVMH Moet)

Dividend Portfolio Changes

I re-calculated the distributions from my Vanguard ETFs as they shared new distribution amounts for the quarterly January 2023 payout. Some increased and some decreased compared to the previous quarter. I keep track using the Dividend Pro app.

I also couldn’t help myself and added some Canadian businesses to my portfolio, gotta love that Canadian dividend income that is more tax advantaged.

In December:

• Bought more National Bank (NA.TO)
• Dripped 1 share of Sunlife Financial (SLF.TO)
• XRE (XRE.TO) increased their distribution
• Vanguard Real Estate ETF (VNQ) increased their distribution
• Vanguard Total Stock Market ETF (VTI also increased their distribution compared to last quarter)
• VXUS, VEE, and VXC also did too.
• XIC ETF decreased their distribution
• Added 100 shares of Telus (T.TO)
• Bought more VTI (Vanguard Total Stock Market ETF)

Here are some of my favourite five Canadian dividend stocks if you’re interested. The companies you select in your portfolio can’t all be winners, but Fairfax Financial (FFH.TO) has done very well for my portfolio so far (up almost 70%).

How did your December go?