July 2024 Dividend Income Update

The reassuring thing about dividend investing (and hybrid investing) is that it gives you a little bit more ‘zen’ when others may be more apt to panic when the market is down.

Life was busy in July.

Friends were visiting from out of town. I took a friend to try Masayoshi, a Japanese omakase experience that involved more dishes than I could count (and pronounce…and explain….and remember). Omakase means “I’ll leave it up to you” and the chef chooses the menu and what is served that day.

I have never had omakase before and wanted to give the experience a try.

It is a one Michelin star restaurant. I’ve been to a few other restaurants in Vancouver with that distinction and the food was okay, not amazing. However, I actually thought that this was worth the price (it is around $200 per person) and I’m pretty hard to please when it comes to value in dining. The food was so delicious and fresh, probably the best sashimi I have ever had, and everything was very beautifully presented.

This experience was brought to me by my friends the dividends, when you know you have a fat paycheque month you splurge a little more.

If you like to track your dividend income like I do, here’s a free dividend tracker spreadsheet download for you.

July 2024 Dividend Income Update

My goal for 2024 is to have at least $36,000 annually of dividend income.

Here’s my June 2024 Dividend Income Update if you want to look at my dividend portfolio from last month.  The forward annual yield at that time was $35,710.

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

My July 2024 Forward Dividend Income is $36,095 and this is a 1.1% increase from last month, or a $385 increase in annual dividend income.

Woohoo for myself on achieving the annual dividend goal- but it was mainly due to a careless mistake.

My “hourly rate” is now $4.12 whether I’m eating or sleeping or cleaning my stove.

Or the rate is $17.35/hour if I was working a 40 hour work week.

On June 1 the minimum wage increased to $17.40/hr so I have just a bit more to go until I am making minimum wage with my dividend income.

Talk about passive income!

Here’s my screenshot chart from Wealthica below on my 12 month performance relative to VTI and VEQT. 12 month returns for the S&P/TSX is 7.82% and the S&P500 are 15.17%.

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 July 2023 forward dividend income was $31,908 and my July 2024 forward dividend income is $36,095 so the YoY increase is 13.1%.

Here’s how my forward dividend yield looks like compared to the last few years, it has definitely slowed down recently.

You can read my Wealthica review here if you’re interested in it. It’s not free anymore but it still provides good value for the cost.

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.

One downside with Passiv is that it always seems to be down at night time (the API and Questrade sync doesn’t seem to work then).

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 $17.50 or so for a year but I think it’s worth it so I can keep myself updated regarding dividend payments and changes.

Wealthica 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 desktop).

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

Here are the companies and ETFs that paid dividends and distributions in July 2024. It was an above average dividend paying month, over $5000.

• Telus (T.TO)
• Vanguard Total Stock Market ETF (VTI)
• Vanguard ex-Canada ETF (VXC.TO)
• Altria (MO)
• TD Bank (TD.TO)
• iShares S&P/TSX Capped REIT Index ETF (XRE)
• Riocan REIT (REI.UN)

DIVIDEND PORTFOLIO CHANGES

Here are some changes and dividend increases to the portfolio:

• iShares S&P/TSX Capped REIT Index ETF (XRE) reduced the monthly distribution to $0.06 per month from $0.062 per month.
• I intended to add about 35 shares of TD Bank (TD.TO), but I was in a bit of a rush for it and unfortunately clicked too quickly, bought 100 shares instead. I briefly thought about selling the amount I didn’t want, quickly again, and then I came to my senses not wanting to calculate the capital gains come tax time, so I just left it at 100 shares picked up.
• I added more LVMUY Louis Vuitton Moet Hennessy ADR.

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

Don’t look at your portfolio if you’re squeamish!

Keep calm and dividend on.