November 2021 Dividend Income Update

When your portfolio diminishes to the levels from one month ago within the span of two trading days, you can find solace in your forward dividend income.

At least I do anyway.

And forward dividend income has increased dramatically because of OSFI (Office of the Superintendent of Financial Institutions) lifting the freeze on dividend increases from Canadian banks because of COVID-19.

November was looking great until Omicron showed up. Thanks a lot Omicron and fearful stock market investors.

Anyway, I waited until all the Canadian banks and financial institutions in my portfolio announced their dividend increases (the last one being Bank of Montreal) before updating my dividend spreadsheet.

Last week was so exciting, every single day there was a new announcement… and BMO topped it off with the highest dividend increase, 25.5%.

The “Canadian financials dividend announcement party week” upped my forward dividend yield by $1016.85.

Everyone was celebrating, except there was a little Twitter drama Friday night, the usual argument of Total Return, ex-Canada investing, and tax efficient investing vs. Canadian dividend investing.

In the past 12 months, BMO has been up 41%, whereas the S&P500 is up 23.77%. That’s pretty good total return, in my opinion. Stock is not up 2% (not sure where that number came from). Of course if you ‘zoom out’ a little more, the S&P500 has performed better than BMO in the past 5 years.

Anyway the moral of the dividend vs total return story is, as I have learned from reading Psychology of Money, investing is 20% investing and numbers and 80% behaviour. Yes, the numbers and rational thinking + math shows one thing but humans are not always rational. As I have mentioned, I like seeing my forward dividend yield increase as the markets go down.

I personally would feel quite uncomfortable (unless I had nerves of steel, which I know I don’t) selling my investments for capital gains to make my own dividend when the portfolio is down 40%.

GENYMONEY.CA DIVIDEND INCOME UPDATE

Moving on to the dividend income update!

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

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 is to get $20,000 in forward dividend yield and this was completed in August 2021.

Here’s my October 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 $21,688.

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

This update, my November 2021 Forward Dividend Income is $22,892 and this is a 5.5% increase from last month, or a $1204 increase.

As you can see, most of the increase came from Canadian Financials Dividend Increase Party Week.

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).

28.28% is the 12 month S&P500 returns and my returns are just shy of 28%.

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 November 2020 forward dividend income was $16,741, my November 2021 forward dividend income is $22,892 so my YoY increase is around 37%.

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, I use this app to track my trailing 12 month yield.

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 November 2021. It was an average month of dividend payments.

• Bank of Montreal (BMO.TO)
• Power Corporation of Canada (POW.TO)
• National Bank of Canada (NA.TO)
• Verizon Communications (VZ)
• 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

Everyone was anticipating the OSFI restrictions being lifted, and the huge dividend increases Canadian banks announced (some as high as 22.5% from National Bank). It was like having Christmas arrive early for the Canadian dividend investor. I eagerly checked my Twitter feed for other dividend investors excitedly announcing the increases.

Here are some of the portfolio changes last month (this is probably the most excited I have been in a while, recording all these dividend increases):

• National Bank (NA.TO) announced a whopping 22.5% increase to their dividend payout, from $0.71/share to $0.87/share.
• Power Corporation of Canada (POW.TO) increased their dividend by 10.2% to 0.495/share from 0.4475/share per quarter.
• Sunlife (SLF.TO) increased their dividend by 20% from $0.55/share to $0.66/share quarterly
• Manulife Financial (MFC.TO) increased their annual dividend yield by 18% from $1.12/share to $1.32/share
• Bank of Montreal (BMO.TO) increased their dividend by 25.5% from 4.24/ share to 5.32/ share annually.
• TD Bank of Canada (TD.TO) increased their dividend by 13% from $0.79/share to $0.89/share each quarter.
• Bought more iShares S&P/TSX Capped REIT Index ETF
• Bought more National Bank (NA.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 $22,892. Which means that I am making $2.61/hour (any hour not just working hours), or $11.00/hr if I worked 40 hours a week. This is more per hour than my job in university!

On average, this is over $1900 a month in dividend income. This is $50 more a month from last month. If you asked me 10 years ago if having passive income in the form of dividends to the tune of $1900 a month was possible (rent for a one bedroom apartment in some parts of Vancouver now), I wouldn’t have thought so.

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.

How did “Canadian Financials Dividend Announcement Party Week” go for you?