October 2023 Dividend Income Update

Last week the market was much more exciting and less depressing. I can see clearly now the rain is gone. It was quite dreary there for a while in October and I almost dipped “below” my goal I had set myself for 2023. I dealt with that emotionally by not checking my portfolio so often and by picking up more income producing assets.

Wealthica announced that they will no longer be offering a free service unfortunately (it was just amazing while it lasted) and they will offer a subscription based service.

• Free Tier allows to track assets manually or sync stock tickers you have on Stockchase
• Connect Plan is available to sync up to 3 accounts ($50/year)
• Connect Unlimited Plan is available to sync an unlimited number of accounts ($75/year)
• Premium Plan offers real-time stock prices and additional options ($150/year)
• Prestige Plan is in development and will offer still more options

In ‘real estate’ news, we figured out what the leak was in our laneway house, it was something to do with the roof exhaust vent. Once that was fixed up the leak stopped. We still have yet to see what the financial damage is as we have not received our invoice from the roofer and handyman that we hired.

B.C. announced the maximum rental increase for 2024 and it is 3.5%, hopefully this covers some of the cost of the leak repair.

October 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.

I will definitely not hit the $35,000 per year goal with two months left but at least I’ll be in the ballpark range area.

Here’s my September 2023 Dividend Income Update if you want to look at my dividend portfolio from last month.  The forward annual yield at that time was $32,492.

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

My October 2023 Forward Dividend Income is $32,785 and this is a 0.90% increase from last month, or a $298 increase in annual dividend income.

My “hourly rate” is now $3.74 whether I’m eating or sleeping or cleaning my stove.

Or the rate is $15.76/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 (14.76% over 12 months compared to the S&P500 which is 18.67% and the S&P/TSX which is 8.04%).

I’m not beating the S&P500, 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 October 2022 forward dividend income was $27,542 and my October 2023 forward dividend income is $32,785 so my YoY increase is less this month, only 19% (usually it’s 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.

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.

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 October 2023.

It was an above average dividend payout month.

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

DIVIDEND PORTFOLIO CHANGES

• Added more Vanguard Total Stock Market ETF (VTI)
• Added more Vanguard ex-Canada ETF (VXC.TO)
• Added to Manulife Financial (MFC.TO), yes I needed to pay myself more for deep cleaning the stove and oven which I have yet to do still!
• Bought iShares S&P/TSX Capped REIT Index ETF (XRE.TO)
• Telus Corporation (T.TO) increased their quarterly dividend by 7.1% to $0.3761 per quarter. This alone increased my annual dividend projected annual income by $80.

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

How did your October investing go?