Hello reader!
Hope your summer is going great, healthy and stress free, accomplishing whatever you planned to do. Enjoy the warm weather and minimal covid cases, while it lasts. As I told you last month, we had planned for 10 days of Quebec trip and it was awesome! ..to be back travelling and visiting places. June was also one of our most exciting and satisfying month from many perspective, do read our monthly updates here if you missed it. As far as our visit goes, this time we spent almost a day each at Saint-Sauveur, Mont-Tremblant, Valcartier waterpark, Sainte-Anne-de-Beaupré, Saint-Laurent-Ile-d’Orleans island, Montmorency Falls, Quebec City (.. went there twice actually!), Zoo de Granby. Each of these small towns in Quebec are picturesque; the churches, old heritage buildings with stunning architecture, boutiques, narrow alleys, restaurants packed with patrons oozing an European charm. My whole family is especially in love with the old Quebec city and we have made an unwritten rule to visit this city every other year, if possible. While returning back home we also stayed couple of nights in Ottawa, our nation’s capital, relaxing and sightseeing . We in fact took a city bus tour (..for the first time in our life!) and I can tell you from this ride that Ottawa is a lot beautiful than I thought. Hands-down, 24 Sussex Drive is literally nothing as compared to the White house and I felt even the residence of US ambassador to Canada is better than our prime ministers! 😉
This was a much needed break for all of us and thankfully it was incident free. We didn’t say it but we all were so exhausted living this pandemic imposed confinement for so long. We are not made for lockdown and fearful lifestyle, this whole pandemic episode makes us realize how much we took small joys for granted. Who knew, one day we will have to think twice before heading out, take precautions such as masks, sanitizers and avoid people. It teaches us to be grateful to what we have and enjoy life to the fullest. Every place we visited last month, we saw bustling crowd living in the moment and enjoying life, far away from the fear and worry.
Back to monthly update business which as usual begins with updating below two pages with the latest data:
- 2025 Goal tracker on homepage – Overall passive income for the year is taking a toll due to negative cashflow with our rental property!
- Dividend Portfolio with latest holdings
Passive Income Pie
This month, our passive income comprised of 98% dividends and 2% from lending loop interest, there was negative rental income and hence not reported. Please read our past monthly updates and from it, you will know that our aspirational passive income split is as below:
- Rental Income – 45% – $3000 per month
- Dividends – 40% – $2500 per month
- Lending Interest – 15% – $1000 per month
Our 2025 financial goals is based on the foundation of diversified and sustainable passive incomes. We are currently working on two more semi passive income ideas and will write about them once they shape up better. Once we start seeing some cash flow from these businesses, I will also revise our 2025 goals and update the diversity pie.
Monthly Dividend Earnings
This is the first month when we crossed $1000 milestone in monthly dividends! With CIBC being a big portion of our portfolio, unless we make drastic change to it, with every CIBC dividend months (Jan-Apr-Jul-Oct) going forward, we will keep hitting new highs. Key points from this month’s dividend income are:
- We received dividend deposits from total 20 entities (18 Canadian, 1 US & 1 ETF), with total value of $1000.52, a 31% increase from Jul’20
- For ease and simplification, I assume 1 USD = 1 CAD
- Top 3 dividend contributors were CIBC, Telus and GoEasy
- We dripped 10.5 shares in total – 4.5 shares for CIBC & 1 each for Alaris, Algonquin, Diversified Royalty, Pizza Pizza, Plaza REIT and Telus
- We received dividend raise from Algonquin – 10%, Telus – 1.6% & Whitecap resources – 7.75%
- Average monthly dividends for 2021 so far is $616 Or about $20.34 a day. By 2025, we need to reach about $85 a day, long long way to go!
Dividend Goal Tracker – Planned vs Actual
In seven months of 2021, we achieved 51% of this year’s dividend goal against targeted 58%. The gap between planned and actual is increasing with each passing month and as I have mentioned before, this is due to our recent focus on growth stocks which often do not pays dividend. This is a deliberate move as we have a long horizon before we wish to retire and live off dividends. I will revisit the 2025 dividend goals some time later this year and shall revise to make it more realistic and achievable, if needed.
My Marketplace
Like most months, we did not sell anything this month as well. On the other hand, again as usual, we kept accumulating more of CIBC shares as part of regular RRSP contribution through my payroll deduction. If your employer offers Employee Share Purchase Plan and you are not enrolled, you need to start now.. can’t stress enough, don’t leave free money on the table.
We had some dividends accumulated under different accounts, which we used to increase our position in two different companies – Palantir technologies & Sylogist limited. We first bought Palantir back in May’21 and I wrote about it in the respective monthly update, this time we added 4 more shares (.. yeah I know it is miniscule but keep in mind – Little drops of water make the mighty ocean). Palantir is a potential growth stock with no dividend payments and hence no increase to our projected annual dividend income.
Our affair with Sylogist goes back to the days when we didn’t even had this blog! We first bought Sylogist in Dec’19 and so far we have gained 34% in share price and 44% if we factor-in the collected dividends. Sylogist Ltd is a Canadian software company, providing ERP solutions in Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom, and internationally offering variety of solutions to Public sector, Non-profit and non-governmental organizations, Education boards, as well as districts, defense, and safety contractors. Sylogist was incorporated in 1993 and is headquartered in Calgary, Canada. I still remember I bought this company on Motley Fool’s recommendation and they appeared in their “best buy” dividend stocks back then.
We did not put any new money in Crypto this month and I was a just a mute but elated spectator to the rising prices after brutal couple of months. Both of my crypto holdings increased significantly, while Bitcoin price gained 32% in last one month, Dogecoin appreciated 19% in the same timeframe. I love twitter as we connect with like-minded people and compare notes, do follow us and share your knowledge and experience, our twitter handle is SettlingNomads! One of my twitter buddy recommended Celsius network, they pays you interest while your crypto is sitting idle and you can even get a loan based on your underlying asset. They pays weekly interest (on Mondays) and so far I have received $1.50 already, not bad considering my initial investment (.. actually existing Bitcoin transferred from CoinSquare) was just $500. But in coming days I will transfer more of my cryptos here and earn interests and promo money. I also received $40 as a referral bonus as twitter friend referred me. If you are interested to test the water, please join using my Celsius network referral link when signing up and earn $50 in BTC with your first transfer of $400 or more.
Rental Earnings
Principal residence – The legal basement construction completed with minor touch-ups pending. Month wise work accomplishment were:
May
- Electric meter movement from back of the house to side
- Electrical panel upgrade from 100 to 200 AMP
- Separate backyard entrance built (steps, door, railing)
- Internal framing
- Plumbing rough-ins
- HVAC
- Foundational electrical work
- Wall insulation
June
- Tiles installation
- Hardwood flooring
- Drywall installation
- Mudding and taping
- Painting
July
- Door installation and painting
- Trimming
- Kitchen cabinets fixture
- Plumbing work – Taps, Sinks, Shower, Vanity etc installation
- Electrical work – Switches, Plugs, Potlights, Lights, Alarms etc
- Finally appliances installation – Laundry, Stove, Refrigerator
Final inspection successfully completed along with occupancy certificate and as I mentioned last month, we had a potential tenant who took the place for rent from the beginning of this month. While the rent will not cover the mortgage but it will surely help with the mandatory expenses related to the property and we are happy to have this additional money.
Investment property 1 – This property is giving me sleepless nights and this is the first time I am having so much trouble with just one tenant. As I mentioned last month, the upstairs tenant reported a temporary job loss due to Covid and stopped paying the rent. We are now in second month of no rent payment and have initiated eviction process but as I understand from many landlords facing similar situation, we are facing many months (..if not years) of non-payment of rent! While I totally understand personal hardship due to job loss, I feel in this situation, the tenant is just milking the situation and trying to benefit out of strict tenant favouring rules in Ontario. We are eagerly waiting to hear back from the board with a hearing date and will take it from there.
Hard, unwarranted and frustrating but definitely not end of the world! This whole fiasco is taking my passive earning forecast for a turbulent ride and the only solace is basement rent is coming and covering approximately one-third of the expenses. Also, July was our last month of mortgage payment at one bank and we refinanced with another. At the time of writing, the formality and transaction between them completed and we see the balance money available for us to deploy elsewhere. 😇
As I mentioned in my Jun’21 updates, we sold our investment property 2 and do read for the details on sale breakdown and profit figures. We have the money available to invest in couple of potential business opportunities with friends as partners. There wasn’t much of an activity in July but do have some updates for August to write about! Stay tuned..
Lending Interest Earnings
Not bothering to even change any text here because as usual, we collected $18 in interest from lending loop on our initial investment of $2000. You can also explore this option for relatively smaller capital and if you invest, we both can earn $25 each using my lending loop referral ink, once you invest $1,500 on their platform.
We continued our new year’s resolution of sharing our good fortune in a measured approach, wherein we aim to giveaway 10% of our previous year’s passive income towards a good cause. I feel happy to share that we are already close to achieve our goal just in seven months! Please check our page sharing with society for more details and do share if you can with any of the charities or initiative we donated, it will mean a lot to me and keep in mind, even a small amount helps! I personally also decided to express more gratitude and appreciation towards the little things in life that I feel blessed with and enjoy, but is mostly taken for granted. While I normally document it at this link – gratitude & goodness, I haven’t gotten a chance to update it lately but I hope to resume it soon.
That’s it for now readers and see you next month! Please do subscribe using the widget at the bottom of the page to get monthly updates, I don’t spam and you will only get an email whenever I post on this website.
Stay indoor, Stay safe, Get vaccinated and don’t forget to Save-Invest-Repeat! 😊
