Tag: Dividend Update

Hi there!

The warmer weather that we saw in early April was unfortunately short and we are still seeing single digit temperatures in mid of May! Being an optimistic, I had planted several vegetable and fruit plants in the backyard and they all shivered and perished in colder weather and now I am looking for late May to replant, and I etched a note in my mind – no planting till you are certain on warmer weather!

The second (..or third) wave of Covid is wreaking havoc back in India where daily cases are upwards of 400K and several nations are extending a helping hand with vaccines, kits, oxygens and monetary help; please support if you can too! Canada especially Ontario is still playing the lockdown game but it is heartening to see vaccination drive picked up and I myself got it last week. Hoping we will be able to tame the pandemic and there will be no further waves and things returning back to normal. Until then, please avoid crowd and follow the local protocols, it had been 15 months and we can wait few more months for the safety of mankind!

Our monthly update begins with updating below two pages with the latest data:

• 2025 Goal tracker on homepage – Again an overall negative income because of more expenses than earnings, two months in a row!
• Dividend Portfolio with latest holdings

Passive Income Pie

Monthly Dividend Earnings

We are slowly inching towards a very important milestone of hitting $200,000 valuation and hopefully if all goes well, we shall achieve it in 2021! Key points from this month’s dividend income are:

• We received dividend deposits from total 20 companies (18 Canadian & 2 US), with total value of $984.50, a record breaking dividend month for us!
• For ease and simplification, I assume 1 USD = 1 CAD
• Top 3 dividend contributors were CIBC (obviously!) followed by GoEasy & Telus!
• We dripped 12.9 shares in total – 4.91 CIBC, 2 Telus and 1 each for Alaris, Algonquin, Diversified Royalty, Pizza Pizza, Plaza REIT & Transcontinental
• Received an increased dividend from GoEasy 46.67% and Saratoga 2.4%
• Monthly average for 2021 dividends so far is $649.89 OR about $22 a day!

Dividend Goal Tracker – Planned vs Actual

Achieved 31% of this year’s goal against targeted 33%, which is $2600 out of total $8500 aimed. I am deliberately allocating more of the new funds towards growth stocks and hence I do expect slippage in achieving this year’s dividend target. Hence I may have to revisit the goal towards the end of third quarter.

My Marketplace

Wife secretly saved some money over last few months and as soon as I came to know about it, I convinced her to invest rather than keeping in some saving account with depressing interest rate. She still have tons of contribution room under her TFSA and hence she gave me $2500 to take care of.

I could have gone safe route with a dividend stock but then decided to go with Newtopia Inc (CVE:NEWU), it is a Canadian healthcare company offering virtual habit change platform. They leverages precision health tools including genetic testing and behavioral evaluations, to develop and implement personalized programs combining the human behavior with the digital interaction. They partners with insurers and employers and focuses its efforts on employees or members at risk of developing chronic diseases, including but not limited to obesity, type two diabetes, heart disease, stroke or fatty liver disease. Its personalized program focuses to manage five primary metabolic risk factors of chronic disease, including body mass index (BMI), blood pressure, blood glucose, triglycerides and cholesterol. The Company’s enterprise technology platform converges genetic testing and social and behavioral science with online human coaching and a mobile platform, wireless tracking devices, personalized gamification and a social health network.

We bought 4250 shares at 0.55 a piece, and at the time of writing this update, we are already in red but I have faith in this and can have patience. I also kept accumulating more of CIBC shares as part of my regular RRSP contribution through my payroll clubbed with Employee Share Purchase Plan.

Like March, I again bought $500 worth of Bitcoin bringing the total allocation to $4000 and it is currently valued around $5000! With all the hype and excitement around Dogecoin, I couldn’t hold myself from buying it a bit ($1000) in mid April and keeping up with my expectation (..and tons of luck), it doubled in no time! At the time of writing this post, I took out my initial capital leaving the remaining $1000 to ride or perish! By the way, Elon Musk’s appearance in SNL saw Dogecoin slide by 20% in an hour, talk about volatility! This whole space is extremely risky and speculative and I won’t recommend it to anybody, this is about of our 3% portfolio and fun money. I won’t be too stressed if I lose the entire money, which I highly doubt. I do not even track our cryptocurrency holdings as part of our portfolio but things may change if the valuation increases more than $10000!

Rental Earnings

Principal residence – We received the legal basement permit back in Feb and a contractor was lined up to begin work but we hit an obstacle as hydro cable is running across the entrance path! I put in another request with the hydro company and they took almost 2 months just to schedule the meter movement, in the name of Covid (..it’s frustrating but what can you do!). Finally the movement is scheduled now and hopefully work will start mid-May. The contractor also raised the price by 10%, thanks to lumber and other materials price increase, again the blame goes to supply chain impact due to pandemic. The original estimate was about $50,000 which now will be $55,000 plus taxes and appliances cost. Once the unit it ready we could look forward to rent it out for $1,200 a month, which is about 20% annual return and at the same time should increase the property valuation by $125,000 easily. We are looking at total cost for this house at $825,000 with market value of about $1M, not bad for 1 year of hard work that went into planning and execution for this property!

Investment property 1 – We finally found a suitable basement tenant and were able to get into positive cash flow after dwindling since Feb’21 when previous tenant left. We even had to reduce the upstairs rent by 15% because of Covid hardship. With no surprise expenses, we could rake in about $500 a month from this property and let the property value appreciate.

Investment property 2 – After bleeding money towards mortgages, taxes & expenses since Feb’21, topped with top-down renovations, the house is sold and up for closing by end of May’21. If you had followed our earlier posts, this house is was bought at equal partnership with my real estate agent back in Jan’20, was on rent for about a year and when the tenant left, we spent 2 months renovating and not to mention lot of money. Not going into all the details again as I have mentioned in my previous posts, we both will double our original down payment amount in 1.5 years, again not a shabby return.

We have had great returns in real estate in last 8 years when we invested in 5 different properties, thanks to GTA real estate bull run! After the sale of property 2, we will still be left with two houses and are invested in four different pre-construction condos in partnership with my agent and friends. We feel we should take a bit of a break from real estate investment and focus on other opportunities. Hence we are looking to deploy the proceeds from the property sale towards two different businesses in partnership with friends as silent partners! More on this in next month’s update, all I can say for now is we are super excited and also scared as it is an uncharted territory and we have no experience but we always wanted to diversify our earnings. 🤞🏻

Lending Interest Earnings

As I mentioned last month, we received back most of the principal from the only outstanding loan and hence our lending earnings is drying up except Lending loop for which I have under $25 of monthly interest from various commitments. This month we received $18 in interest. We may (..or may not) revisit private lending once we refinance one of our property, this is surely a no-brainer passive income source and you can read more on how to start here where I wrote about first steps on lending!

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 document our monthly giveaways here at Sharing with Society and feels so happy and glad to see we are much ahead with our plans on this front! 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.

This is a wrap for now and 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 and Save-Invest-Repeat. Do share with people in need and count your blessings.. Good luck! 😊

Hi there!

Early arrival of warmer weather is a silver lining amidst third wave (.. or not sure at what number we are now!) of pandemic and new restriction enforcement. My work from home routine is getting bearable with half of my time working from the deck or backyard, soaking in the sun and listening to the chirping birds! I never imagined infrastructure build for Amber alert will be used to broadcast stay at home emergency order!

The rising cases all over the world (..in some parts even more than first phase) makes us believe the whole situation is really grim, out-of-hand, and slow vaccine rollout is quite hopeless. I feel the administrations all over the world could have done a better job with speedup vaccination drives, it could have helped contain the pandemic to some level but then what do I know.. there could be endless challenges. Anyways I am hearing that in “hot zones” of Ontario, the plan is going to be much more aggressive now and the goal is to reduce the age group by 5 years; and I am really glad they are looking at it this way not but my question remains, what made you go soft to begin with! I really hope the rollout goes quicker as a lot is at stake, more than ever and people are really getting restless and we all really want to witness a stress free summer!

Our monthly update begins with updating below two pages with the latest data:

• 2025 Goal tracker on homepage – Again an overall negative income because of more expenses than earnings, two months in a row!
• Dividend Portfolio with latest holdings

Passive Income Pie

Monthly Dividend Earnings

The recent surge in market helped our portfolio attain new highs! Key points from this month’s dividend income are:

• We received dividend deposits from total 20 companies (18 Canadian & 2 US), with total value of $484.76
• For ease and simplification, I assume 1 USD = 1 CAD
• We dripped a share each for Diversified Royalty, Pizza Pizza, Plaza REIT & whopping 3 shares from Enbridge
• Received an increased dividend from A&W 35% and CNR 7%
• Monthly average for 2021 dividends so far is $538.36 OR about $18 a day!

Dividend Goal Tracker – Planned vs Actual

Achieved 19% of this year’s goal which is $1615 out of total $8500 as compared to target of 25%. Realizing shifting priority (allocate more towards growth stocks) and slippage in achieving targets, I may have to revisit the goal towards the end of third quarter.

My Marketplace

I was holding a tiny bit of Saputo for 3 years with no growth at all and I lost my patience with this one and hence was looking for an escape route with dignity! The recent rally produced an opportunity to sell my 30 shares with no-profit/no-loss, dividend included. If I exclude the dividends then I would have been at a loss of about 4.5%. This experience give one more reason to think twice before putting money into anything, but no qualm as the stake was quite low (.. well if you compare it to my Vermilion Energy fiasco!)

The proceed was used to get some more of NIO Inc. I first dipped my toe into this in January and again bought 24 shares to lower the cost basis to $46.6 from $58!

As usual, I kept collecting my CIBC shares as part of my regular RRSP contribution through my payroll clubbed with Employee Share Purchase Plan. If you aren’t using ESPP program from your employer then <<scream begins>> ENROLL NOW AND DON’T LEAVE THE MONEY ON THE TABLE! <<scream ends>>!

Lastly, I dropped $500 again towards Bitcoin bringing the total allocation to $3500 which I am comfortable losing it all which I doubt will happen! So far I think I am at a gain of about 30% in 3 months. I may not go over $5000 on cryptocurrency and although I don’t track it yet as part of my portfolio, I may if the valuation increases significantly (.. insert optimism!).

Rental Earnings

No rent yet again from both of our investment properties and if you follow.. this was the third consecutive month for which we had no earnings! Since I started this month’s update quoting silver lining, I will use it one more time.. we found a good tenant for one of the property starting April. Application screened, first and last rent collected, place cleaned, painted, and minor issues fixed! The rent I got is significantly lesser than my previous tenant but the person is good with stable income and hopefully, both of us have a good time! Three months without income puts us in a bleak position as we bleed money towards mortgage, insurance, utilities and other expenses, but the silver lining is we survived and see the light at the end of the tunnel.

Even for the townhouse, we are in a much better position. The renovation got completed, cleanup done and the property was listed on MLS for sale. We already have an offer that we accepted and I will share more on it next month.

For the third house, we are still waiting for the legal basement work to start as the hydro company is yet to move the electric meter to the side of the house. With increasing lumber cost, I would hope for my contractor to honour the agreed price else I will again have a setback! I am going to reach out to him as soon as the meter movement work is scheduled.

Lending Interest Earnings

We received back the principal from the only outstanding loan and hence it’s a wrap on our lending earnings except Lending loop for which I have under $25 of monthly interest from various commitments. The certified check took 5 business days to clear, talk about efficiency and advancement! I literally checked my banking app twice a day as I was so eager to pay of some of my line of credit balances! Needless to say I immediately did it and now our overall debt is in control. The plan now is to refinance our principal resident and pay off completely and if opportunity presents, may initiate the private lending once again!

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 document our monthly giveaways here at Sharing with Society, please do visit when you get a chance. 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. I hope to resume it soon after these rental madness ends.

This is a wrap for now and 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 and Save-Invest-Repeat. Do share with people in need and count your blessings.. Good luck! 😊

Hello!

I hope you are staying sane and sticking to whatever plan you laid out for yourself.. be it maintaining your schedule while working from home (..trust me it isn’t easy to work from home anymore though there are benefits) or staying the course with your exercise routine or the plan to save and invest! It is all the more important to maintain the sanity with ongoing pandemic, the lockdowns and restriction with growing level of stress and frustration. It seems like the limit is reaching when we just want to break free and return back to normal life as before, free from fear and stress and masks and sanitizers! Have patience and hopefully after few months, we shall be like before. Coming back to business, as usual, our monthly update begins with updating below two pages with the latest data:

• 2025 Goal tracker on homepage – Again an overall negative income because of more expenses than earnings, two months in a row!
• Dividend Portfolio with latest holdings

Passive Income Pie

Monthly Dividend Earnings

Key points from this month’s dividend income are:

• We received dividend deposits from total 13 companies (8 Canadian & 5 US), with total value of $191.16
• While to keep it simple I assume 1 USD = 1 CAD, I realize this month brought us dividends from both sides almost equal!
• I normally compare yearly dividends but couldn’t help myself noticing Feb’21 brought in 30% less than Feb’20 and this was due to bad investments (can’t believe they were recommended by a paid subscription!) such as Chesswood & Vermillion Energy, I sold them and redeployed elsewhere!
• We dripped a share each for Pizza Pizza & Plaza REIT
• Received an increased dividend from Abbvie 10.2% and reduced dividend from RioCan -33%, I plan to drop RioCan at some point after recouping some of the loss

Dividend Goal Tracker – Planned vs Actual

Two months down and ten more to go and so far we have achieved 13% of our dividend goal for this year. With the annual target of $8500 we roughly need 9% a month, so we are already slipping. I am knowingly redeploying more to low (or no) yielding stocks when opportunity presents, keeping in mind the broader time horizon we have and hence tilting a bit more towards growth stocks but maintaining a healthy balance with dividend payers. While the dividend target is still the same for the year, I would admit that I may revisit the goal if need be, towards the end of third quarter.

My Marketplace

Unfortunately we don’t have net new cash to take benefit of recent dips. I still got a chance to buy 15 shares of Algonquin when it dipped due to Texas snow and blackout, increasing our annual dividend to miniscule $12. AQN needs no introduction and is a well known name in dividend world, they have tremendous growth potential and I have a good faith in them.

We also had some accumulated dividends in one of our account and I dipped my toe into 90 shares of Banxa Holdings Inc (CVE:BNXA). They are a payments service provider (PSP) with mission to build the bridge between fiat and digital currency. This was more of an impulse buy in the heat of the moment when I witnessed cryptocurrencies scaling new highs and Bitcoin adoption by several mainstream companies lead by Tesla & Square.

I again started buying some Bitcoin but I don’t track the gain (or loss) anymore as it is strictly now a dump-and-forget play. I had been severely burnt in the past and don’t want to repeat the same mistake again. I started buying weekly cryptocurrencies (BTS, ETH & LTC) in late of 2019 when BTC was in the range of $5000-$25000 but to much of my dismay sold the entire portfolio last year at about 35% gain when BTC was $23000. I needed the money to help with the renovation for the house we bought. When I think about this transaction now I laugh (..in pain) as the investment would have tripled by now but then hey.. I still made a good profit in a year and half and the money helped us when we needed the most, isn’t that’s what money is for? Back then I used Coinbase for the transactions but at some point the credit card transactions started getting declined for some reason (I suspect banks denying them). So I now use a Canadian company Coinsquare, and it supports Interac and wire transfers (over $10000) as mediums to transfer funds, no complain so far except the interac transfer takes few hours to complete.

Lastly, I kept nibbling at CIBC shares as part of my regular RRSP contribution through my payroll. With great F21 Q1 results and stock hitting 52W highs, this particular account of mine reached a milestone of $50000! I have been contributing since last 6 years through my bi-weekly payroll deductions. If you have heard the saying – drop by drop is the water pot filled, it perfectly fits here!

Rental Earnings

We are going through some really tough times with the rental properties as both properties are vacant and we are bleeding money. While rents are not coming, we still have to pay the mortgages, property taxes and several utility bills! Rental income may look enticing but vacancy periods are real dampeners and unless you have deep pockets, it could put you into a lot of stress. Thankfully for us, we have things in control so far, thanks to good line of credit limits! The townhouse is undergoing renovation before we will put it in market for sale and as per my real estate agent, he aims to make this the highest seller on the street! Talk about seeing the light at the end of the tunnel! We purchased this house 14 months ago and it was rented for 12 months so we haven’t bleed a lot of money in this one. At the end of the deal, each of us expect to net about $75000 on our initial investment of $50000 after capital gain and expenses.

For the second property, we are actively looking for tenant and I must tell you, the rental market isn’t good at this moment. Last year it took us just 1 week to rent it out but this time around, we are in second month without finding a good tenant and not to mention the much reduced rent!

The third house we have for which legal basement permit came in and I finalized a contractor, the work hasn’t started yet! The area where we planned to make the basement entrance has hydro cables going in and hence the electrical meter (and probably the panel) would require relocation. While cost is fine, this will delay the start of the work by minimum 2-3 weeks. If it goes smooth, it isn’t construction or renovation!

Lending Interest Earnings

Wife had a 0% balance transfer offer on her credit card for 10 months so we transferred some of the line of credit balance on the card last month but still we are paying good amount in interests on borrowed money from line of credit accounts. They do charge a one time 1% transaction fee but still it was helpful though on the flip side it decreased my wife’s credit score drastically! If you ever do it, do make sure you leave about 20% on the card and not utilize the full limit, like we did. Now I am trying to get back within the limit so that her score can start climbing back, we have a mortgage renewal coming up and a good score helps.

The principal from our private lending hasn’t come yet, the borrower asked for an extension of a month and we expect to get the money some time this month. Eagerly waiting for this money so it can cover the basement construction cost and reduce some line of credit balances.

Lending Loop kept paying its monthly interest and while I don’t closely monitor the statements, I haven’t been informed of any defaults so far except couple of delays, which is totally understood considering the prolonged lockdown and adverse impact on small businesses. I wish for a speedy recovery for these guys!

Continuing our new year’s resolution of sharing our good fortune (well it isn’t so good right not but nevertheless..) in a measured approach where we aim to giveaway 10% of our previous year’s passive income towards good cause. 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. Sharing with Society & Gratitude & Goodness are dedicated towards these new goals of life, please do visit them when you get a chance.

This is a wrap for now and 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 and Save-Invest-Repeat. Do share with people in need and count your blessings.. Good luck! 😊

Hi there!

First of all, I want to begin the first update for 2021 by thanking you for being part of our journey. I started writing about my personal finance back in June of 2020 in the midst of pandemic. It is my way of staying the course, be disciplined and showing commitment to our goal towards financial independence, please browse our monthly updates on passive income when you get a chance. By this blog I also hope to inspire few people to stay committed with their saving, investment and financial wellbeing, it is so so important in a time we all are witnessing presently. As usual, our monthly update begins with updating below two pages with the latest data:

• 2025 Goal tracker on homepage – You will notice a negative income to begin with, this is because of more expenses than earnings in January
• Dividend Portfolio with latest holdings

Passive Income Pie

Monthly Dividend Earnings

While we ended 2020 on a solid note by crossing $6000 in annual dividend and not to mention beating our 2020 goal handsomely, we also started the year with a bang by raking in the highest monthly dividend ever! This surely gives us the confidence to beat this year’s dividend goal of $8500 as well. Key points from this month’s dividend income are:

• We received dividend deposits from total 20 companies (19 Canadian & 1 US), with total value of $939.15
• CIBC is the biggest contributor for Jan-Apr-Jul-Oct months and with its help I am looking forward to see a 4 digit monthly dividend amount for the first time in April (or certainly July!)
• Dripped 11.3 additional shares for CIBC, Diversified Royalty, Pizza Pizza, Plaza REIT, Telus & Transcontinental
• Received increased dividends from: Telus 6.8% & Transcontinental 3.5%

Dividend Goal Tracker – Planned vs Actual

I have mentioned this several times in the past – this is my favourite visual of our dividend earnings as it helps visualizing where we stand with our dividend goal. As per our Dividend Portfolio, the projected annual dividend earning is just over $6700, so every bit of dividend raise will help narrowing the gap of $1800 that I currently have. I will be monitoring the progress closely and take every action possible to meet the goal if not beat it!

My Marketplace

I sold 209 shares of Brookfield Property Partners (BPY.UN) under one of our TFSA account, with about 9% of profit (including dividends earned over little over two years), this reduced our forward annual dividend by about $360. With the sales proceed I grabbed the opportunity with both hands by buying 100 shares of Alimentation Couche-tard (ATD.B) when it dropped 10% on the news of Carrefour acquisition, which failed later on due to French government’s rejection by stating it will risk their food safety. The purchase value appreciated little over 6% already in less than a month. This purchase also makes ATD.B our biggest TFSA holding and added $35 to forward annual dividend. They were also one of the contender of my Top 2021 stock picks but didn’t make the final three, nevertheless I see it as a company with great growth potential, both in terms of share appreciation and dividend raises.

I also bought miniscule amount of Nio Inc which do not pay any dividend. They are known as a Chinese Tesla and are in the business of designing, manufacturing and selling electric vehicles primarily in China and several other countries. The stock price appreciated more than 3550% in the last one and a half year and they reported 7225 vehicle sales in January which is 352% sales growth year-over-year. With a long timeframe to retire I wish to tilt the scale a little bit towards growth stock as compared to dividend payers and this buy was a step towards it.

I also kept accumulating CIBC shares as part of my regular RRSP contribution through my employer, they match 50 cents to every dollar I contribute up to an annual limit of $2550. I will repeat again, if you have such contribution plan with your employes, don’t leave money on the table and enrol NOW!

Rental Earnings

The rental property which we own 50% with our real estate agent is vacant now. Tenant’s last month was January and hence no rent but we did had mortgage and other bills to pay which led our passive income to go below zero. Our plan is to spend some money in renovation and put it in the market for sale. If you followed us in the past, you will know that we bought this townhouse in Jan’20 for $495000 and it was rented for $2100, with all expenses we were neither earning nor losing but price appreciated drastically. So we are thinking of cashing it on the current market run and deploy the money elsewhere. We bought another investment property back in Sept’20 and it was a rundown bungalow. We spend a good amount of borrowed money in renovating upstairs and had applied for a legal basement permit which came in last week, We are now in the process of screening contractors and collecting estimate and have almost zeroed in on one, hopefully we will kick-off the construction soon. It would take eight to ten weeks to wrap up the work before we put it out for rental. Currently due to people working remotely, a lot moved out of Toronto downtown (and pockets of GTA as well) which impacted the rental market and rents came down by 10%-25% or more. I am already having difficulty finding a tenant for one of our downtown property and hopefully we will find a good tenant soon. Else we keep depleting our personal money and achieving new height with line of credit balances and paying higher and higher interests every month! That’s all for now for rental income update and we really aim to bring back the rental earnings on track soon.

Lending Interest Earnings

As we are paying a lot of interest on borrowed money from line of credit, the net interest earning is quite low but thanks to the private lending money, we are still in green! The commitment for lending is ending this month and we will receive the principal back, which will partly go towards the basement construction and rest to reduce line of credit balances. We have literally exhausted most of the balance and let me tell you.. we have quite a good limits under different accounts! We may again look at private lending when we sell the townhouse and have some cash to lend, I am pretty comfortable with the arrangement and have good and reliable contact. As far as our Lending Loop income goes, all I want to say is.. it roughly pays for a Pizza every month! Ever since Covid started, the new funding needs from small businesses have almost stopped, we hardly get one request a month while pre-Covid the average was 4-6 requests a month. This itself shows the impact on small businesses!

As a new year’s resolution we decided to share our good fortune in a measured approach where we aim to giveaway 10% of our previous year’s passive income towards good cause. I also decided to express more gratitude and appreciation towards the little things in life that I feel blessed about and enjoy, but is mostly taken for granted. Sharing with Society & Gratitude & Goodness are dedicated towards these new goals of life, please do visit them when you get a chance.

This is a wrap for our first update of the year. 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 and Save-Invest-Repeat. Do share with people in need and count your blessings.. Good luck! 😊

Hi there! First of all.. I wish you and yours’ a very Happy New Year, hope this year let you achieve whatever you aim for, be it spiritual or materialistic. Finally 2020 ended and oh boy.. what a year we all witnessed! I am sure most of us will remember this year for a long long time and will have many interesting incidents and stories to share with our grandchildren. Personally we were not impacted at all by this ongoing pandemic and hope it end soon but this whole situation makes us realize how lucky we are and are thankful to the invisible power behind it! In fact this realization lead me to kickstart following two blogs:

1. Gratitude & Goodness – Write one gratitude (or something good in life) for each week of 2021! I plan to append one paragraph every week, please do visit when you get a chance. 😊
2. Sharing with Society – Measured yet thoughtful approach towards helping an organization or an individual in need, all year long. ✌️

Now getting back to business, as I mentioned last time, we achieved our 2020 dividend goal in November itself and our portfolio attained a milestone of crossing $150K mark! As usual, our monthly update begins with updating below two areas with the latest data:

• 2025 Goal tracker on homepage
• Dividend Portfolio with latest holdings

Passive Income Pie

Monthly Dividend Earnings

We ended 2020 crossing $6000 in annual dividend and it was the first time ever in my life, hope to continue this journey and keeping beating our goals, year after year. Key points from this month’s dividend income are:

• We received dividend deposits from total 20 companies (18 Canadian & 2 US), with total value of $581.62
• Dripped 12 additional shares for Brookfield Property, Diversified Royalty, Enbridge, Exxon Mobil, Pizza Pizza, Plaza REIT & Suncor
• Received increased dividends from: Alimentation Couche-Tard 25%, Fortis 5.8% and OTEX 15%

Dividend Goal Tracker – Planned vs Actual

We beat 2020 dividend goal by $658 which gives us the much needed headstart for 2021 goal of $8500 in dividends. As per our Dividend Portfolio, the projected annual dividend earning is just over $7000, so we are short by $1500 to attain our laid out goal. If we consider achieving the goal by pumping new money only (the worst case scenario), then at a healthy yield of 4%, we will need to contribute additional $37,500. Looking at our debt situation, most of our savings this year will go towards paying off the debts and hence contributing to dividend portfolio will be quite challenging. Apart from regular payroll deduction under RRSP, we can probably look at adding some funds in TFSA or take yet another loan for RRSP. On the other hand, we have many quality stocks and upcoming dividend raises and drips will surely help us narrow down the gap. The good part about dividend investing for us is we have no plan to take out any money any time soon and we also have ample contribution room under both TFSA & RRSP. In short, the 2021 journey is steep but not unattainable.🤞

My Marketplace

George Soros said – If investing is entertaining, if you’re having fun, you’re probably not making any money. Good investing is boring. I strictly followed his philosophy this month and stayed away from the market and news, most of the time. I just kept accumulating CIBC shares as part of my regular contributions in RRSP through my employer.

Rental Earnings

There was no change in cash flow from the rental property in which we have 50% ownership. After deducting mortgage & maintenance fee from the rent, the property gives us $180, and if we split two ways then our shares is $90. We let the money accumulate in our joint bank account and it is mostly used for the property tax installments; factoring this we are losing about $100 a month. This doesn’t include any random tap leak or heat malfunctioning or any other issue with the property. There is an upcoming kitchen cabinet change and some other cosmetic repairs, which will further drain money. Having said this, we still believe we are doing pretty well as based on few comparables, this property shows a price appreciation of 25% already in just 1 year. If you keep a tab on GTA real estate market, you will know the madness, it is much hot and surely more exciting than stock market! To give you an example, a house was sold in the end of 22-Sept-20 for $790,000 after which they renovated and sold again on 4-Jan-21 for $998,000, got sold in just 1 day! The signage in the front lawn proudly boasts – Sold at highest price on the street! Even if the buyer spent $100,000 (which is quite lavish) for the renovation work and 3 months of mortgage, they still earned $100,000 in 3 months. This property is on the same street we bought a house, also back in Sept’20 and are awaiting legal basement permit. We have no plan to sell it anytime soon but are eagerly waiting for it to start bearing fruit.

Lending Interest Earnings

The interest we received reduced yet another month as we are paying half of the incoming interest towards various line of credit accounts. This income stream is going to end up in a month or two as the contract is coming to an end, we will use the proceed to pay off some of our debt. Once we are financially comfortable I totally want to get back to this yet again.

This is a wrap for 2020 and overall we are quite pleased with our achievements. We are super excited and looking forward to 2021 and its offering. Thank you for being part of our journey and once again we wish you and your family a great new year. Please 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 and Save-Invest-Repeat. 😊

We are almost at the end of 2020 and it had been a heck of a year. Who knew we will see days akin a zombie or pandemic movie showing empty ghost town with people walking in masks and gloves! Below are few pictures I snapped recently on my unavoidable visit to the downtown. It is heartbreaking to see near empty streets, stations and trains at 11AM in the morning. In a normal day at this time, these places will be choked with honking cars and bustling people.

While these scenes are surreal, there will be countless heartbreaking stories from small and big business owners which almost entirely depended on the inflow of people into the downtown. With empty offices and near zero traffic, most of these business are already closed or breathing on government assistance. I know of a place where we use to go after work and recently read that it is closed auctioning off the kitchen equipments and furnitures; felt sorry for so many lives in suffering! Personally for us the only inconvenience was the lockdown and restrictions, which is nothing as compared to hardship faced by numerous others. We consider ourselves quite fortunate and are thankful that our lives remained unimpacted.

While October brought us our highest dividend ever, November is again a special month for us in two ways – we surpassed our annual dividend goal in Nov itself; and our portfolio hit the highest value ever surpassing a special milestone! As usual, our update begins with updating below two areas with the latest data:

• 2025 Goal tracker on homepage
• Dividend Portfolio with latest holdings

Passive Income Pie

Monthly Dividend Earnings

Nov’20 is the second time (after Aug’20) this year that our year-over-year dividend dipped, while last dip was 11% this time it is 16%.. ouch, it surely hurts!! This as I mentioned back in Aug was due to bad purchase choices I made such as VET, CHW, CHR etc where I lost plenty of capital as well as $140 per month in Dividends. Nevertheless this month was still an awesome as we hit our yearly dividend goal a month earlier and we couldn’t be any happier. Key points from this month’s dividend income are:

• We received dividend deposits from total 14 companies (9 Canadian & 5 US), with total value of $214.16
• Dripped 3 additional shares for Diversified Royalty, Pizza Pizza & Plaza REIT
• Received increased dividends from: General Mills 4.1%, Saratoga Investment: 2.5%, Pizza Pizza – 10%
• As I mentioned last month, A&W announced a special dividend of 0.30 per share on top of their regular 0.10, and it got deposited this month! This special payment compensated for Apr-May-Jun months when they had suspended their dividends.
• Fortis announced a dividend raise of 5.8% while OTEX raised it by staggering 15%, both effective Dec’20

Dividend Goal Tracker – Planned vs Actual

As you can see from the tracker, we beat 2020 dividend goal by $77 with a month to spare. All dividends now on will contribute towards 2021 goal of $8500, which is quite steep. Currently our entire portfolio’s projected annual dividend earning is about $7000 meaning we have to fill the gap of about $1500 in dividends by Drips, Raises & More money! I have many quality stocks with rich history of dividend growth and some of this gap will surely be filled by the raises. Also, not to forget all dividends earned are reinvested via drips or occasional buyings, which will again increase the future dividends. Worst case I need to pump in $30000 in new money to increase my annual dividend by $1500 at 5% yield, some of it will be taken care of by RRSP investment at work and for the rest, I may have to rob a bank or Oh yes.. just take a RRSP loan!

My Marketplace

November was also the busiest month in entire year and I literally had to come up with a quick table to show the trades! I ripped off the bandage on my laggard stocks which I was considering selling ever since pandemic hit and they dropped by like 60%-90%. I booked nearly $11000 in losses on just 4 stocks but I am quite happy with the sellouts as I was able to deploy the proceeds (and some additional cash) in much better options which already started showing results. While I opened no new position, I added to my existing ownerships in 7 different companies. I have full faith in all of them except Suncor which I bought to lower my book value a bit. These buyings will boost the annual dividend by about $400 at a healthy yield of 3.7%.

Along with above trades, I kept accumulating CIBC shares as part of my regular contributions in RRSP through my employer.

Rental Earnings

The cash flow from the rental property in which we have 50% ownership remained the same. After deducting mortgage & maintenance fee from the rent, the property gives us about $180 in positive cash flow. The months when we also have to pay the property tax installment, the cash flow dips to negative. Overall we are losing about $100 a month but it is still a good deal when you look at the bigger picture. The price appreciation on this townhouse is already about 20% in less than a year and the longer we keep the better capital gain we’ll see. The other property that we bought is still far from fruition and the patience as well as cash continues to drain! But I have full confidence in the investment.

Lending Interest Earnings

Lending income kept nosediving as compared to previous months as we are paying more interest on various line of credit accounts and hence net earning continue to slide. This aligns with our goal to decrease the interest earnings and continue diverting the funds to real estate or better investment prospects.

Concluding November reporting gives immense satisfaction as we reached our yearly dividend goal and we already started looking at the next years’ planning and implementation. Feel free to subscribe using a widget at the bottom of the page to get an update on our monthly blog, I don’t spam and you will only get an email whenever I post on this website.

Thank you for the read and see you next month and until then… Stay indoor, stay safe and Save-Invest-Repeat. 😊

Hi there.. I hope you all ducked the pandemic and other related challenges that 2020 offered so far, if there is any consolation we only have about 6 weeks to go! While we can’t predict what future has to offer but hoping new year bring along some positivity and overall situation improves. After many failed drug trials the Pfizer announcement on a possible Covid-19 vaccine sounds promising and most likely we shall see them mass producing the vaccine in coming weeks if not months. According to their press release – Vaccine candidate was found to be more than 90% effective in preventing COVID-19 and based on current projections we expect to produce globally up to 50 million vaccine doses in 2020 and up to 1.3 billion doses in 2021. So far worldwide 54.2M Covid cases and 1.31M deaths have been reported and not to mention the impact it had on millions of families in terms of life or job losses, hardship it brought along and businesses ruined. I personally know so many people who had cases of Covid in their family, fortunately no fatality but even so, I can only imagine how scary it could get and disrupt the life. With second wave picking up, a vaccine would certainly be seen as the light at the end of the tunnel. If you were able to stay clear of the direct or indirect impact, you should consider yourself lucky, as we do.

October was a great month for us and our passive income, we saw little over $1500 from different sources, and to my liking the dividend income was the frontrunner. Like previous months, my update begins with refreshing below two areas with the latest data:

• 2025 Goal tracker on homepage
• Dividend Portfolio with latest holdings

Passive Income Pie

Monthly Dividend Earnings

I feel immense joy to see (and tell..) that October was our highest dividend income month EVER! We crossed $800 a month mark for the first time with 18% year-over-year growth. It surely does pay to stay the course and show patience and discipline. Key points from this month’s dividend income are:

• We received dividend deposits from total 17 companies (16 Canadian & 1 US), with total value of $827.87
• CIBC with $556.24 in dividends comprised 67% of total dividends, dripping 5.5 shares. They pays in Jan-Apr-Jul-Oct and hence these months are pretty huge deals for us!
• Dripped 3.5 additional shares for Algonquin Power, Diversified Royalty & Transcontinental
• Philip Morris was the only company which announced a dividend raise by 2.6%
• A&W Royalties & Pizza Pizza continued paying their reduced dividend. As I mentioned last month, A&W announced a one time 0.30 per share special dividend, which I saw deposited in first week of Nov, sweet!!

Dividend Goal Tracker – Planned vs Actual

While I like all the charts I have to track passive income, I must admit this one is my favourite as it tells how we are doing at any given time and it is quite important to track progress. Looking at this chart, I am highly optimistic that we will reach our 2020 dividend goal in Nov itself. With 1 month early it shall give us the much needed head start to the steep next year’s goal of $8500! Other than regular RRSP contribution, I don’t foresee much scope for new money allocation toward buying new shares in 2021 and hence we will rely a lot on dividend growths and price appreciation. This also means buying some of the duds that I own and redeploy towards better companies such as Telus who have guidelines in place for their dividend growth for next 2-3 years.

My Marketplace

We had zero action once again except dripping few shares and nibbling through CIBC shares as part of regular contributions in RRSP. All sell limit orders expired one more time and were set for November again with hope to see some price appreciation and curtail the loss. We have about $3000 in cash from last month’s Maxar sell proceed and dividends, but been sitting on the fence and taking our own sweet time to deploy them. In October we set few more stocks to DRIP and should start seeing accumulations in coming months, the more I think about it the more I realize now that I should have set drips long back for eligible stocks. It is indeed a great way to let solid companies be on auto pilot/accumulation to see increased dividends by each passing month, especially if you also don’t have much time on hand to focus on the portfolio.

Rental Earnings

If you read my last month’s post, we had a closing on an investment property in September and then October was completely dedicated to renovating the upstair portion of the house. Most of the planned work got wrapped up with few things yet to be taken care of. Now to realize the full potential of our investment, we chose to take the right approach and apply for legalization of basement apartment as a second dwelling. The house is having a partially finished basement and we plan to tear apart the full area and build it in two sections – a 1 bedroom self contained apartment and a big sized recreation room with attached washroom. An architect was hired to put our ambition on paper and he put together a decent design for the basement apartment and submitted it to the city for permit. It normally takes about 8-12 weeks to get the design approved but considering covid related delays and backlogs, it may take little longer. Looking at the timelines, we shall be able to get the permit in March but most likely have to wait another month or so as we can’t kickoff the work during mid of winter. The first step is cutting the exterior wall to build a separate entrance which descending staircases and apparently this can’t be done with snow and cold outside. This is actually good as it will give us a breather to arrange funding and finalize contractor(s) for April-May to begin the work and get it done in 2-3 months.

Don’t trust anyone if they tell you that real estate investment is the easiest, while it is surely a time tested and proven way to grow your money, it surely isn’t as easy as it may look. In the last 7 years we have been part of about 11 different deals (Buy or Sell) and each had its own set of challenges but I personally see this as a hobby, rewards is secondary to me. From my personal experience the whole process can be quite stressful and full of hassles, so unless you also enjoy the process like I do, you should look for an opportunity elsewhere.

Lending Interest Earnings

Our lending income decreased 60% as compared to last month as we settled majority of our principal to fund the investment property. This is in line with our long term goal and I expect further reduction in first quarter of next year to pay off the line of credit balance and fund the basement renovation. As I mentioned in last month’s update, we dip deep into our line of credit to fund this a new property and renovation meaning we are paying significant interest, which again eats into our overall lending income.

This is a wrap for October passive income updates and overall I am quite satisfied with the way we are heading. Please do subscribe using a widget at the bottom of the page to get an update on my monthly blog, I don’t spam and you will only get an email whenever I post on this website which is about 1-2 a month. Thank you for the read and see you next month and until then… Stay indoor, stay safe and Save-Invest-Repeat. 😊

Hope you all are staying Safe-N-Sound, maintaining social distancing and staying indoors as much as possible, who knew we have to live in a time like this? I had a funny encounter a week ago when I was at a tiles wholesaler with my real estate agent to pick up some hardwood floor. Someone greeted him and my agent friend couldn’t identify the person behind the mask so the guy had to clarify – Hey.. I am Steve! I guess this is the new normal, earlier to forego small talks, you avoided eye contact by pretending to read an advertisement, now you simply wear a mask and stare at a known person without any hesitation! Schools started this month and it was expected that Covid-19 cases may increase and it did. Probably schools weren’t the only reason, relaxed social distancing norms, indoor rules relaxation and people taking Covid-19 less seriously also added to this second wave. I have seen a family of four coming to Costco which could be easily avoided. If your kids are getting restless, I would rather recommend going for a long walk outdoors as it is safer than an indoor crowded spaces. There are plenty of other safe outdoor activities that you can chose over a grocery shopping. We decided not to send our elder one to school and let her join online instead, and I am noticing she’s getting more independent with her computer skills and enjoying the short breaks to play with her sister. While our daughter do miss the social interaction and I’ll admit, also causes a bit of a trouble for us as we work from home as well, we still thought it would be wise to wait and watch which direction the cases go. Besides, there will always be another chance to enroll for physical schooling and we can take an informed decision, avoiding some risks. It is a bit of a pain with all the adjustments and while nobody asked for it, we need to live with the fact that restraints will be needed especially till a vaccine is available. We are all in this together and some patience and better decisioning will help us all contribute towards the eradication of this pandemic. September was one heck of a stressful month, both in my professional 9-5 life as well as part time investment gig. If you read my August passive income update, we had put an offer on an Investment property in July, Mortgage got approved in August and Closing was in September; and hence the stress. I will discuss some learnings and best practices further down under Rental Earnings section.

As usual, my monthly updates begins with updating below two pages with the latest data:

• 2025 Goal tracker on homepage
• Dividend Portfolio with latest holdings

Passive Income Pie

Monthly Dividend Earnings

While August saw a dip in year-over-year dividend, September was quite heartening as the dividend earnings increased 38% as compared to last September, thanks to new money and few dividend growths. Due to increased demand from day job and new investment property, I realized I am not doing justice to deploying accumulating dividends to immediate use, hence we set up DRIP on selected stocks which we want to keep for long term and are also get enough dividend to buy at least one or more share. Highlights from this month’s dividend income are:

• We received dividend deposits from total 24 companies (22 Canadian & 2 US stocks), total value of $542.06
• Dripped 13 shares in total for Brookfield Property, Diversified Royalty & Pivot Technology
• Saputo & Sylogist raised their dividend by 2.9% & impressive 13.6% respectively
• A&W, Pizza Pizza and Suncor continued paying their reduced dividend though I read A&W announcing a one time 0.30 per share special dividend!
• My top two earners were Brookfield Property & Enbridge, contributed about 40% of total dividends
• USD comprised of 11% of total dividend earned, though for this reporting I consider 1 USD = 1 CAD

Dividend Goal Tracker – Planned vs Actual

With 3 months remaining in year completion, we are about $1000 less in achieving our annual dividend goal of $5500. Looking at the forward dividend earnings, I am pretty confident we will meet if don’t exceed our target. This shall give us a good head start to next year’s target of $8500!

My Marketplace

My August wish to sell some of the losers remained unfulfilled as all sell limit order expired unexecuted! I know we are too heavy in Oil & Gas sector and overall portfolio is still about 8.5% down and it is mostly due to stocks in this sector. As much as I do wish to get rid of them, I think I am not ready to book heavy losses yet. I haven’t placed new sell orders yet, but I surely will in coming days giving some careful consideration to the selling price. While I wasn’t able to sell any losers, I did sold a winner Maxar Technologies as part of my preplanned swing trade. I bought 100 shares in June for 22 a piece and sold half of them at 37 each, adding little over $700 under my RRSP account. Talk about filling the whole tank, drop by drop! This trade made remaining shares almost free and I do plan to keep them and see how it goes, at the time of writing it already breached $42 mark!

We didn’t bought any new stock this month and have been pondering what to add with the proceeds from Maxar trade and so far I am tilted towards adding more Sylogist or Telus. For the first time, we also set multiple stocks on DRIP this month, keeping in mind busy schedule and lesser focus on portfolio or stock market in general. I figured it is easier to let the keepers keep accumulating and grow forward dividends on auto pilot without any attention; besides DRIPing also saves some transaction fee! As usual we also kept nibbling CIBC shares as part of RRSP contribution & Employee share purchase plan, it is usually 5-12 shares per month depending on current price and also dividend months when we DRIP more shares.

Rental Earnings

As I mentioned in my August post, we had a closing in end of September for an investment property we finalized. The mortgage was preapproved with staggering 16 conditions! With our high debt-to-earning ratio, we were fortunate to even gotten considered. Bank pre-approved in first week of August and it took me and mortgage advisor almost 7 weeks to fulfil them as per bank’s satisfaction. I have been through many property deals in the past but this was most nerve wracking as we got the final approval merely one day before closing deadline. No one should undergo the stress like this as it makes your night go sleepless. If you can’t secure a timely mortgage you won’t be able to close the deal and it shall have cascading effect starting with losing your deposit money. It would still be fine if you just lose the deposit but more severe consequences could be but not limited to – seller asking for punitive damages (at times legitimate but mostly outrageous) and drag you to court, your own plan to move-in/rent/renovate may go out of control. To me, the worst thing would be to recoup the confidence and get back on track. Sometimes the trauma and suffering could have long lasting impact and you may lose the optimism and self-confidence. Some of my learnings and best practices from this deal would be:

• ALWAYS secure your firm mortgage approval at least 1 week before closing day
• While shopping around for lower rate is good, also give importance to the mortgage advisor. A flexible and creative advisor makes this tedious process easier. One has to be equally well versed with the processes and loopholes and guide you with your unique situation.
• TRY to negotiate the deposit amount with seller agent, most of the time a lower deposit is acceptable
• ALWAYS ask your mortgage advisor for Cash back, most of the time bank offers $1000-$3000 back. If you go via brokerage, they usually keep this money (apart from their commission) and won’t tell you!
• Ask your mortgage advisor to register the property for a reasonably higher amount, they can do this easily and it can save you lawyer fee while refinancing in future
• Try to ALWAYS put 20% down payment towards the property as it helps avoiding CMHC insurance cost and secure better mortgage deal
• CONNECT directly with seller agent as it increases your chance of closing the deal and that too at a cheaper price, as agentless buyer save seller agent about 2% in commission payable to buyer agent

While closing was stressful, we only planned for 1 month for renovating upstairs, again put ourselves into a stressful situation! Real estate construction is a tricky landscape full with all kinds and you will be in luck if you find right people at right price at right time. And renovating 3 bedrooms with living room, kitchen and washroom can lead you to deal with bunch of contractors and challenges at each stage. You have the choice to give full contract to an established professional but then it will cost you much higher and mostly they don’t get their hands in smaller renovation work, so a bit difficult to find and could take much longer. My real estate agent is helping with the renovation as time is less and we live 50 kilometers to keep an eye on day to day work. At a high level, work involves demolition of entire upstairs – removing carpets, hardwood floor & doors, washroom and kitchen tiles & fixtures, scraping walls, tearing down the staircases and couple of walls to build an open concept kitchen; re-laying hardwood floor throughout the bedrooms and living area, tiles in kitchen, washroom and entry landing; redoing entire electricals including changing switchboards, wiring and lights/potlights; relocating & changing furnace, AC, HVAC, even water tank; cutting through the wall and adding a sliding door to patio; building new cabinets and island in the kitchen overlooking living room, adding a gas pipeline; fitting in new standing shower, toilet and vanity in washroom, minor plumbing job; changing staircase & doors; painting & finally cleaning. I missed on numerous smaller subtasks but trust me even when you have right people on the job, there are decisioning required every two hours and I am not even exaggerating! If all goes well and our calculation holds true, we should see a 20% appreciation in property value immediately and renting should see cash flow of about $1000 per month. Our plan is to keep it for long term and let the value appreciate assuming the GTA real estate market will continue to be in top gear in coming years. Fingers crossed, all the hard work that went into this deal, risk taken and primarily the time-money spent shall make this a successful investment. I will keep you updating on how this shapes up in coming days, feel free to subscribe via widget at the bottom of the page to stay updated.

Lending Interest Earnings

I had to settle half of the lending money to pay towards down payment of the property so this month the cumulative interest earning shot up significantly due to previous pending dues settlement. This action will also decrease our monthly interest by half starting October and is aligned with our goal to reduce interest earnings anyway. Also, to fund renovation work we have taken out heavy debt from our personal line of credit, hence we will also be paying significant interest towards it, which will further decrease the overall interest income.

That’s all for September folks! Tons of work still need to be done on all fronts and all we need is not to get restless, tons of patience, aggressive savings and staying focused. I don’t know about you but for us, this whole isolation thing have increased our savings – be it less commuting expense or negligible indulgence on unnecessary mall visits or no expense at all on formal clothes! While all our savings got diverted in buying a new property, I hope once things normalize we will be able to divert some of these savings towards new stock positions. Thank you for the read and as always, would love to see your take on savings and investment ideas.

See you next month and until then… Save-Invest-Repeat. 😊

Another month passed by and I tell you if you set a clear and achievable goal(s), working towards making it a reality is quite gratifying! You can literally see yourself inching towards the goal with the help of numbers, charts, spreadsheets; and the journey itself becomes so much exciting and fulfilling. Now I look forward to month end when I update my tracker and look at all the earnings for which we didn’t had to go out and work! The beauty of passive income is it keeps accumulating while you enjoy life. August was again a busy month for outings and we tried to make the most out of pleasant weather. While it wasn’t warm enough for beach anymore, we along with bunch of friends decided to explore small towns so each week we visited one such hidden gem. We went to Paris, Stratford & Elora and were quite impressed with their their lively & clean downtowns and laidback lifestyle. Most of our trips we plan are on weekdays, it helps avoiding the crowd and maintain social distancing (yeah I think this is going to be a thing for long long time!). I would recommend weekday trips if you have the flexibility, it is so much more relaxing and fun when you meet less traffic and fewer faces! Everytime we visit a small town, me and my wife mull over moving to one, but can’t gather the courage to make the move. I guess we are so accustomed to a city life and gotten spoilt by its offerings, be it shorter commute or easy access to facilities or proximal options with everything. But then a city also gives you smaller (and expensive) abode, traffic, crowd, noise and other headaches! I think it is a tradeoff between what you really want and what you can let go. Maybe one day we’ll be able to break the shackle and move to one of these places and I am quite certain that financial independence will give our decision a boost; more of a reason to achieve our goals sooner than later!

In contrast to July, August was a very busy month on all front which I will discuss in detail in respective sections below. As I mentioned in my June and July postings, I updated below two pages to reflect the latest data:

• 2025 Goal tracker on homepage
• Dividend Portfolio with latest holdings

Passive Income Split

Monthly Dividend Earnings

August dividend earnings had been quite lacklustre and lesser, as compared to August of last year. This was due to dividend cuts announced in past few months for several of my holdings such as CHW (-$35 per month), CHR (-$14 per month), VET (-$91 per month). Key highlights for this month’s dividend income are:

• I received dividend deposits from 9 Canadian & 4 US based companies, total value of $182.46
• The dividend is about $20 less than last August due to several dividend suspension and cuts as I mentioned above

Dividend Goal Tracker – Planned vs Actual

With 4 more months to go, we are only $1500 less in achieving our annual dividend goal of $5500 and even in worst of the market, I am pretty confident we will meet and exceed our target. As per our portfolio and forward yield, we may cross $6000 this year itself.

My Marketplace

A tweet by a person I follow had quite an impact on me and I decided to get active with my cleanup and rebalancing. The gist was, while you can get wrong with your picks, don’t stay wrong, instead be ruthless in cutting losers! This changed my perspective towards being lazy and giving losers time to recover, I decided to book loss (heavy ones I emphasise..) and move on. I setup several sell limit orders and none of them got executed in August but I am pretty certain I will “move on” from some of my losers especially in Oil & Gas sector. As far as adding more to the portfolio goes, I put our 3% of cash reserve to use by adding 50 shares of Manulife and initiating a position of 93 shares in Telus. I also dipped my toe in Apple the day their share split came into effect. As usual I kept accumulating about 5-7 shares (depending on price) of CIBC as part of Employee share purchase plan. Again will repeat for your benefit, if your employer offers share purchase plan then you must take advantage of it, it is FREE money and I haven’t come across a single person yet who like leaving money on the table!

As far as my Buy goes, any Canadian dividend investor will know the companies I traded in. Manulife averaged about 11% dividend growth rate in last 5 years and the last increase at the beginning of 2020 was 12%. The market haven’t been just to the share price though even after posting good last quarter result. Telus is again a household name in telecom sector and I always wanted to initiate a position. The recent stock split made it more “affordable” and impressive dividend yield made it too tempting to ignore any longer! Last but not the least, Apple – world renowned name and the first trillion dollar company and what a rally in last 1 year! Recent stock split spurred the price to an all time high and my buy was on the first day post the split, as this was probably the only time I could afford it. We had some chump change in USD, sitting in one of our RRSP which I utilized for a minuscule position. I do plan to add more when our sell order materializes. This will help us with our goal to diversify more into growth stocks based south of the border.

Rental Earnings

Few months back we thought of buying an investment property so we can increase our rental income. As I mentioned in my July post, we checked out several properties and put a conditional offer on a house subject to mortgage approval. I am quite excited to share the news that our mortgage got approved and we made our offer firm! The closing is scheduled for September end, thereafter the house will require good amount of renovation upstairs and legal second unit basement apartment will be added later on. If all goes well and our calculation holds true, we will have a positive cash flow of about $1000 per month and at least 10% appreciation in property value immediately after renovation. Our plan is to keep it for long term and let the value appreciate for higher capital gain, assuming the GTA real estate market will continue to be in top gear for coming years.

With the same hope, this month we also invested in a pre-construction condo unit. The down payment is staggered across 3 years making it less burdensome financially and there is a free assignment, meaning we will have the option to sell it before actually closing the deal. The scheduled closing is in 2024 and again going by the trend, we expect the price to appreciate by 20%, giving us a handsome gain on our investment. Pre construction market comes with several benefits primarily being no hefty upfront cost and more on this will be discussed in my upcoming blog on Rental Income, you can stay informed by subscribing via widget at the bottom of the page.

Lending Interest Earnings

Same as last month, both incoming interest and outgoing payments towards leveraged PLC account remained more or less constant. Since we have an upcoming property deal closing to take care of, we plan to redeploy half of our lending money towards 20% down payment and hence there will be a considerable dip in interest income next month onwards. This aligns well with our goal to reduce lending income and at the same time fund the new property. I strongly believe in minimum 20% down payment towards investment property to keep CMHC insurance cost out of the equation and overall cost low. You can read more on this in my earlier blog on Lending income.

To wrap up our August update, I would say I feel much more focused and confident ever since I started blogging about our goal and progress; and I hope you as a reader takeaway some action items too. Thank you once again for the read and would love to see your take on savings and investment ideas. Until next month.. Save-Invest-Repeat. 😊