Tag: Financial Independence

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

Unlike March, we finally started seeing positive cash flow on our rental income and needless to say, it is so much of a relief! This month, our passive income comprised of 66% dividends, 33% of rental and 1% of from interest. If you are following our monthly updates, I mentioned our ideal passive income will have following income split:

• Rental Income – 45% – $3000 per month
• Dividends – 40% – $2500 per month
• Lending Interest – 15% – $1000 per month

2025 goals that we put together is based on the foundation of good diversified and sustainability earnings. Keeping that in mind, we have couple of businesses that we are exploring as partnership route and I will update more on this next month. I am also going to update both the goals and diversity pie at some point to factor in earnings from businesses, but it will be a while before we get to it as we get more understanding on the earnings.

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

We saw no rental income for the third straight month which makes an ugly pie yet again! If you followed our monthly updates, then you will know our ideal passive income will have following income split:

• Rental Income – 45% – $3000 per month
• Dividends – 40% – $2500 per month
• Lending Interest – 15% – $1000 per month

We have couple of good businesses that we are exploring as partnership route and I may have an update on it in coming months, and all the while our pursuit to other passive income sources to build a solid foundation for our 2025 goals with good diversification and sustainability and hopefully over time we will see less fluctuation and more stability.

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

For the second month in a row, we had no rental income but surely mortgages and taxes to pay so the pie looks ugly and scary! By 2025, our ideal pie should have the following income split:

• Rental Income – 45% – $3000 per month
• Dividends – 40% – $2500 per month
• Lending Interest – 15% – $1000 per month

We are actively exploring other passive income sources to build a solid foundation for our 2025 goals with good diversification and sustainability and hopefully over time we will see less fluctuation and more stability.

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

For the first time since I started reporting, our diversity pie shaped up like this, with no rental income at all! Our end state 2025 pie would ideally have the following income split:

• Rental Income – 45% – $3000 per month
• Dividends – 40% – $2500 per month
• Lending Interest – 15% – $1000 per month

In coming days (..and years) I aim to smoothen out the ratio and expect less fluctuations with different passive income sources. We also wish to explore other passive income sources to build a solid foundation for our 2025 goals with good diversification and sustainability.

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

The diversity pie which depicts the split between our various income stream for this month shaped up pretty nicely, to my liking. Over time I expect the ups and downs to smoothen out and get closer to below split which I consider ideal for our situation:

• Rental Income – 45% – $3000 per month
• Dividends – 40% – $2500 per month
• Lending Interest – 15% – $1000 per month

As I keep mentioning, in coming years we also wish to add at least one more solid income source and hence we shall start exploring other opportunities as soon as our debt situation improves, to ensure our 2025 goals is amply diversified and sustainable.

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. 😊