SettlingNomadMonthlyUpdate | Settling Nomad!

August’21 – Slow month = Work harder!

Hi there!

Can’t believe we are already in the last leg of summer and it started getting a bit chilly towards the end of August! Thankfully we extracted the most out of the warmer days, either by going out to places (..mostly during the weekdays to avoid the crowd), or just relaxing in the backyard. This year we spent a lot of time in our backyard, either in the pool or gardening – harvesting tomatoes, peppers, eggplants, beetroots, cucumbers and potatoes (.. yeah you got that right!!). We enjoyed it so much this year that we want to take this to a whole new level next season, we would love to be self sustained with vegetables for few weeks if not entire summer. While it is much colder now at the time of writing, the political scene is heating up with elections coming up on 20-Sept. What I have learned over the years of my adulthood is that in politics you do not get all good things in just one party so you will have to compromise with the one which aligns the most with your ideology. At times your local candidate will be awesome but the party they belong to may have matching goals. Think about how the current government faired on concerning areas such as healthcare, inflation, economics, fiscal health of the country, taxation, future of the country, benefits and go vote them back in or vote them out based on your assessment. My recommendation would be to go with the best option you have but don’t skip the process altogether, do go and vote for the best candidate.

July was a special month for us since we hit 4 figures of dividends for the first time ever! On the other hand it was also the month when one of our tenant stopped paying us rent (..thanks to Covid! 🙄). In August I also wrapped up and submitted my interview questionnaire for Hard Bacon and now eagerly waiting for them to polish and publish it. For those who aren’t aware, we were mentioned by Hard Bacon website in their list of 25 Best Financial Independence and Early Retirement Blogs In Canada For 2021 and they also asked us if we would be interested for an interview for their readers, which we gladly agreed to. In case you missed on our previous monthly updates, you can read them all here. Coming to this month’s updates, it begins by updating below two pages with the latest data:

2025 Goal tracker on homepage – Overall passive income for the year is taking a toll due to negative cashflow with our rental property!
Dividend Portfolio with latest holdings

Passive Income Pie

This month, our passive income comprised of 74% of rental income, 23% Dividends & 3% in Interests from Lending loop & Celsius. For our long time readers, you know already that our financial independence pursuit is fueled primarily by these 3 categories of income and new readers can read our past monthly updates to know about our journey. Our aspirational passive income split shall look like below:

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

The above split is carefully put together as our 2025 financial goals which is based on the foundation of diversified and sustainable passive incomes. We are currently working on two more semi-passive income ideas and will write about them once they shape up better. Also after we start seeing some cash flow from these businesses, I will also revise our 2025 goals and update the diversity pie.

Monthly Dividend Earnings

After attaining an all time monthly dividend highs in July’21, August floored us with our lowest dividend month for this year (.. in fact lowest in last 15 months!). This was due to closing our positions in AT&T & Saratoga in past months. While it is disheartening to see a slump, it is a reminder that we need to work even harder and grow our portfolio – point noted and now we need to find that extra money to invest!

Key points from this month’s dividend income are:

We received dividend deposits from total 15 entities (11 Canadian, 3 US & 1 ETF), with total value of $169.07, a 7% decrease from Aug’20
For ease and simplicity, I consider 1 USD = 1 CAD
Top 3 dividend contributors were Pembina, Abbvie and Pizza Pizza
We dripped 3 shares in total – one each for Diversified Royalty, Pizza Pizza and Plaza REIT
We received one dividend raise from A&W – 11.11%
Average monthly dividends for 2021 so far is $560.25 Or about $18.675 a day. By 2025, we wish to reach about $80 a day, long long way to go!

**BLACK**: Unchanged | **GREEN**: Increased | **BLUE**: Reduced | **RED**: Suspended

Dividend Goal Tracker – Planned vs Actual

**BLUE BAR**: Planned Yearly | **PINK BAR**: Actual Yearly | **GREEN LINE**: Planned Monthly | **GREEN PLOT**: Actual Monthly

In eight months of 2021, we achieved 53% of this year’s dividend goal against targeted 66%. With just four months to go, we are lagging behind quite significantly with our 2021 dividend goal and may not be able to achieve it. This is mainly due to our refocus on growth stocks and two business interests where we are diverting a lot of funds, which was otherwise earmarked for dividend portfolio. I will revisit the 2025 dividend goals some time later this year (.. or early next year) to revise the dividend goals and again next year to include business earnings as part of our overall passive income.

My Marketplace

There was no Buy or Sell in August and this buying and holding forever (.. well unless something goes terribly wrong!) bodes well with our investment philosophy. We are currently in accumulation phase and all we want is to keep buying quality stocks and build a significant portfolio to live off, years away from now.

This doesn’t mean we had no excitement at all! As I mentioned earlier we did DRIP 3 shares and also accumulated 9 more shares of CIBC as part of employee share purchase plan under monthly RRSP contribution via payroll deductions. These new acquisitions will contribute about $54 more towards our forward annual dividend yield. I know this is quite small and insignificant amount but as the saying goes and I strongly believe in – Individually we are one drop, together we are an ocean!

This month, we did not put any new money in Crypto either. If you have followed us, you may know we hold little bit of Bitcoin between two wallets – CoinSquare & Celsius (which also pays weekly interests on your holdings, isn’t that nice?!). Feel free to sign-up using my Celcius network referral and we both can earn $50 in Bitcoins once you transfer $400 or more. I also had a fun-trade couple of months ago with Dogecoin and whatever left in our CoinSquare account is free money, will let it ride or perish! Within last one month, Bitcoin increased about 30% and my other holding Dogecoin raised more than 50% but our overall valuation haven’t reached $10K that I formally start tracking cryptocurrencies under our portfolio.

Right now we are financially recuperating from the debt we put on ourselves for basement renovation and shall take few months before we are in a “healthy” state. Once we are there, I want to work on at least two areas on priority – 1. Create a plan to reduce the big gap we currently have for our TFSA contribution 2. Create a regular crypto investment plan

Rental Earnings

Principal residence – While minor touch-ups are still pending here and there, the basement is now registered legally and rented out. I am so glad that after spending 6 figures in renovation and almost one year of hardship, this property is ready for some cash flow. The one bedroom unit is rented for $1200 monthly which is a bit on low for such units but we chose to rent out to a couple as they are out working most of the week and don’t own a car. This means, we save on utilities, have minimum interference, and don’t have to broaden the driveway yet. It was a win-win situation and so far we are glad we rented them the basement.

Investment property 1 – This upstairs tenant defaulted on the rent starting July and Landlord-Tenant board of Ontario gave us 10-Nov date for the eviction hearing. By then it would be 5 months of rent non-payment and the whole experience screams overhauling of the process to help both parties. I hope one day, the concerned board wakes up and improve on the timeframe it takes and the process in general to avoid sheer waste of time and inefficiencies! For now, we are impatiently waiting for the hearing and bleeding money. 🥲

The proceed from investment property mortgage refinancing and investment 2 property sale are used to fund part ownership in two businesses and I will write more on them once we are in a better shape. For now, all I can say is a lot goes into planning and execution for such projects with significant risk and reward at play. More on this to come in coming months.. Stay tuned.

Lending Interest Earnings

We collected about $15 in interest from lending loop on our initial investment of $2000. You can also explore this option for relatively smaller capital and if you invest, we both can earn $25 each using my lending loop referral ink, once you invest $1,500 on their platform.

We also earned about $3.5 in interests for keeping our Bitcoin on Celsius network. This was recommended by a twitter friend and after initial setup and Bitcoin transfer (partial transfer only for now) from CoinSquare, I started seeing weekly interests been deposited to my account. It is great to earn interests while the cryptocurrency is just sitting somewhere! You can signup using my Celsius network referral link when signing up and can earn $50 in BTC with your first transfer of $400 or more.

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. We have almost achieved our 2021 goals (~96%) in eight months! Please check our page sharing with society for more details and do share if you can with any of the charities or initiative we donated, it will mean a lot to us and keep in mind, even a small amount helps! I personally also decided to express more gratitude and appreciation towards the little things in life that I feel blessed with and enjoy, but is mostly taken for granted. While I normally document it at this link – gratitude & goodness, I haven’t gotten a chance to update it lately but I hope to resume it soon.

That’s it for now readers and see you next month! Please do subscribe using the widget at the bottom of the page to get monthly updates, I don’t spam and you will only get an email whenever I post on this website.

Stay indoor, Stay safe, Get vaccinated and don’t forget to Save-Invest-Repeat! 😊

July’21 – First ever 4 figures dividend – Passive Income Update!

11-Aug-2111-Nov-21RLeave a comment

Hello reader!

Hope your summer is going great, healthy and stress free, accomplishing whatever you planned to do. Enjoy the warm weather and minimal covid cases, while it lasts. As I told you last month, we had planned for 10 days of Quebec trip and it was awesome! ..to be back travelling and visiting places. June was also one of our most exciting and satisfying month from many perspective, do read our monthly updates here if you missed it. As far as our visit goes, this time we spent almost a day each at Saint-Sauveur, Mont-Tremblant, Valcartier waterpark, Sainte-Anne-de-Beaupré, Saint-Laurent-Ile-d’Orleans island, Montmorency Falls, Quebec City (.. went there twice actually!), Zoo de Granby. Each of these small towns in Quebec are picturesque; the churches, old heritage buildings with stunning architecture, boutiques, narrow alleys, restaurants packed with patrons oozing an European charm. My whole family is especially in love with the old Quebec city and we have made an unwritten rule to visit this city every other year, if possible. While returning back home we also stayed couple of nights in Ottawa, our nation’s capital, relaxing and sightseeing . We in fact took a city bus tour (..for the first time in our life!) and I can tell you from this ride that Ottawa is a lot beautiful than I thought. Hands-down, 24 Sussex Drive is literally nothing as compared to the White house and I felt even the residence of US ambassador to Canada is better than our prime ministers! 😉

This was a much needed break for all of us and thankfully it was incident free. We didn’t say it but we all were so exhausted living this pandemic imposed confinement for so long. We are not made for lockdown and fearful lifestyle, this whole pandemic episode makes us realize how much we took small joys for granted. Who knew, one day we will have to think twice before heading out, take precautions such as masks, sanitizers and avoid people. It teaches us to be grateful to what we have and enjoy life to the fullest. Every place we visited last month, we saw bustling crowd living in the moment and enjoying life, far away from the fear and worry.

Back to monthly update business which as usual begins with updating below two pages with the latest data:

2025 Goal tracker on homepage – Overall passive income for the year is taking a toll due to negative cashflow with our rental property!
Dividend Portfolio with latest holdings

Passive Income Pie

This month, our passive income comprised of 98% dividends and 2% from lending loop interest, there was negative rental income and hence not reported. Please read our past monthly updates and from it, you will know that our aspirational passive income split is as below:

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

Our 2025 financial goals is based on the foundation of diversified and sustainable passive incomes. We are currently working on two more semi passive income ideas and will write about them once they shape up better. Once we start seeing some cash flow from these businesses, I will also revise our 2025 goals and update the diversity pie.

Monthly Dividend Earnings

This is the first month when we crossed $1000 milestone in monthly dividends! With CIBC being a big portion of our portfolio, unless we make drastic change to it, with every CIBC dividend months (Jan-Apr-Jul-Oct) going forward, we will keep hitting new highs. Key points from this month’s dividend income are:

We received dividend deposits from total 20 entities (18 Canadian, 1 US & 1 ETF), with total value of $1000.52, a 31% increase from Jul’20
For ease and simplification, I assume 1 USD = 1 CAD
Top 3 dividend contributors were CIBC, Telus and GoEasy
We dripped 10.5 shares in total – 4.5 shares for CIBC & 1 each for Alaris, Algonquin, Diversified Royalty, Pizza Pizza, Plaza REIT and Telus
We received dividend raise from Algonquin – 10%, Telus – 1.6% & Whitecap resources – 7.75%
Average monthly dividends for 2021 so far is $616 Or about $20.34 a day. By 2025, we need to reach about $85 a day, long long way to go!

Dividend Goal Tracker – Planned vs Actual

In seven months of 2021, we achieved 51% of this year’s dividend goal against targeted 58%. The gap between planned and actual is increasing with each passing month and as I have mentioned before, this is due to our recent focus on growth stocks which often do not pays dividend. This is a deliberate move as we have a long horizon before we wish to retire and live off dividends. I will revisit the 2025 dividend goals some time later this year and shall revise to make it more realistic and achievable, if needed.

My Marketplace

Like most months, we did not sell anything this month as well. On the other hand, again as usual, we kept accumulating more of CIBC shares as part of regular RRSP contribution through my payroll deduction. If your employer offers Employee Share Purchase Plan and you are not enrolled, you need to start now.. can’t stress enough, don’t leave free money on the table.

We had some dividends accumulated under different accounts, which we used to increase our position in two different companies – Palantir technologies & Sylogist limited. We first bought Palantir back in May’21 and I wrote about it in the respective monthly update, this time we added 4 more shares (.. yeah I know it is miniscule but keep in mind – Little drops of water make the mighty ocean). Palantir is a potential growth stock with no dividend payments and hence no increase to our projected annual dividend income.

Our affair with Sylogist goes back to the days when we didn’t even had this blog! We first bought Sylogist in Dec’19 and so far we have gained 34% in share price and 44% if we factor-in the collected dividends. Sylogist Ltd is a Canadian software company, providing ERP solutions in Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom, and internationally offering variety of solutions to Public sector, Non-profit and non-governmental organizations, Education boards, as well as districts, defense, and safety contractors. Sylogist was incorporated in 1993 and is headquartered in Calgary, Canada. I still remember I bought this company on Motley Fool’s recommendation and they appeared in their “best buy” dividend stocks back then.

We did not put any new money in Crypto this month and I was a just a mute but elated spectator to the rising prices after brutal couple of months. Both of my crypto holdings increased significantly, while Bitcoin price gained 32% in last one month, Dogecoin appreciated 19% in the same timeframe. I love twitter as we connect with like-minded people and compare notes, do follow us and share your knowledge and experience, our twitter handle is SettlingNomads! One of my twitter buddy recommended Celsius network, they pays you interest while your crypto is sitting idle and you can even get a loan based on your underlying asset. They pays weekly interest (on Mondays) and so far I have received $1.50 already, not bad considering my initial investment (.. actually existing Bitcoin transferred from CoinSquare) was just $500. But in coming days I will transfer more of my cryptos here and earn interests and promo money. I also received $40 as a referral bonus as twitter friend referred me. If you are interested to test the water, please join using my Celsius network referral link when signing up and earn $50 in BTC with your first transfer of $400 or more.

Rental Earnings

Principal residence – The legal basement construction completed with minor touch-ups pending. Month wise work accomplishment were:

May

Electric meter movement from back of the house to side
Electrical panel upgrade from 100 to 200 AMP
Separate backyard entrance built (steps, door, railing)
Internal framing
Plumbing rough-ins
HVAC
Foundational electrical work
Wall insulation

June

Tiles installation
Hardwood flooring
Drywall installation
Mudding and taping
Painting

July

Door installation and painting
Trimming
Kitchen cabinets fixture
Plumbing work – Taps, Sinks, Shower, Vanity etc installation
Electrical work – Switches, Plugs, Potlights, Lights, Alarms etc
Finally appliances installation – Laundry, Stove, Refrigerator

Final inspection successfully completed along with occupancy certificate and as I mentioned last month, we had a potential tenant who took the place for rent from the beginning of this month. While the rent will not cover the mortgage but it will surely help with the mandatory expenses related to the property and we are happy to have this additional money.

Investment property 1 – This property is giving me sleepless nights and this is the first time I am having so much trouble with just one tenant. As I mentioned last month, the upstairs tenant reported a temporary job loss due to Covid and stopped paying the rent. We are now in second month of no rent payment and have initiated eviction process but as I understand from many landlords facing similar situation, we are facing many months (..if not years) of non-payment of rent! While I totally understand personal hardship due to job loss, I feel in this situation, the tenant is just milking the situation and trying to benefit out of strict tenant favouring rules in Ontario. We are eagerly waiting to hear back from the board with a hearing date and will take it from there.

Hard, unwarranted and frustrating but definitely not end of the world! This whole fiasco is taking my passive earning forecast for a turbulent ride and the only solace is basement rent is coming and covering approximately one-third of the expenses. Also, July was our last month of mortgage payment at one bank and we refinanced with another. At the time of writing, the formality and transaction between them completed and we see the balance money available for us to deploy elsewhere. 😇

As I mentioned in my Jun’21 updates, we sold our investment property 2 and do read for the details on sale breakdown and profit figures. We have the money available to invest in couple of potential business opportunities with friends as partners. There wasn’t much of an activity in July but do have some updates for August to write about! Stay tuned..

Lending Interest Earnings

Not bothering to even change any text here because as usual, we collected $18 in interest from lending loop on our initial investment of $2000. You can also explore this option for relatively smaller capital and if you invest, we both can earn $25 each using my lending loop referral ink, once you invest $1,500 on their platform.

We continued our new year’s resolution of sharing our good fortune in a measured approach, wherein we aim to giveaway 10% of our previous year’s passive income towards a good cause. I feel happy to share that we are already close to achieve our goal just in seven months! Please check our page sharing with society for more details and do share if you can with any of the charities or initiative we donated, it will mean a lot to me and keep in mind, even a small amount helps! I personally also decided to express more gratitude and appreciation towards the little things in life that I feel blessed with and enjoy, but is mostly taken for granted. While I normally document it at this link – gratitude & goodness, I haven’t gotten a chance to update it lately but I hope to resume it soon.

Stay indoor, Stay safe, Get vaccinated and don’t forget to Save-Invest-Repeat! 😊

June’21 – Super Exciting Month – Passive Income Update!

17-Jul-2111-Aug-21R3 Comments

Hi there!

Hope you’ll are doing great and enjoying the warmer weather outside. Finally it looks like we are at the end of this long and dark pandemic tunnel after excruciating last 15 months of lockdown and the nagging fear. Both myself and my better half are fully vaccinated now and have even completed the two weeks of post-vaccine immunity building period and I don’t know if we really achieved the advertised 95% Pfizer efficacy, but it surely feels relaxing. With provinces opening up and relaxing the lockdown norms, we have booked our first trip since Mar’20 and are very excited to go back to Quebec for 10 days and honestly more than the beautiful Quebec, I am just looking forward to out of home for this long! This would be our second trip to the province and looking forward to explore more of it other than going to Quebec city again, the whole vibe out there is so magical.

June is a busy month in my household with our anniversary and both kids’ birthdays to celebrate, within a span of 6 days.. needless to say, almost half of the month is spent making good memories, sharing gifts, foods-drinks and at least four cakes! This year it was our 15th marriage anniversary while our elder daughter turned 11 and the younger one is now 4 years old – and she’s already looking forward to her school! This month as a whole is a reminder that how blessed I am to have a family like this, so fortunate, really! While June was indeed an exciting month and it became even more special when we achieved another important financial milestone.. our combined portfolio reached $200,000 valuation!! I have read time and again that the first hundred thousand is the most difficult one, and thereafter you will witness the power and magic of compounding and my firsthand experience bolster this statement. We achieved our first $100,000 in Jan’20 and in exactly 1.5 years, we doubled our valuation. This magic was possible with the combination of continued regular contributions, growth and DRIPs and irrespective of the stock market mayhem we encountered back in Mar’20! So one learning here is, stay the course, if you choose good quality stocks to begin with, there is nothing to worry.

While I was pretty happy and content with all the goodness June had to offer, it was quite a pleasant surprise when we got mentioned by Hard bacon. Normally we don’t have much traffic on our website during mid-month as I only write monthly updates but it suddenly increased and I later got to know on my twitter account that we appeared in their list of 25 best financial independence and early retirement blogs in Canada for 2021! They had some nice things to say about us and this is the type of encouragement that keeps me going and gives a proud feeling! Please do visit the below link to know about several brilliant bloggers and what they are going to attain financial freedom. 😊

**Hard Bacon – The 25 best financial independence and early retirement blogs in Canada for 2021**

Also excited to share that I am working on an interview questionnaire for them and it may get published in a near future! Going back to our monthly update which as usual 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

This month, our passive income comprised of 44% rental, 54% dividends, and 2% from interest, our previous monthly updates can be found here. If you are our regular reader, you will probably know our aspirational passive income split is as below:

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

Our 2025 financial goals is based on the foundation of diversified and sustainable passive incomes. As I mentioned last month, we have decided to passively invest in two different businesses with our friends and I will provide some insight once it takes better shape formally. Once we start seeing some cash flow, I will update our diversity pie and 2025 goals as needed.

Monthly Dividend Earnings

Key points from this month’s dividend income are:

We received dividend deposits from total 22 entities (18 Canadian, 2 US & 2 ETFs), with total value of $531.22, a 12% increase from Jun’20. I am quite happy with these double digit growths considering average annual raise for regular 9-5 job in Canada is about 3%
For ease and simplification, I assume 1 USD = 1 CAD
Top 3 dividend contributors were Enbridge, Exxon Mobil and Fortis
We dripped 7 shares in total – 3 shares for Enbridge & 1 each for Diversified Royalty, Pizza Pizza, Plaza REIT and XAW
Fun fact – We received dividend increases from various companies we hold for straight 9 months but the beautiful streak is broken.. no dividend raise for us this month!
Monthly average for 2021 dividends so far is $552 Or about $18.40 a day!

Dividend Goal Tracker – Planned vs Actual

It is halfway past 2021 and so far we achieved 39% of this year’s dividend goal against targeted 50%. The planned vs. actual keeps increasing by each passing month and this is mostly due to our recent focus on growth and non-dividend paying stocks. This is a deliberate move as we have a relatively long horizon before we wish to retire and live off dividends. I haven’t done the projection yet but upcoming July & Oct are my golden months for dividends and I expect to break $1000 monthly mark for both these months and they will surely help us narrow the gap. I may still have to revisit the 2020 goal towards the end of third quarter but I hope not to fall too short with it.

I am a long term reader of tawcan and Bob recently published two parts interview with one of his reader who along with his wife lives off dividends since 2004 and while they started with a modest amount back in 1985, now their combined portfolio generates a whopping annual dividends of $360,000.. yes you read that right! Both part-1 and part-2 interviews have tremendous learnings and I must have read them several times and took notes. One key learning for me was to exhaust TFSA limits and only put enough in RRSP to grab my employer’s contribution. I am pretty much sold on this idea from future tax savings perspective and will be looking to rebalance our portfolios,aligned on this principle. Do read those interviews when you get a chance and learn from the pro!

My Marketplace

This month one of our sell limit order for Saratoga Investment Corp got triggered and our one and half year old position got sold with almost no profit, no loss factoring in the dividends we received over the time. I don’t even recall why I bought them back then but was a good riddance. We lost $88 worth of annual dividend and that was my only complain.

The proceed along with some other dividend money was utilized to buy 2 shares of Royal Bank, 25 shares of Apple and 40 shares of ZWC increasing our annual dividends by $77. I am sure both Royal bank and Apple requires no explanation at all; ZWC is a covered call ETF from BMO and comprises of all major Canadian stock. Their annual yield is 7.16% which is 0.11 cents per share, per month and they costs 0.72% as MER with 15.95% returns so far in 2021.

Needless to say I also kept accumulating more of CIBC shares as part of my regular RRSP contribution through my payroll clubbed with Employee Share Purchase Plan.

No new action in crypto space this month, just watching the painful downward movements for both Bitcoin & Dogecoin that I hold. As I mentioned in the past, I will officially track crypto investment if the valuation increases more than $10,000 until then it is just having fun (..or pain)!

Rental Earnings

Principal residence – The legal basement construction continued this month and as I mentioned in May updates, last month work accomplished were:

Electric meter movement from back of the house to side
Electrical panel upgrade from 100 to 200 AMP
Separate backyard entrance built (steps, door, railing)
Internal framing
Plumbing rough-ins
HVAC
Foundational electrical work
Wall insulation

In June, the work continued with:

Tiles installation
Hardwood flooring
Drywall installation
Mudding and taping
Painting

As you can see, there is so much work involved and more important is the sequence and staged inspection clearances as this is a legal second dwelling unit. The work is continued and is scheduled to be wrapped up in July. We have already found a potential tenant for this unit and more on this in next monthly update for July.

Investment property 1 – We collected the rents and overall the cash flow is positive but the upstairs tenant reported a temporary job loss due to Covid. It looks like we are going back into turbulence with this property and it just makes me upset and wonder if we should just sell it and deploy the money into stocks! We have locked in so much money into this property that it would easily generate about $2000 per month in dividend! The mortgage renewal application is in the final stage post property appraisal, which came in quite good. We decided to move to a new bank as the conditions were more favourable. More update on what action we took for the defaulting tenant and mortgage renewal next month.

Investment property 2 – Finally we closed the selling of this property and proceed is deposited in our bank account! So this is the last month I am providing an update on this property and will be removed going forward! If you followed our last few monthly updates, you may know how relieved we are after last minute buyer’s mortgage denial back in May (original closing month). This property was co-owned with our real estate agent at 50% partnership. Some facts and figures:

Property: 3BR townhouse with unfinished basement in Brampton, ON
Bought in Jan’20 for $495,000 plus $10,000 buying cost with 20% down payment ($50K each)
Rented out to a great tenant for $2100 per month from Feb’20-Feb’21
Renovated top to bottom including finished basement from Mar’21-May’21 costing about $50,000
Sold in Jun’21 (originally May’21) for $720,000, highest sale price in the complex
Usual expenses included Closing cost, Realtor fee, Bank fine (..ouch!) etc
We both more than doubled our initial investment in 18 months, 230% to be precise

I don’t know about you but to me this certainly is a rosy story if I leave minor hiccups out but nevertheless a great investment story with solid (..and guaranteed) returns and we may do it again with our agent if such opportunity presents. But as I mentioned last month we were just waiting for this sale money to come so we can invest in a business opportunity with my friends. While I will add a section next month onwards, all I can say for now with super excitement is.. we are now officially a partner in an Indian restaurant scheduled to open in Burlington, ON soon! 🤟

Lending Interest Earnings

As usual, we collected $18 in interest from lending loop on our initial investment of $2000. Yyou can also explore this option for relatively smaller capital and if you invest, we both can earn $25 each using my referral link, once you invest $1,500 on their platform. All our private lending principal is now back with us and the money is used to pay-off some of our line of credit balance. 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 feel happy to share that we are already close to achieve our goal just in six months! Please check our page sharing with society for more details and do share if you can with any of the charities or initiative we donated, it will mean a lot to me and keep in mind, even a small amount helps! I personally also decided to express more gratitude and appreciation towards the little things in life that I feel blessed with and enjoy, but is mostly taken for granted. While I normally document it at this link – gratitude & goodness, I haven’t gotten a chance to update it lately but I hope to resume it soon.

This is a wrap (..oh boy a long one this time!) 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, Get vaccinated and don’t forget to Save-Invest-Repeat. Please do share with people in need and count your blessings.. Good luck! 😊

May’21 – Monthly Passive Income update!

23-Jun-2123-Jun-21R1 Comment

Hi there!

I will be honest, this month’s update took me longer to write and it wasn’t because of complexity or length, it was simply because I didn’t felt like writing! I tried quite a few times and couldn’t finish due to lack of focus and interest and this was the first time since I started blogging an year ago! By no mean this shows lack of my commitment to our financial goals or towards this site, I believe it is just a “phase” and it happens! Normally I write our monthly updates in one sitting but this one took like four and I don’t intend to keep it this way. Not to blame myself totally and giving some slack, a lot is going on currently. Be it mortgage refinancing/renewal, selling a property, focusing on two new businesses setup (though my involvement in comparatively less), arranging funds, basement renovation, 9-5 work etc. This phase should pass and I would like to go back with my routine of publishing it before 10th of each month.

We got our first Covid vaccine shots and are a bit more relieved, if not pandemically, at least psychologically. The cases are declining and things finally seems returning back to normal or shall in next few months. The biggest relief to me is seeing stores open and people lining up for businesses and this is a heartning and normalancy sign.

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

Starting April, we started seeing positive cash flow from our rental income and it continued this month as well. This month, our passive income comprised of 55% rental, 41% dividends, and 4% 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

Our 2025 financial goals is based on the foundation of diversified and sustainable passive incomes. Keeping that in mind, we have decided to passively invest in two different businesses with our friends and I will provide some insight once it takes better shape formally. Once we start seeing some cash flow, I will update our diversity pie and 2025 goals if needed.

Monthly Dividend Earnings

Key points from this month’s dividend income are:

We received dividend deposits from total 14 companies (10 Canadian & 4 US), with total value of $181.30, a 20% increase from May’20
For ease and simplification, I assume 1 USD = 1 CAD
Top 3 dividend contributors were Pembina Pipelines, Abbvie and AT&T
We dripped 3 shares in total – 1 each for Diversified Royalty, Pizza Pizza & Plaza REIT
Received one dividend increase of 7% from Apple
Monthly average for 2021 dividends so far is $556.20 Or about $18.50 a day!

Dividend Goal Tracker – Planned vs Actual

Within first 5 months of 2021, we achieved 33% of this year’s goal against targeted 47%. The difference between planned and actual keeps on increasing and this is mostly due to our recent focus on growth and non-dividend paying stocks. This was a deliberate move since we have a relatively long horizon before we wish to retire and live off dividends. Based on this rebalancing, I may have to revisit the goal towards the end of third quarter but I hope not to fall too short in our goals.

My Marketplace

It was unusually busy month with 2 sells and proceed going towards 2 buys and still holding some cash (BTW at the time of writing, the cash got already used up in May.. 😉).

We sold AT&T after the news of them buying Discovery, while I loved their juicy 7% dividend yield, the price has been relatively flat in past 5 years and I lost the patience on this news. Their debt is high and probably to fund this deal, they shall cut their dividend and hence price could further slump. After two and a half years of holding, I sold them with meagre 1% profit or 19% if I factor in the dividends.

Second sale was Chorus aviation and now when I look at it, it was a bad decision to buy in the first place! I hold them under both my RRSP & TFSA accounts and had sold them in November’20 from my RRSP and then was just waiting for a better price before getting rid of them totally. They cut their dividend back in Apr’20 and ever since struggled to appreciate in pricing due to pandemic and lesser flight demands. In both accounts I sold at a loss of more than 30% each but I didn’t had a big position so the loss wasn’t too big.

Our first buy was adding 10 shares of Algonquin Power to our existing position, taking our total count to 127 shares and increasing the forward yield by $6.20 annually. If you are a Canadian dividend investor than AQN should be a familiar name, they are a Canadian renewable energy and regulated utility conglomerate with assets across North America. They actively invests in hydroelectric, wind and solar power facilities, and utility businesses, through its operating subsidiaries.

Our next buy was 76 shares of Palantir Technologies, they do not pays dividend and the buy was more from growth perspective and a long term hold. I was eyeing them since a long time and finally got the opportunity! Palantir is an American software company that specializes in big data analytics, founded in 2003 and headquartered in Denver, Colorado. The company is known for three projects in particular: Palantir Gotham, Palantir Metropolis, and Palantir Foundry. Palantir Gotham is used by counter-terrorism analysts at offices in the United States Intelligence Community and United States Department of Defense. Palantir Metropolis is used by hedge funds, banks, and financial services firms with clients such as Morgan Stanley, Merck, Airbus and Fiat Chrysler Automobiles. We are already up 20% but our holding is for a long term and we will add to our position at given opportunity.

As always, we also kept accumulating more of CIBC shares as part of my regular RRSP contribution through my payroll clubbed with Employee Share Purchase Plan.

No new action in crypto space this month, just watching and ups or downs on every small news. I wish I had unlimited funds to buy the dips, unfortunately I don’t! As I mentioned in the past, I will officially track crypto investment only if the valuation increases more than $10,000 until then it is just having fun!

Rental Earnings

Principal residence – As I mentioned in April updates, we were just waiting for legal basement work to start and gladly we chose a very professional contractor! The work started as promised, they day after meter movement work and by end of May we got lot of work accomplished. So far, we got a side entrance built (steps, door, railing) along with internal framing, plumbing, electricals, insulation. Being a legal second dwelling, all of these work is also inspected and approved by city officials. Next step is roof insulation followed by dry wall, mudding, finishing etc. The contractor is one of a kind and it amazes me how he manages multiple projects in parallel. If anyone needs a contractor in GTA area, feel free to ping me for his contact. As stated last month, this basement unit should go for $1,200 a month rent, which is about 20% annual return and at the same time should increase the property valuation by $125,000.

Investment property 1 – Nothing special to report, we kept collecting the rent and overall the cash flow is positive. The mortgage on this property is up for renewal next month and we are in the process of renewing it along with option to refinance. If anything, with low interest rate, we expect to extract more money from the property to pay off some debts and still lower the monthly mortgage payments and hence better cash flow. By the time next month, we should have clarity on whether we will go with existing bank or move on to a new one.

Investment property 2 – If you followed our last update, we sold this property and closing was end of May but the excitement do not cease on this one! The buyer couldn’t secure mortgage and we signed a mutual amendment to extend the closing to end of June now. Honestly, if I did not extended and put the property in the market, I wouldn’t have got the price I locked back in April. I am really hoping now to get over this and move on. I already have plans for the proceeds and this delay is keeping my anxiety level high, unfortunately this is part of the process and at times, it happens sometimes. To remind you all, I co-own this property with my own real estate agent and at a high level we are looking at doubling our initial investment in short span of one and half years. I will delve into details once we formally close the property.

Will repeat from last time, 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

This space will keep getting boring now onwards with nothing to report whatsoever except minuscule Lending loop income. This month it was $18 on our initial investment of $2000, interests re-invested bringing our lifetime earnings to $479.25! You can also invest and we both can earn $25 each using my referral link, once you invest $1,500 on their platform. 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 feel happy to share the news that on this front, we are quite ahead of our plan just within six months, please check our page sharing with society for more details. 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, Get vaccinated and don’t forget to Save-Invest-Repeat. Please do share with people in need and count your blessings.. Good luck! 😊