Throughout these updates we will go over the previous month’s dividend income, as well as our rolling 12 month projected dividend income and our progress towards our goal of having $50,000 in annual passive income. For reference, I received my first ever dividend payment in December 2017, and I immediately realized that they needed to be a prominent part of our any investment strategy.
If you’re interested in seeing December’s post click here.
What a blur 2023 has felt like thus far! The odd part about it is that we’ve had hardly any major events take place so far in 2023 yet the first month and a half has absolutely flown past.
One thing that’s been bothering us a little bit is the amount of time its taking us to get our TFSA’s and RESP’s maxed out for the year, in a normal year we’d like to have that done by the end of January but here we are mid-February with almost ZERO contributions made. Why? Well, simply put we’ve been spending the money!
So far in 2023 instead of investing we’ve been pre-planning our vacations for the year having already paid for flights and accommodations for a trip home to see the family and another destination wedding for some close friends, so the investment account has had to sit on the back burner.
Does that bother us? No, not really.. it’s more of an itch in my brain that I know I still have all this unused TFSA space and RESP space but it’s also a nice feeling knowing we’ve got pretty well all our vacations for the year paid for and out of the way so we can focus for the remained of 2023 on building.
Now, let’s get on to why we’re here and that’s the numbers:
Dividends Received: $2,215.30
$2,215.30 is far and away a January record for us – although not a true monthly record. It’s quite amazing that we could have such a strong month without the likes of Enbridge and Fortis paying us out as those used to be our heavy lifters. Also, if you’ve been following along our journey you’ll know that during the last half of 2022 we slowly made some pretty significant changes to our investment portfolios that cut out some of our highest paying stocks in favour of some smaller yielding but better overall performing stocks so our future income took a hit.
Now, onto our year to date numbers:
Dividends Received YTD: $2,215.30
Now obviously a year to date number is pretty uneventful for the first month or two of the year but what this table does highlight is our growth year-over-year. We were able to grow upon our 2022 January income by 63% which- much like the months before it still amazes us this far along our journey.
Every year I remind myself that the dividend snowball slows down over time but we’re still able to see some really terrific growth year-over-year and hope it continues this way.
A lot of that growth is obviously due to the fact that we invested a fair bit of capital in 2022 but it’s also a byproduct of dividend growth as well and does go to show that dividend growth investing can play a huge factor in your retirement plan if you set yourself up correctly.
Now for the 12 month rolling projection:
Dividend Projections: $19,433.95
Our dividend projection is simply the total projected income our portfolio spreadsheets tell us we’ll receive over the course of a year. This number increases when we make contributions, reinvest dividends or receive dividend raises. Right now, this number is up roughly $400 from what it was last month and that’s in part due to small dividend raises but mostly a small contribution and reinvestment of dividends received in our accounts.
Hopefully in a few months time we’ll be able to build back up across the $20k threshold where we were before our portfolio re-allocation/re-balance.
It’s still surreal to think that if we achieve a very realistic ~10% dividend growth across our portfolio we could be in line for a $2,000 raise without having to lift a finger.
That is where we’ll leave off for this month, if you have any questions or comments feel free to reach out on our social media pages:
TWITTER: @FindependenceC1
INSTAGRAM: @FindependenceCanada
Thanks for stopping by,
FIC.
Great job and I have a feeling you will surpass your goal beyond $20K in 2023.