March 2023 Passive Income $2,846

Hey Everyone, welcome to the March 2023 Passive Income report.  This is where I track our investment income from dividend stocks, index funds and exchange-traded funds (ETFs). We earned over $2,846 in passive income from investments and online sources in March!

Our long term goal is to one day be able to live off this passive income or at least have a significant portion of our family’s living expenses covered by it.

Financial markets are still super volatile as we saw with all the bank failures in March. Silicon Valley Bank, Silvergate, Signature and the biggie Credit Suisse. The world continues to grapples with high inflation but it does seem to be moderating a bit. Higher interest rates are taking a real bite out of the economy and this is just starting to show up in corporate earnings etc.

As a prudent investor, I will say the one positive thing about higher interest rates is that we are now able to earn a decent, risk free, return of around 4% simply by holding cash in high interest savings accounts, money market funds or short term T-Bills. Check it out. Tangerine is offering GIC rates I haven’t seen in 20 years! This provides a welcome alternative to TINA (there is no alternative) about having to put all your money in the stock market to earn a decent return.

Asset bubbles seem to be slowly deflating. Sure we see rallies and selloffs which is normal in Bear Markets.

As painful as the past year has been to investors things don’t seem to be getting much better. We have a major geopolitical crisis between the West and the BRICS nations who recently announced further action on de-dollarization and inter BRIC trade using each others currencies. This of course reduces demand for US dollars and as this movement gains steam problems are likely to arise in a few more years or sooner if Japan and Europe abandon the US dollar.

I think we are headed for a major global debt and currency crisis. Of course it’s impossible to get the exact timing right but I’m keeping all of this in the back of mind as I make financial and investment decisions.

Here in Canada, the Trudeau Government released the worst budget in at least 30 years. It guarantees that Canadians will be worse off in 5 years. Higher taxes for the vast majority of Canadians and more debt and deficit spending as far as the eye can see.

So for the average investor, the little guy, we need to keep in mind that what little in the way of financial assets we are able to build up, the government will be looking at ways to tax it or to reduce its dollar value through inflation. That’s why I think people should have a bias toward real, hard assets like real estate and commodities.

I really think global central banks are caught between rising inflation that is hitting the economy and the huge deflationary impact that will result when the Everything Bubble bursts.

The inflation versus deflation debate has been dominating economists and macro strategists for the past year so I’m trying to position my family’s finances to withstand either one.

I don’t think the road ahead will be smooth at all and we may face periods of intense deflation along with rising inflation in some areas. In short, it’ll be messy which makes diversification, I mean real diversification important for a generation of investors that know only rising asset prices.

As I said in an earlier post, we’ve focused on paying off debt and building cash. This decision has impacted these passive income reports, but has also strengthened our financial position. For inflation protection we’ve also invested in commodities and precious metals: physical through Silver Gold Bull – Your Trusted Bullion Dealer as well as some ETFs and mining stocks.

Why Do We Publish Our Passive Income?

First off, I’d like to say that I’m not trying to brag about our passive income in any way by publishing these reports. Trust me, there are some financial bloggers out there that do a lot better than I do and are absolutely killing it. I’m not some financial guru either. I’m just a regular guy with a day job that’s trying to get ahead and escape the daily grind like everyone else.

My main reason for producing these reports is to motivate myself and hopefully others to do better financially. Over the years, I’ve found that when I track my dividend income, it tends to grow.  

Maybe its because I’m focused on growing those dividends that I’m constantly scheming up ways to make more money (or save more money), so that it can be put to good use by investing it in great dividend paying companies.  This approach has served me well and this year my family is on track to earning $25k in passive dividend income.

Think about it.  That’s $25k that we don’t have to get up in the morning to work for.  We just go on living our lives and all the while, each and every month, we receive cold hard cash in the form of dividends from our investments.  

Right now we re-invest these dividends to buy more shares in our favorite companies so that the dividend income continues to grow over time.  But one day, we will be using that dividend income to finance an early retirement.

Building Solid Net Worth

We continue to make progress and are well above $1 Million! I didn’t have an official net worth goal for this year, and I’m happy to see that we are above the 1.776 million mark.

Financial Assets

The recent stock market weakness has slightly reduced the value of our financial assets. As we keep investing, our financial assets are just over $820k!

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Building Up Real Assets

We’ve also added to our Gold and Silver holdings to hedge some of the risks to financial markets.

I purchase gold and silver from: Silver Gold Bull – Your Trusted Bullion Dealer because if you can find a better deal, they’ll match it.

Killing Debt + Building Assets = Wealth

While it’s always nice to see our investments grow, I’m also happy that we are now finally completely DEBT FREE!!! We paid off the HELOC in June of 2021 and the mortgage in July 2022.

The more I think about being completely debt free, the more I realize how much of a huge obstacle debt is on the road to building wealth.

I firmly believe that paying down debt is key to achieving financial freedom. Killing our family’s debt helped us build our net worth in a safe, sustainable way while strengthening our overall financial position.

Net Worth vs Investment Income

Having a million dollar plus net worth is an important milestone on the road to financial freedom.  But unless it’s backed up with some serious cash flow, it doesn’t really mean all that much.  

After all, as you can see from these reports, my net worth rises and falls primarily due to fluctuations in the stock and real estate markets.  For me, what’s really important is that my investments keep paying me cold hard cash each and every month.  

That’s where my sense of financial security comes from, not whether I can sell something for more than I paid for it last week, or a month ago.

Streams of Passive Income are Key to Financial Independence

The one major thing I learned during the last recession was that, while my net worth may fall, the bulk of my dividend income remains the same.  That’s why I think building streams of alternative forms of income, whether it’s from a rental property, dividend stocks or even an online source like starting a blog, is key to achieving financial freedom.  

Once you start hitting $1k/month, you basically have about half of your monthly expenses paid for by passive investment income.  What’s even better is that I’ve found that after a few years, the income really starts to take off.

Benefits of Passive Income

I once read somewhere that millionaires have about 7 different sources of income, which is a big reason why they’re rich.  If they lose 1 source it’s not the end of the world for them because the other 6 still provide financial security.  On the other hand, the rest of us are almost completely dependent on 1 source: our Jobs!

This is something that I’m working hard to change for my family and is why I invest as much as I can.  In these income reports  I try to be as transparent as possible to show you where my investment income comes from.  

These reports simply show my investing approach and what has worked (and sometimes not worked) for me.  I’m by no means a financial expert but I am very pleased with my results to date.

I hope these reports inspire all of you to start saving and investing your money for a healthier financial future.  Now you may think that you need a lot of money to start investing, but the reality is that you can get started with as little as $25 a month!  So what are you waiting for?

How You Can Build Passive Sources of Income

Some of you may be wondering how YOU can start investing and building up streams of passive income.  First, just let me say that investing is NOT rocket science, but I DO recommend reading as much as you possibly can.  Check out my MUST READ page for some useful articles.  You can also see my Favorite Personal Finance Books List.

If you’re hell bent and determined to start investing your money in dividend stocks and exchange-traded funds (ETFs) right now, check out my step by step guide on How to Open a Questrade Account.  

If you’re a bit hesitant to start buying stocks or ETFs through an online discount broker like Questrade, then you may want to try an online bank like Tangerine.  They offer a range of accounts (RRSP, TFSA) and a whole menu of Tangerine Investment Funds at reasonable prices.

Now on to my monthly cash flow from investments.

Monthly Investing Activity

Saving and investing automatically is a proven strategy for building long term wealth so I keep making extra cash purchases in my DRiP account to buy more shares of great dividend-paying companies. In addition to the stock purchases, I’m also investing in low-cost index funds in our retirement accounts.  These purchases amounted to about $1.6k in total.

As I said before, one of the great things about being a dividend investor is that all of my dividend income is automatically re-invested.  Every month this income buys more shares in my favorite companies that will, in turn, produce even more monthly income for me.  This is how compounding works and is why it’s such a powerful force…what Einstein called the “Eighth Wonder of the World”!

This month, reinvested dividend income bought more shares in Fortis (FTS), Manulife (MFC), Suncor (SU), Enbridge (ENB), and lots more shares of our index funds.

Dividend Raises

None.

March 2023 Passive Income Report

Monthly Passive Dividend Income

March was a decent month for dividend income coming in at $2,148.99

Here is the breakdown of the numbers for my March 2023 Passive Income:

Dividend Stocks

Agnico Eagle Mine (AEM) – $220.70

Bank of America (BAC) – $7.41

Fortis (FTS) – $7.49

Freehold Royalties (FRU) – $18.00

Enbridge (ENB) – $0.97

Manulife Financial (MFC) – $6.84

Pan American Silver (PAAS) – $40.61

RioCan Real Estate Investment Trust (REI) – $3.52

Suncor Energy (SU) – $273.97

Sun Life Financial (SLF) – $64.38

Tourmaline (TOU) – $25.00

Unilever (UL) – $61.55

Mutual Funds and ETFs

BMO Covered Call Utilities (ZWU) – $16.00

Purpose Bitcoin ETF (BTCY) – $4.83

Hamilton Enhanced Multi-Sector Covered Call ETF (HDIV) – $0.54

TD CDN Money Market – $1,109.18

TD CDN Bond Fund – $60.41

TD International Index Fund – e (TDB911) – $186.93

Shares 20+ Year Treasury ETF (TLT) – $36.21

TD US Money Market – $4.45

Total Dividend Income: $2,148.99

It’s great to see that our investments are producing over $2,100 last month!  That’s not too shabby at all for a completely passive source of income. After years of saving and investing, I’m starting to see the fruits of my effort and I’m happy to finally have my money working for me.

Blog Income: $697.50

I’ve included my blog income as I’ve had a number of readers ask about its profitability.  Blog income is never a sure thing.  In fact, it’s all over the place.  This month’s income was decent and is a combination of Mediavine Display Ads and affiliate sales.

Starting a website and earning online income has never been easier and I highly recommend starting your own website. It cost about $200 a year and the sky is the limit as to how much you can possibly earn.

If you’re looking for a side hustle consider earning online income. I’m not gonna lie and say that it’s easy to make tons of cash, but if you spend a little bit of time and write some quality content you should do just fine. Check out my step by step guide below for more info:

How to Start a Blog

While I’m not living off of my blog income, it does help my cash flow for buying dividend stocks. For those of you interested in building solid long term wealth, it’s crucial to find ways to make more money so you can use it to make investments.  

I’ve been investing thousands each month in high quality dividend stocks. Without my blog income I wouldn’t be able to invest as much.  I think you guys get the idea here.  Generate more income to invest and you’ll really kick-start the power of compounded returns.  If you want to achieve financial freedom, you gotta do some side hustling to get there.

My family’s annual passive income goal is $25,000 and we have so far received $7,178.62 in passive income. So far, we’re at 28.71% of our annual goal.

Thanks for reading my March 2023 Passive Income Report and remember that if you Invest Early and Stay With It for the long haul, then you’ll see these kinds of results too!

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