Black Friday Financial Update

Hi everyone and welcome to my Black Friday financial update.

It’s been a while since I’ve been able to shoot out a post so I thought I’d update you all on what I’ve been up to.

Dividend Investing

First, I maxed out my retirement account (RRSP) for the year.  I also made a big move on the investing front.  Pipeline operator Enbridge (ENB) shares took a huge dive this month so I scooped up some more.  I bought another 101 shares so that will give me another $61.61 a quarter!

The yield popped to over 5.25%, which is the highest I’ve ever seen it.  There are good reasons for this too: too much debt, trouble digesting the Spectra merger etc.  But these seem to me like short term issues.  Let’s not forget that the company is the North America’s largest energy infrastructure company with assets in place (or should I say in the ground!).

That to me is a major bonus because as we’ve seen over the past few years, not a lot of pipelines are getting built.  I think Enbridge will be a major energy player for decades to come, which works for me because I intend to hold their shares that long.

I think the market is a little expensive right now so I trimmed some of my bank stocks to raise a little cash in anticipation of the inevitable pullback.  I was really over exposed to this one sector so it made sense that I take some profits.

Paying Down Mortgage

Secondly, I made an extra mortgage payment with some extra money I had from working some overtime.  This helps me reduce our biggest debt: the mortgage.  Hopefully we’ll have it paid off in less than 10 years.  If you want to do the same, check out my How to pay off your mortgage faster.

Saving, investing and paying down debt are the essential ingredients for building long term wealth.  With these 2 moves we are slowly working towards our goal of financial independence.

Gearing Up for the Holidays

Saving, Investing and Paying down debt are great but what I’m most excited about this month is our Christmas shopping for our kids.  Holidays are always super fun, but with young kids its even better.  I love seeing how excited they get when they open their gifts.

I already wrote a post on one toy we picked up for them, Fingerlings.  We also found a great deal on last year’s “it” toy, the Hachimals.  My son in particular just loves everything about Paw Patrol so we picked up a few action figures.  We managed to get all our Christmas shopping done and came in under budget!

Thanks for reading this special Black Friday Financial Update.