February 2023 Passive Income $1,986

Hey Everyone, welcome to the February 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 $1,986 in passive income from investments and online sources in February!

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 the world grapples with crippling inflation and aggressive rate hikes by the US Fed and Bank of Canada. I will say the one positive thing about higher interest rates is that investors 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. 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 are slowly deflating and in some cases outright collapsing. Meanwhile, a global currency crisis is raging due to the massive sovereign debt bubbles.

The British Pound, the Japanese Yen are collapsing as inflation rages and their respective central banks intervened in their bond market.

My guess is that the ECB will be next as Europe’s energy crisis continues. And finally the almighty US dollar will be the last to go.

Here in Canada, the Loonie has dropped about 10% against the USD but has recovered slightly as the tug of war between the value of real things (ie. energy and food) and government paper play out in front of us.

Inflation is still raging and company earnings are getting destroyed.

So we have half the world’s central banks pursuing highly inflationary policies and half attempting to rein in inflation by ending QE bond buying programs and aggressively raising interest rates.

This is a huge mess and things are starting to come off the rails with pension funds going bust in the face of rapidly declining asset prices.

The sad thing for stock and bond investors as well as home owners is that these markets were all propped up on record low interest rates. How low have interest rates been since the Global Financial Crisis of 2007-2009? Well, you may be surprised to learn that they’re the lowest in over 2000 years! Yes the last decade of inflating the Everything Bubble is not normal.

It’s not normal for housing to increase 20% plus for several years in a row. This is what a bubble looks like and I think a lot of people are going to get hurt. The narratives we’ve been told by the media, politicians and central bankers is designed to keep we the people spending and chasing a host of bubble assets, only to have them pull the rug from under our feet.

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 1.759 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 $814k!

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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 Emera (EMA) and Bank of Montreal (BMO).

I’ve also sent money to my DRIP accounts to buy my favorite Canadian dividend stocks: Telus (T), Emera (EMA), Fortis (FTS), Bank of Nova Scotia (BNS), Bank of Montreal (BMO) and Bell Canada (BCE).

Dividend Raises

None.

February 2023 Passive Income Report

Monthly Passive Dividend Income

February was a decent month for dividend income coming in at $1,204.09

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

Dividend Stocks

Emera (EMA) – $95.71

Bank of Montreal (BMO) – $15.19

RioCan Real Estate Investment Trust (REI) – $3.33

Freehold Royalties (FRU) – $18.00

Mutual Funds and ETFs

BMO Covered Call Utilities (ZWU) – $12.00

Purpose Bitcoin ETF (BTCY) – $4.83

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

TD CDN Money Market – $952.43

TD CDN Bond Fund – $60.63

Shares 20+ Year Treasury ETF (TLT) – $37.50

TD US Money Market – $3.93

Total Dividend Income: $1,204.09

It’s great to see that our investments are producing over $1,200 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: $781.90

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 $4,332.13 in passive income. So far, we’re at 17.33% of our annual goal.

Thanks for reading my February 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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