July 2014 Dividend Income / Monthly Highlights

Here is my July 2014 dividend income.  July has been another strong month and we are well on our way toward meeting our annual goals of increasing our net worth to $700,000, being mortgage-free in early 2015, and hitting the $4,000 in dividends mark.

I managed to earn additional income this month by selling some items on Kijiji and working a few extra overtime shifts.  Again, rather than spending the extra money on “stuff”, I decided to do the smart thing by paying down our mortgage debt first.  The lump sum payments, in addition to our regular, weekly-accelerated, mortgage payments knocked the principal down by almost $4,500.  At this rate, being mortgage-free in 2015 should be no problem.

The stock markets were still on a tear for much of July, with the TSX hitting another all-time high on July 30th when it closed at 15,524.  After solid gains for much of 2014, we are finally starting to see some volatility return to stock market indices.  For me, this is the buying opportunity that I’ve been waiting for as I have a lot of cash that is building in my investment accounts.  I’m not about to deploy it all at once while the markets are at all-time highs.  Yes I’ll be giving up some of the compound growth, but I also believe that the price you pay for an asset should be reasonable!  I continue to make my automatic share purchases and reinvest my dividend income, but I won’t be making any big moves unless something compelling comes along.  I should say that I have been eyeing Procter & Gamble (PG) lately.

Not surprisingly, with the recent run-up in the markets, my investment portfolio also had strong results this month – with much of the gains coming from organic growth.  This is why it doesn’t pay to time the market.  Had I not stayed invested I would have missed out on the spectacular returns the markets have posted over the past few months.

I continued with my plan to make regular monthly and quarterly share purchases in my dividend reinvestment accounts (DRIPs).  I bought more shares in TransCanada, Bank of Nova Scotia and Bank of Montreal.  In these accounts there is no point in trying to time the market – I contribute small amounts on a regular basis, regardless of what is happening in the market and I let compounding and dollar-cost averaging do their work.

One of my companies, Suncor Energy (SU), raised their dividend payout this month by a whopping 22%.  Since I own about 230 shares that alone will give me another $46 in annual dividend income.  I also received my first quarterly dividend payment from KP Tissue (KPT), a new position that I initiated in late May.  I enrolled in the synthetic DRIP through my discount broker so I increased my holdings by 5 shares.  In other news, Bell Canada (BCE) is buying up the rest of Bell Aliant (BA).  So I will be losing one of my high-yielders.  I think I’ll just roll my BA shares into BCE shares.  Beyond this, I did not initiate any new positions – I just made the same, regular investments into the same collection of stocks, ETFs and index funds.

I’ve also managed to do some much needed housekeeping with my investments this month.  I finally moved my shares in Citigroup (C) and Bank of America (BAC) from my Tax-Free Savings Account (TFSA) to my RRSP.  This move will save me the US withholding tax on my dividends from these companies.  Right now the dividend payout from both companies is next to nothing, but I believe that in another few years the dividend payout from them will return to a more normal level.

July has been a decent month with regard to dividend income.  Here are the numbers:

Bell Aliant (BA) – $11.79

Bell Canada Enterprises (BCE) – $19.17

KP Tissue Inc. (KPT) – $90.00

RioCan REIT (REI) – $3.82

TransCanada Corporation (TRP) – $7.39

Bank of Nova Scotia (BNS) – $55.55

Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce (CM) – $20.36

Toronto Dominion Bank (TD) – $2.82

TransAlta (TA) – $2.89

iShares S&P/TSX Canadian Preferred Share Index ETF (CPD) – $44.19

iShares S&P/TSX Capped REIT Index ETF (XRE) – $29.32

Vanguard Canadian Short-Term Corporate Bond Index ETF (VSC) – $14.54

Vanguard Canadian Short-Term Bond Index ETF (VSB) – $11.15

TOTAL = $312.99