Welcome to my March 2018 investment income report. This report helps me track all of my investment income from dividend stocks, index funds and exchange-traded funds (ETFs). My goal is to one day be able to live off this income or at least have a significant portion of my living expenses covered by it.
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 roughly $14k in passive dividend income.
Think about it. That’s $14k 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 favourite 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.
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I was pleased to see that our net worth held fast in March, coming in at 1.092 Million! Not only did we finally make it to the coveted million-dollar mark, but we managed to stay above it and keep growing our net worth. The markets have been all over the place in March. I still thinking the Bull market is done, but I continue to invest for the long haul. Of course, no one can tell the future, the best odds that we have is a 50/50 chance day to day. But the patient investor does vey well in the long run. All the volatility brought the value of our financial assets down to 583k!
Net Worth vs Investment Income
There’s no question that hitting the million dollar mark is an important milestone on the road to financial freedom. But like I said before, net worth is great, but unless it’s backed up with some serious cash flow, it doesn’t really mean all that much. After all, 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 Top 10 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.
Home Renovations
For the past few months, I’ve been focusing on updating my home and have not really devoted much time at all to my investments!!! But that’s what passive investing is all about. These days, my life’s way too busy to be constantly watching the markets or trying to gauge the impact of the latest Trump tweet. Yet my passive investment income keeps rolling in and is slowly being reinvested. Anyway, these renos will be done in mid-April so hopefully I’ll be able to give you all an update with some before and after pics.
Monthly Investing Activity
I’m back to owning my beloved bank stocks. I picked up BNS, TD and RY this month. I also continued to make extra cash purchases in my DRiP account to buy more shares of great dividend-paying companies. I like to save and invest automatically because it’s a proven strategy for building long term wealth. In addition to the stock purchases, I’m also investing in low-cost index funds in our retirement accounts. These purchases amounted to about $1k in total. I really wanna try to invest a bit more now that a lot of solid dividend stocks are getting cheap.
Dividend investing is still a great strategy and I think a lot of people are abandoning it right now because it is falling out of favour. I think for us it’s a great buying opportunity. Dividend stocks have been everyone’s darlings for 10 years now and that’s just pushed up prices. Now we can buy more income for our dollars and despite the scary noise in the market, we should be happy to buy these stocks at these levels.
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), Canadian Utilities (CU), Enbridge (ENB), Manulife (MFC), Suncor (SU), and Sun Life Financial (SLF).
I’ve also sent a lot more money to my DRIP accounts to buy my favourite Canadian dividend stocks: Enbridge (ENB), Fortis (FTS), Telus (T), Sun Life Financial (SLF), Bank of Nova Scotia (BNS), Bank of Montreal (BMO) and Bell Canada (BCE).
Dividend Raises
After a rockin February, no dividend increases this month.
March 2018 Investment Income Report
Monthly Passive Dividend Income
March was a decent month for dividend income coming in at a solid $762.85! This month’s dividend income has grown by 23.6% compared to that of March 2017 ($616.96).
Here is the breakdown of the numbers for my March 2018 Investment Income:
Dividend Stocks
Bank of America (BAC) – $3.82
Canadian National Railway (CNR) – $45.50
Canadian Utilities (CU) – $80.23
Enbridge (ENB) – $211.97
Fortis (FTS) – $109.40
Manulife Financial (MFC) – $40.19
RioCan Real Estate Investment Trust (REI) – $4.60
Suncor Energy (SU) – $41.01
Sun Life Financial (SLF) – $30.73
Mutual Funds and ETFs:
iShares S&P/TSX Canadian Preferred Share Index ETF (CPD) – $53.70
iShares S&P/TSX Capped REIT Index ETF (XRE) – $41.96
TD International Index Fund – e (TDB911) – $99.74
Total Dividend Income – $762.85
It’s still great to see that we made over $750! After years of saving and investing, I’m slowly starting to see the fruits of my effort and I’m happy to finally have my money working for me.
My family’s annual passive income goal for 2018 is $14,000 and we have so far received $2,246.32. So we are 16% of the way there.
Thanks for reading my March 2018 Investment Income Report and stay wealthy my friends!