December 2010 Dividend Income Update
Last month, shareholders (like me) of Enbridge were given another reason to be happy for the holidays: the Calgary-based pipeline giant said it would increase its dividend by 15% to $0.49 per share, payable on March 1, 2011. If anyone is keeping count, that was the second dividend increase for ENB in the last 12 months. While I was hoping our Canadian banks would do the same, increase their dividends in 2010, it didn’t happen.
Maybe the banks were more naughty than nice?
Overall, 2010 was a great year that marked progress on my passive income journey. I was fortunate enough to buy a few new companies such as Bell Canada, TransCanada, Bank of Nova Scotia and Emera as I continued to hold my favourites like Bank of Montreal, CIBC, Enbridge and Sun Life.When the math was done, I discovered we finished the year with about $4,300 in dividend income, with our Canadian dividend-payers. Instead of getting the dividends paid out to us in cash, whenever possible, we reinvest all dividends to buy more shares of the same stock either via full DRIPs with stock transfer agents or via synthetic DRIPs with our discount brokerage institution. My first full year as a DRIPper is now complete, and it feels good.
Sure, I made some investing mistakes this past year but I’ve also made some significant progress and in the end that’s what matters. More steps forward than backwards.
