February 2017 Dividend Income Update

Welcome to my latest dividend income update.

For those of you new to these posts on my site, every month I discuss our approach to investing focusing on Canadian dividend paying stocks.  We believe buying and holding a number of Canadian dividend-paying stocks in our tax-free (thanks TFSA) and non-registered accounts will, over time, provide some steady monthly income for future wants and needs in retirement.

Thank you February.  It was a good month.  While I was away surfing in Costa Rica no less…

Dividends

…some companies raised their dividends while I was on vacation. 

Thanks to those dividend increases we’re on pace to earn $14,200 this calendar year from our Canadian dividend paying stocks in our tax-free and non-registered accounts.  To put that income in perspective, that will cover the following expenses as long as we live with room to spare without touching the capital:

  • Home property taxes (currently $350 per month, estimated $4,200 per year)
  • Home utilities (currently $650 per month, estimated $7,800 per year)

A reader recently asked me the following:

Hi, maybe you have covered this before but could you go over how you keep track of your investments and dividends to end up with your progress graph and your percentage and dollar estimates? I’m not a spreadsheet or tech kind of girl and this stuff baffles me 🙂 Thanks!

Well, to help you out, I’ve put a simple Dividend Income Tracking Tool on my Helpful Sites page so you can track your own passive income journey.  Simply adjust the cells with your own assets (stocks, ETFs, mutual funds, other) and it should tabulate your own metrics in the graph area.  I hope that helps this reader and others.  I’ll work on more free calculators when I can for this page.

Stay tuned for my next dividend income update in March and thanks for reading.

What’s your take on my journey?  Got questions for me?  How is your income journey coming along?

12 Responses to "February 2017 Dividend Income Update"

  1. Hi Mark,
    I look forward to your posts and credit your blog for my discipline with dividend investing. In your recent post you wrote:”we’re on pace to earn $14,200 this calendar year from our Canadian dividend paying stocks in our tax-free and non-registered accounts.” Can I ask why you are not including your RRSP account dividend paying equities?
    B

    Reply
  2. Hi Mark,

    I have not posted comments on your site for a long time, but I still have been an avid reader of your blog.
    I just want to say a great job for staying on track with your equities, as you are well on your way to your dividend income target! And thank you for continuing to post good quality blog entries.

    Reply
  3. Dividends on the Prairie · Edit

    Yes, I did check it out. I was wondering about how you arrive at your ‘Estimated Income End of Year – Series 1’ column (especially with new money added in the future).

    Reply
    1. I made those numbers up. You can use “Yearly Income” in the table and then put a forecast into the graph area. If you know you’re going to save about $11,000 in any given year (i.e., max out TFSAs x2) then you can estimate your income will grow at least 2-3% in that year based on yield.

      How? That’s the yield for many Canadian equity ETFs if you choose to invest in them. XIC and XIU yield about 2% and 3% respectively. That’s $220 or $330 extra in income per year. I hope that clarifies.

      Reply
  4. Dividends on the Prairie · Edit

    Hi Mark. What calculator do you use for estimating your future dividend income stream? I’ve calculated my own in Excel but always seem to come up with lower projected dividends than the online calculators (especially when new money is assumed to be added to the portfolio in the future). I feel like I’m missing something…

    Reply
  5. Dividends on the Prairie · Edit

    Thanks for pointing out the “Helpful Sites’ section of your blog. I’m not sure why I’ve never stumbled across it before but it’s got some really great calculators and links in there (some that are new to me). I’m excited to check them out. Thanks Mark!

    Reply

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