1. Investment & Portfolio Update
- Algonquin Power & Utilities Corp (AQN.TO)
- Amgen Inc (AMGN)
- Brookfield Infrastructure Partners LP (BIP.UN.TO)
- Canadian National Railway (CNR.TO)
- Canadian Utilities Ltd (CU.TO)
- Inter Pipeline Ltd (IPL.TO)
- Kinder Morgan Inc (KMI) – 1 share DRIPped
- Omega Healthcare Investors Inc (OHI) – 1 share DRIPped
- Qualcomm Inc (QCOM)
- Starbucks Corp (SBUX)
- Toronto-Dominion Bank (TD.TO)
In my wife’s portfolio, we continued adding to the positions in the following ETFs. Click here to read details about my wife’s portfolio and why we chose the route of index ETFs.
- BMO S&P/TSX Capped Composite Index ETF (ZCN.TO)
- Vanguard FTSE All World Ex-Canada Index ETF (VXC.TO)
- BMO Aggregate Bond Index ETF (ZAG.TO)
Dividend Increases
Q3 saw 6 dividend increase announcements in my portfolio. The companies from my portfolio increasing their dividends and details of my portfolio changes are summarized below.
2. Passive Income Update
Another quarter passed and another great quarter for passive income. I have finally crossed the $2000 mark in quarterly passive income!
Year |
Q1 | Q2 | Q3 | Q4 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
2013 |
$383.65 | $516.32 | $718.33 | $1,063.97 |
2014 |
$1,322.47 | $951.18 | $1,055.79 | $1,803.90 |
2015 |
$1,546.87 | $1,960.10 | $2,076.81 |
“Other” Passive Income
Passive income that we achieve seems to be evenly split between investments from dividend paying companies and what I call other sources of passive income, which includes cash back rewards credit card, advertising revenue from this blog, interest on cash and writing premium articles for Seeking Alpha. As you can see from the chart below, my other category has performed well. For Q3 2015, my other passive income totaled $1,168.25. I look forward to investing proceeds of these sources into stocks and funds to compound my growth.
3. Blog Update
Pageviews
The three months in the quarter saw the following figures:
- Jul 2015: Total pageviews = 15,109. Unique visitors = 5,140
- Aug 2015: Total pageviews = 14,414. Unique visitors = 5,086
- Sep 2015: Total pageviews = 11,841. Unique visitors = 3,983
The 20,000 pageviews per month remains elusive, a target that Ive been chasing for months now. I continue to work away and hope to increase my pageviews.
4. Goals Update
Right. Onto the goals that I set and see how I am progressing on that front. I set the following goals for 2015.
Earn $5,500 in annual passive income(completed in Q3 2015!)- My passive income YTD is $5,584.02. I couldn’t be happier with this progress and had no idea that the goal was achievable in three quarters when we were setting goals last December. We will be looking at setting much higher goals for next year.
- Focus on reducing debt (mortgage) – Pay down more than the minimum mortgage amount. .
- No extra payments in Q3. In Q1, we paid an extra 52%. In Q2, we managed to pay an extra 33%.
- With mortgage rates so low, we have decided to divert the extra cash towards saving for a kitchen renovation project and/or some other work that we want to get done around the house.
- Maintain a 3-5% cash position in portfolio
- This goal was motivated by the fact that last year I had to pass up on some good investing opportunities due to lack of liquidity in my portfolio. We now maintain well above the target 3-5% cash in our portfolios and will be able to move and take advantage of investing opportunities when they present themselves.
Re-balance portfolio with my wife’s portfolio integrated(completed in Q1 2015)- We sold the expensive mutual funds in my wife’s portfolio in January and have started building an ETF portfolio starting February. I am happy to say that we have now completed one of our goals for the year 🙂
- Take atleast one finance related e-course
- I am taking this online course from Coursera – The Power of Macroeconomics: Economic Principles in the Real World by Dr. Peter Navarro from University of California, Irvine.
- Write an e-book – No progress here yet. Needs attention.
That’s all folks! Thanks for reading. Be sure to leave a comment at the bottom – I love to hear from the readers on your thoughts and opinions.
Outstanding quarter in term of pay raise (6 dividend increase), passive income is doubling each year. You guys are doing a lot of things right.
Keeping that income growing is the name of the game, Vivianne. Thanks for the wishes…hope you had a great quarter too.
Best
R2R
Great numbers on passive income and blog traffic. Congratulations!
Regards,
Deets
Thanks Deets.
I am a bit disappointed with the blog traffic, as it has seen some steady decline over the quarter. Hopefully that will stabilize and change direction. But overall, it was a great quarter.
Thanks for stopping by
R2R
Outstanding surpassing your $5,500 goal.
I like to see that you are upping your cash holdings, it can be very tempting to buy as soon as the cash is there, and I don’t like to let cash sit idle in a brokerage either, but whatever potential money we are missing in not having it working is minor to what that cash can do on a major pull back Always good to have dry powder. Another option is to put the cash to work with a very conservative put option.
Absolutely, Devin. Having some dry powder is key to picking up great companies are great valuations. Markets always tend to panic and overdo the swings, so I am keeping some cash on the sidelines waiting for that opportunity. I still have majority of my money working for me, so Im ok with a small 5%-ish cash position sitting on the sidelines.
Thanks for the wishes
R2R
Well done on achieving such a great income this quarter. But I am very much more impressed with the Coursera class – such a great idea to take a relevant class. I’m taking a data analysis with Excel class through EdX right now.
Get studying!
Cheers
Good to hear that you are taking some classes as well. I love learning new things and online courses are a great way to keep my brain active and challenged.
cheers
R2R
Looks great. Your total passive income is doubling year over year and you just crossed the $2k mark for one quarter. That’s awesome progress. I normally try to get fully invested but I would like to get to a 3-5% cash target especially if volatility is going to remain elevated. You could have picked up some great deals in August if you had cash and were quick. Best of luck wrapping up the year!
Thanks for stopping by and the wishes JC. Ive managed to double my income in a year, but dont think I can keep that rate of growth going forward. If I can consistently stay $2K+ for the next couple of quarters, I’ll be happy.
Bring on the volatility — I have some dry powder waiting to be put to work 🙂
Best
R2R
I want to set up a dividend payment spreadsheet like the one shown here. Where do you go to find out the dividend payment dates for each company. Many sites only show the next dividend payment date. Do I have to go to each company’s web site to get the dates? Thanks.
Hi Helen,
I dont track the dividend payment dates as closely, but a good resources is the Nasdaq website. Heres the schedule for SBUX: http://www.nasdaq.com/symbol/sbux/dividend-history
The data show some historical data and as each dividend is declared by the company, the new details are captured at the top of the list
Hope that helps
R2R
Bravo R2R ……Bien content de pouvoir suivre votre voyage de l’indépendance financière …. Je constate que depuis votre dernier trimestre de 2014 , vous être en feu $$ …..Le revenu passif entre par la grande porte ……
Félicitation ….
Merci pour les voeux, Gaston.
Sorry, my spoken/written French isnt very good, but I understand it well – so will reply in English. Passive income has grown well since last year and I am very happy about it. Hoping to keep this momentum going forward.
Best wishes
R2R
Nice update R2R!
I understand your frustration with the blog traffic. have you looked into SEO or anything like that? Maybe you can take an online course in that sometime? I’m sure you have, it’s just a suggestion. Obviously I don’t have all the answers. If you find something that works, please share! 😉
Congrats on the income though!
-Adam
Hi Adam,
I have experimented a little bit with SEO, but not really sure if that has made a huge difference. Maybe I need to give it a more serious shot and learn how to do things properly and try it out. Good idea to take a course and try it out. I will look into it and share if I have any insights for sure.
Best
R2R
Congrats on the great quarter! Huge improvement from last year.
Love to see those dividend increases. Only CVX and GE are hiding their cards(as for me too). Well, GE’s increase would be scheduled only in December, but I have understood that they won’t raise this year. But pretty much all others in your portfolio have delivered nice increases.
BR, DL
Nice. Yeah Im hoping for an increase this year, but even if CVX and GE dont increase this year, they wont lose the streak. I am still confident in their long term prospects, so I wont be selling anytime soon until something more fundamental changes.
Best
R2R
Hi there,
I have a question for you on your BIP-UN.TO purchase. I’ve been looking into this stock and am unsure on whether or not it’s a candidate for TFSA. As it’s reported and paid for in USD, would the 15% with holding tax still be applicable? Or with it being listed on the TSX would it surpass the tax? I’ve searched on a couple of finance forums and have yet to find a clear answer!
Thanks for your thoughts!
Jane
Hi Jane,
I own BIP.UN.TO in a TFSA account and I got the full distribution amount from my broker – no withholding taxes applied. BIP pays dividends @ US$0.53 per quarter and I own 35 shares and got an amount of C$24.58.
Hope that helps
R2R
Great numbers with that blog traffic! I’ve been cracking over 1000 myself. Hopefully your numbers don’t just grow, but snowball.
I heard somewhere that blogs earn an average of $1 for every 1000 page views. It seems to be the case for me. Ugh. Hopefully those eventual 20,000 monthly views will bring you more than $20/month.
Best of luck for Q4.
Sincerely,
ARB–Angry Retail Banker
Google ads seem to gyrate a bit…I have some good months and some bad months. Good months I make about $75-80 and bad months, I make about $35-40, and my pageviews seem to hover around 10-15K.
Hope that helps
R2R
Keep doing what you are doing R2R, you are doing great. The development of your passive income is impressive!
– mraitn
Thanks for the wishes mraitn.
Hope you are doing well with your goals this year and surpassing them
R2R
Hi R2R,
Congrats on achieving $2k Q3 dividend income. It is a significant milestone and one that will set you up nicely for even higher amounts in future quarters. I just received my very first dividend payment in September from ENB. I look forward to hitting double digit dividend income in the coming months.
Cheers,
Dividendniche
Thanks Dividendniche.
It took a while to get to $1K but getting from $1k to $2k was a lot faster…looking forward to keeping this momentum going forward. Congrats on getting started with your journey and ENB is a great company to own for the long haul. Keep it up!
R2R