2019 – A Look Back In The Past

2019 – A Look Back In The Past

2019 is almost over. Another year is passing us by already, time fly’s when your having fun. I hope you all had a wonderful 2019 full of little yodas, ice cream and good times.

Every year I wish I had some kind of post to look back on in the future and see all the growth of a year all summed up in one post. This is it.

2019 Finances

Year End Forward Dividend Total – 5,786.58. A little disappointing as there wasn’t a massive growth rate this year. To many sales in the last 1.5 years for our 2 new cars and then Dream Global Reit just got bought out and I haven’t redeployed the money yet. (this lost about 250.00 to forward income) The cash is sitting idle waiting for a good opportunity to put it to work.

Stocks I bought in 2019

• Added 136 shares of Interpipeline
• 107 shares of Dream Global Reit
• 245 Shares of Brookfield Property Partners
• 43 shares of BNS
• 12 shares of 3m
• 86 shares of bce
• 15 shares of Abbvie
• 26 shares of Nutrien
• 11 shares of Disney

All together these purchases did add $1,435.46 to our forward income. This would be fantastic but unfortunately we also made quite a few sales to pay cash for our car in 2019. People debated if this was a smart move, but I prefer that versus a 6-8% line of credit. We also sold some stocks to re-allocate the portfolio and remove some of the non dgi stocks.

Stocks I sold in 2019

• 146 shares of Enbridge (just wanted to lower their overall % in the portfolio. It used to be 11%)
• All our Corus Entertainment shares (I forget the amount we had and didn’t record it, sold right before the dividend cut)
• 32 shares of sienna senior (wanted a better dgi healthcare stock)
• 150 shares of Highliner (sold before the dividend cut – things didn’t look good.)
• Took a nice profit in Russel Metals and sold our position. (No dividend growth)
• Sold our shaw position (no dividend growth)

Altogether these moves lost $939.05 in forward income. While more than half of the funds were allocated back to the portfolio we lost nearly 450.00 just from the sales for the car.

No question all these sales are not good for the long term growth of the portfolio and looking back sucks……. But moving forward me and the wife both bought a new car in the last yr and a half, so this shouldn’t happen again for a long time.

I also sold 2 stocks that were about to cut their dividend. (and did after) Little learning lessons we learn along the way, stick to the blue chip – wide moat companies!

Looking at things now I really like the looks of the portfolio and don’t see many stocks I’d consider selling. Extendicare may be the standout, but I love the space. Just hate the lack of dividend growth.

Dividend Raises

1. Canadian Utilities raised their dividend by %7.5
2. Restaurant Brands International kept it going by boosting theirs by %11.11
3. CNR came through with a massive 18% dividend raise
4. Brookfield Property Partners (BPY.UN) – Raised their dividend by 4.8%
5. Brookfield Renewable (BEP.UN) – Raised theirs 5.1%
6. Cisco (CSCO) – Boosted their dividend by 6%
7. Bank of Nova Scotia (BNS) Raised theirs 5.79%
8. Td Bank (TD) increased their dividend 10.44%
9. Transcontinental (TCL.A) – Bumped up theirs 4.8%
10. Proctor and Gamble raised their dividend by 4%
11. IBM raised their dividend by 3.2%
12. Telus raised their dividend %6.81
13. Algonquin Power bumped theirs %10
14. BMO added 5.9%
15. National Bank raised theirs %9.01
16. Emera raised their dividend 4.3%
17. Abbvie raised theirs 10.3%
18. Enbridge came through as stated, raising their dividend 9.8%

We added $274.08 in forward income this year from dividend raises alone.

Fantastic stuff. If you were to invest new money to get that you would need roughly $6,750 invested at 4% to get that. That’s the power of dividend growth investing!

Considering our year end total for forward dividends is 5,786.58 we achieved a overall dividend growth rate of 4.73% this year. We currently have 28 different stocks in the portfolio, so 10 didn’t raise their dividend this year. (Some did, but I bought them after the raise) This clearly has a impact on that percentage. Room for improvement in that department.

Drips

Ahhh drips. The simplest way of investing. I love my drips. Don’t know what they are? Read more about them here.

As the portfolio grows the amount of dripped stocks should increase and the magic that is compounding really starts to grow those numbers. These are the stocks we dripped in 2019.

1. Dream Global Reit x9
2. Telus x4
3. Transcontinental x 4
4. Td bank x 4
5. Bank of Nova Scotia x3
6. Shaw x 4
7. Riocan x 12
8. Extendicare x23
9. Algonquin Power x8
10. Emera x4
11. General Mills x4
12. Canadian utilities x8
13. Interpipeline x10
14. Brookfield Renewable x6
15. Brookfield Property Partners x14
16. Enbridge x9

Altogether we dripped 126 various shares. Our drips added $184.94 to our forward income this year. I did nothing but choose to reinvest versus taking the money. I look forward to watching this list grow each year moving forward.

Giving

One of my goals this year was to give more. I feel really fortunate to be where we are today and encourage everyone who is financially fit to give back in some way or another.

In April we committed to giving 50$ a month to the nature Conservatory of Canada. It comes right off our credit card, so we don’t even notice it. Getting their mail and email’s is an incredible feeling. Your money is truly making a difference to the world.

Altogether we donated $450 to them this year and 100$ to Movember. We will discuss what we will do next year, maybe increase these numbers.

Conclusion

I’m not going to get into all my goals for the year. Generally speaking I have been updating them every month in our passive income updates.

Altogether we increased our forward dividend income by 955.43 in 2019. Not bad, not bad at all. I hate looking at all these sales, ultimately you don’t want to keep playing with your portfolio. Set it and forget it!

In March I did a post called Dividend Growth Investing – Looking 30 years into the future. I tried to project where the portfolio would be and did 2 charts based on a 5% dividend growth rate and a 8% one. This post opens my eyes as we are behind where I wanted to be. (although I didn’t know we would be buying another car lol…) But it also shows that our overall dividend growth is even lower than the 5% which I thought was conservative.

There’s still some work to be done moving forward….. and you know what, that’s alright. We are still early into our investing journey and have lots of time on our side. I’ll focus on higher dividend growth rates moving forward and possibly eliminate the stagnant dividend payers.

2020 is going to be another fantastic year on all fronts. I wish you all a wonderful new years night. Don’t drink and drive.

Cheers to 2020! Thanks to you all for the support and motivation in 2019.

How was your 2019? Did you achieve the results you set out at the beginning of the year?