October 2023 Passive Income – Back to Growth
October 2023 Passive Income Update
- 3 sources of passive Income
- $917.34 from dividends
- 37 stocks/units dripped in October
- Trailing 12 Month Portfolio Return +1.96%
S&P 500 12 Month Total Return +21.62% for September 2023
S&P/TSX Composite Index 12 Month +5.10% November 3 2023
Lower than the market year to date once again. Algonquin and Aecon specifically are just beating us down. Aecon should bounce back as business is good, they are just getting killed on projects quoted before all this inflation. Algonquin I dunno, I just hope they keep their water assets and turn things around.
Life
October is time to get excited about halloween once again. Throughout this year we have been acquiring more used animatronics. This year our setup was so big it had to go into the backyard as well. The kids in the neighbourhood loved it and so did I. Unfortunately the disassembly is a lot less fun then the setup.
I cheated this year for Movember and grew a beard all October in preparation. As always I love to participate in Movember and rock the stache. This year hits a little closer as my dad has been battling prostate cancer and I can happily say everything looks good now, as he found it early. Get things checked out boys! Well you too girls…. Fu%k Cancer right?
If you would like to support my movember that would be pretty sweet of ya. Hey it feels good to give, puts a smile on my face and is also a tax write off.. Win/win/win Robs Movember
Alright, Let’s Get To Our September 2023 Passive Income
Raises/ Cuts
Another raise this month
- Abbvie – Abbvie came through with a 4.7% raise. Pretty good considering they are still navigating the humira issues. This raise adds $19.60 in forward dividends for us.
Total Added Income from Dividend Raises in 2023 – $15.08
We are finally in the positive territory after that algonquin dividend cut earlier this year. Sweet…
October 2023 Dividend Income
8 Companies paid us this month.
Stocks | October 2022 Dividends | October 2023 Dividends |
---|---|---|
Restaurant Brands | 105.33 (1 Drip) | sold |
Franco Nevada | 5.07 | sold |
Nutrien | 31.58 | 42.99 |
Cisco | 53.20 (1 Drip) | 56.16 (1 Drip) |
TD Bank | sold | 120.96 (1 Drip) |
Bell Canada | 153.64 (2 Drips) | 192.53 (3 Drips) |
Aecon | 114.52 (11 Drips) | 121.92 (10 Drips) |
Telus | 136.46 (4 Drips) | 77.45 (3 Drips) |
Tc Energy | 157.50 (2 Drips) | 172.05 (3 Drips) |
Algonquin Power | 208.72 (14 Drips) | 133.28 (16 Drips) |
Totals | 912.82 | 917.34 |
37 stocks/units Dripped in October.
Great to see these months back with some year over year growth. The payments are getting chunkier too.
If your interested check out our Previous Dividend Income Reports.
Our Drips (Dividend Reinvestment Program) added $49.36 bucks to our forward income…. sweet!
Other Income
Private Investment Payment – $1000.00
1k a month, very nice!
Solar Panel Income
In September (We always get paid a month later) our solar panel system generated 733kWh. Since we bring in a fixed rate of 28.8 cents per kilowatt hour, Hydro One deposited $211.17 into our chequing account this month.
Last September the system generated $204.81, so we came out slightly ahead this time
Total Income for 2023 – $1,936.82
System Installed January 2018
Total System Cost ——–$32,396.46
Total Income Received ——–$14,109.11
_____________________________________________
Amount to Break even —- $ —18,287.35
The sun continues shining and the income keeps coming. =)
Total October 2023 Passive Income – $2,128.51
October 2022 Passive Income – $2,117.63
A couple bucks is a couple bucks right? Count it!
Totals For 2023
Dividends Year To Date Total – $7,799.14
Other Passive Income Year to date – $12,700.66
Total Passive Income for 2023 —– $20,499.80
Year End Goal – $26,000 (78.84%)
Breaking 20k for 2023, very nice! It still amazes me getting this. Just a couple years ago we had no passive income. When I tell people about dividends they are like oh 30-80 bucks? That ain’t gonna change my life.. But its those constant 30-80$ increases that will. Don’t focus on the short term, long term you will be laughing..
October Stock Purchases
CNR – Canadian National Railway. We added more shares to our existing position. This is one of my favourite companies we own and when it yields over 2% it generally has been a good time to buy. I added 9 more shares at a cost basis of $146.92 per share.
This purchase adds $28.44 in forward dividends.
Costco – We decided to add a grocer in our portfolio. While costco is alot more than that, food is its bread and butter. It’s not a cheap stock by any means but the growth has been fantastic and I could see that continuing in the future. A simple raise on the membership fees will boost their income and that will probably happen soon enough. Personally we dont have a costco membership. Why? Because the place is just too busy. I hate their parking lot and shopping there. That says a lot. Lots of room for growth in my opinion and our portfolio could use more growth.
We went the cdr route on this one in our tfsa. I like that I’m not converting dollars and at 26 bucks per unit the kids can, and did add it to their portfolio as well. We bought 46 shares at 25.83 per unit. This adds a monster $8.79 in forward income.
Overall we added $37.32 in future dividend income. Growth and high dividend growth this month.
Total added forward dividend income from purchases in 2023 – $1,031.40
Bitcoin
I have now been buying bitcoin for a year as I started in November last year. To say its been a great investment would be an understatement.
We decided to go with shakepay because it is regulated in Canada and you shake the phone daily to get some free sats (bitcoin). They recently changed the way shaking sats is done. You get a certain amount per day now
A 100 dollar deposit gets you 10 bucks and 10 for the referrer. Feel free to use my affiliate here if your interested in trying out the crypto space. Or if your a fan of the site and wanna toss me some btc my Shaketag is @hutz8 – worth a shot =)
I appreciate the support.
Financial Goals Update
Charities
- We continue our monthly donation to The Nature Conservancy of Canada of $85.
Etf Monthly Minimum Purchase of $250
- This month we added 4 more units of xaw etf.
- Questrade* is great because it offers free etf trades and cheaper stock trading options than most Canadian brokers. $250.00 a month would kill us if we needed to pay high trading fees.
- * Note the questrade link is a affiliate link and at no additional cost to you, I would get a little payment if you were to sign up. You could get $50 in free trades by using my affiliate link though.
We added a couple bucks to get 4 shares of xaw etf this month. =)
October 2023 Passive Income Conclusion
A great month overall. Im happy with how the month went and that our portfolio is back to positive year over year growth. I hope you all had a great month as well.
cheers
Enjoy the little things in life, for one day you may look back and realize they were the big things – Robert Brault
Hey I’m Rob, creator of Passive Canadian Income.
In 2011 me and my wife had almost $60,000 in debt and a negative $7,000 Net Worth. Through hard work and financial education we paid all that off. Now we are focusing on increasing our Passive Income Streams to make the money work for us. Feel Free to Follow along the Journey by clicking the Social Media links below or subscribing to get notified of new posts on the sidebar.
Keep up the good work 🙂
Thanks Fil
Appreciate the comment as well
Good to hear things looking good for your father. Continued good health. Another solid update with your different streams of passive income. Love seeing how it all comes together. I was hoping for a little better ABBV raise though these days I’ll take what comes in. ABBV has been such a great long term hold since the spin off. As you know, I love seeing the BTC update too. Unfortunately, not many in the dividend space give enough attention to BTC. It will be the only long term winner against everything else fiat. Look at this: https://www.pricedinbitcoin21.com/landing
hey Keith
Yeah abbv was a lil disappointing but at the same time thats kinda expected with the humira hits.. Suncor this month was a lil more disappointing with 5% but here’s hoping there’s another bump after their newest acquisition gets digested. Bitcoin has been great, wow that link you shared really does break things down. Still think people should hold some physical prescious metals as well to hedge fiat.. Too much reliance on tech – banking, crypto.
All the best, cheers man
Hey Rob, great to see your dividend total for October (and similar months) nearing $1000/month again. Lots of DRIPs as well, some possibly caused by under performance (looking at you AQN….). That problem exists in my account as well with AQN and BNS, but I no longer drip AQN and am more than happy to drip extra shares of BNS right now!
Once again your purchases look to be solid and with good reasoning to back them up. I snagged my first ever shares of CNR right around the price point you did, and will be looking to purchase more next year. As for Costco, no membership over here either and just can’t be bothered for the reasons you mentioned, and the fact so many people complain about their trips to the store.
As the end of 2023 approaches have you put much thought into assessing how successful your year was from an investing perspective? Making any strategic shifts to long term goals? Enjoyable to hear people’s honest thoughts on that and how they evolve as investors over time, and sometimes shifts in market and economic conditions warrant a change.
hey Norm
Yeah aqn is killing me, I keep debating selling it but feel it is just too cheap and the whole thing really reminds me of altagas which has rebounded since its dividend cut. Here’s hoping they can turn things around but they are absolutely destroying our overall total return this year.
Nice buy of cnr. They are my 2nd largest holding at 6.3% and I actually keep debating increasing that holding. Changed my mind when I logged into the brokerage and saw they were once again over 160 per share though. Costco I’ll will be increasing every quarter (atleast that is the plan)
As for evaluating our investing perspective, I want to focus on total return. I think I have been leaning more that way the 2nd half of this year. Our forward dividends have grown quite a bit this year and maybe moving forward I’ll aim for 1k a year and try to get more low yielders after that. Try to balance things out. But there is no debate all the lower yielding companys in our portfolio are bringing in alot more capital gains and the dividend increases are almost in line with big yeilders boosting theirs by 3-5%.
We do have some massive returns from buying high yields when they are undervalued. – Abbvie stands out. Cisco hasn’t been bad either both up about 70% from our original purchase price.
I’ll ask you the same question? How has your investing style changed/evolved over the years? What would you do differently looking back?
All the best Norm, Always appreciate hearing from you
cheers Rob
Hey Rob, total returns are certainly important so kudos on that approach. Changes to my approach over the years:
1. For 2024 the big change is to pay off the mortgage. Personally have never been in the camp of paying off a mortgage early, however after renewing the mortgage late last year I finally just want that thing gone! The new rate is higher, which doesn’t bother me, but what does bother me is of all the debt/leverage we use that’s the only debt with non-deductible interest. That’s the reason for wanting it gone and to make this happen I sold a chunk of TFSA assets last month to make a lump sum payment to the mortgage, and will do another TFSA asset sale in 2024 to put that mortgage to rest. These sales will greatly deplete the the TFSAs but won’t empty them, and they’ll eventually be refilled. I feel this shift for 2024 is inline with the bigger mindset shift below
2. Run our finances like a business and diversify income as assets grow. Dividends are awesome and I was laser focused on them for a few years, however this business mindset has been the biggest key to success and admittedly it’s not for everyone. I’ve always used leverage as a tool just like businesses, and if done correctly that accelerates growth. Implemented this business mindset shift several years ago (i.e. creating income statements and balance sheets, use professional services, and using corporations where appropriate) which has made it easier to diversify non-employment income into multiple successful streams (I think you wrote about this long ago and I’m aligned). Long term plan is to continue operating as business, evolve, look for more growth and leverage assets to increase income as the assets in the business grow (i.e. immediately pay off that damn non-deductible mortgage interest and reinvest via a HELOC).
Right now we’ve got three really good non-employment income streams (dividends, rentals, and options). As dividends self-manage now, I want to get annual net rental income and options profits closer to the dividend income. The current annual net income split is probably 55% dividends / 25% rentals / 20% options whereas a 35/35/30 seems ideal to me.
Hey Norm
Man I love that thinking and mindset. Once we max our tfsas, that may be a really good option. (pulling out a chunk to help pay off mortgage at end of year and then having room to invest again the following year)
Diversifying is always a good idea and I like your ideal mix. How many rentals do you have? I keep reading about real estate rentals etc but just feel the time is not right. Maybe soon enough.
Im in the process of setting up my business as a corp with 4 different share structures. Its amazing how much there is still to learn about finances and maximizing taxes etc. Im now dealing with a accountant so that should help me learn some great tax advantages.
All the best Norm, sounds like you got a great plan