December 2023 Dividend Income Update
Happy New Year! I hope everyone had a restful holiday full of joy. I certainly had a restful break and met up with friends and family. The first order of business in the new year is to reduce annoying foreign exchange (FX) fees. I currently have a Rogers Platinum Mastercard, which Rogers Bank is phasing out. The card charges a 2.5% FX fee but credits 3% of the purchase. However, the credit is only available on purchases in USD and I’m hoping to do some international traveling this year. In addition, I find that applying the credit is not straight-forward. I’m leaning toward the Scotiabank Passport Visa Infinite card. If I go that route, I will upgrade to the Scotiabank Ultimate package so that the annual fee is waived.
I also have to figure out what to do with my Quicken US subscription. The annual subscription fee for Quicken Classic Deluxe is increasing by 20%! The least that I can do is start a Quicken Canada subscription so that I’m paying in Canadian dollars. I chose Quicken US because it can connect to US banks. Quicken Canada can do the same thing as long as you’re using the Mac version. The price is also increasing for Quicken Canada, but at least I won’t have to pay the FX fee. The other option is to search for alternatives. Intuit Mint is closing and there is a lot of discussion about alternatives on Reddit. I tried Neontra, which is a Canadian company, but I didn’t like it. Connecting to my primary US brokerage didn’t work and the UI needs a lot more polish. I’m still researching alternatives.
Anyway, onto the dividend income update.
In December, I received a total of $7,849 in dividends and interest. I earned a cumulative passive income of $46,079 this year. At the end of 2022, I earned $31,566 in passive income. That’s a 46% increase compared to last year. Much of the difference comes from fixed income and cash, which isn’t sustainable because interest rates are expected to decline in 2024.
Of the dividends received this month, $1,837 was earned in my taxable account. The point of tracking passive income in my taxable account was to calculate how much I could withdraw if I retired early. This isn’t completely accurate because I can also withdraw from Canadian registered accounts. Only US retirement accounts have an age requirement for penalty-free withdrawal. I’m going to include the amount that is available to withdraw going forward.
As a reminder, I convert any USD amount to CAD using the month-end exchange rate published by the Bank of Canada. For December 2023, I used an exchange rate of 1.3226.
| Account | Income |
|---|---|
| Cash | $981 |
| Margin | $2,693 |
| Retirement | $4,175 |
| Total | $7,849 |
I received dividends from the following stocks and ETFs in December:
- Alimentation Couche-Tard Inc (ATD.TO)
- Blackrock Inc (BLK)
- Brookfield Corp (BN.TO)
- Brookfield Infrastructure Corp (BIPC.TO)
- Brookfield Renewable Corp (BEPC.TO)
- Canadian National Railway (CNR.TO)
- Canadian Tire Corp (CTC.A.TO)
- CT Real Estate Investment Trust (CRT.UN.TO)
- Discover Financial Services (DFS)
- Fortis Inc (FTS.TO)
- Global X High Interest Savings ETF (CASH.TO)
- Granite Real Estate Investment Trust (GRT.UN.TO)
- Intact Financial Corp (IFC.TO)
- Lockheed Martin Corp (LMT)
- Magna International Inc (MG.TO)
- Realty Income Corp (O)
- Sun Life Financial Inc (SLF.TO)
- T Rowe Price Group Inc (TROW)
- Vanguard FTSE All-World ex-US ETF (VEU)
- Vanguard Short-Term Bond Index ETF (BSV)
- Vanguard Total Stock Market ETF (VTI)
- Visa Inc (V)
- Walgreens Boots Alliance Inc (WBA)
- WisdomTree Floating Rate Treasury Fund (USFR)
I purchased shares of the following stocks and ETFs in December:
- Dollarama Inc (DOL.TO)
- iShares Balanced Growth Core Index ETF (XGRO.TO)
- PepsiCo Inc (PEP)
- Visa Inc (V)
I sold shares of the following stocks and ETFs in December:
- Adobe Inc (ADBE)
- Autodesk Inc (ADSK)
- Nutrien Ltd (NTR.TO)
- T Rowe Price Group Inc (TROW)
How did your month go? Did you buy or sell any stocks or ETFs?