June 2024 Dividend Income Update

calendar Jul 4, 2024 · 4 min read · Dividend Income Update
Photo by Micheile Henderson on Unsplash

For all the Americans out there, Happy Independence Day! And for the Canadians, Happy Belated Canada Day! Summer is upon us. Although I’m excited about the warmer months, I’m sad that the days are getting shorter. I’ve been trying to stay active by playing recreational sports with friends. I’m starting to get into a groove, playing sports 2-3 times a week.

June was the anniversary of the launch of this blog. Four years ago, I purchased a 3-year WordPress hosting plan. The plan price was great, but the hosting company didn’t publicize the expensive price for domain name registration renewal or that privacy protection is extra. Besides the recurring high price, I was unhappy about the site’s performance and how frequently some WordPress plugins broke. I didn’t renew the hosting plan and let my old domain name lapse. Upon further investigation, I learned how easy it was to host a static site for close to free. While the site has static content, enough of it is dynamic that I’m very happy with the results.

June has been an interesting month. It was another record month for the market. I’ve been busy buying shares and monitoring certain stocks for an entry. Specifically, I’m looking to buy shares of EQ Bank (EQB.TO) and looking for a small stake in Canadian Western Bank (CWB.TO). If you haven’t heard, National Bank (NA.TO) is acquiring Canadian Western Bank in an all-stock deal. There’s still quite a bit of profit to be made. But at the same time, it’s not a done deal.

In the past month, EQ Bank launched a new Notice Savings Account. The Notice Savings account offers a 4.5% or a 5% interest rate depending on whether you open a 10-day or a 30-day account. The downside is that you have to let them know 10 or 30 days in advance of withdrawal. It’s essentially a cashable GIC. There is no need to play interest-rate lottery games (I’m looking at you, Tangerine). I opened up a 30-day Notice Savings Account. More details in an upcoming post.

Wealthsimple has an offer to pay a 1% cash bonus on incoming balance transfers. Their offers have been getting more and more aggressive ever since the iPhone 15 offer from late last year. I’ve been eyeing opening an investment account with Wealthsimple for a while now and this offer pushed me to open an account. I’m in the process of transferring my Questrade accounts over. It’s too bad for the big banks and other well-established investment brokerages, but these new fintech companies are the only ones innovating. More to come in a future post once the account transfers are complete.

In June, I received a total of $8,248 in dividends and interest. I earned a cumulative passive income of $31,568 year-to-date. For comparison, I earned a cumulative passive income of $21,633 this time last year. At the end of 2023, I earned $46,079 in passive income. Of the dividends received this month, $6,639 was available to withdraw without penalty.

This is the most I have ever earned in dividends in any month. It would have been higher if the quarterly dividend for VTI paid out in June instead of July this year. The year-to-date cumulative earnings are slightly higher than the year-end cumulative dividends I received in 2022. I couldn’t be more elated.

As a reminder, I convert any USD amount to CAD using the month-end exchange rate published by the Bank of Canada. For June 2024, I used an exchange rate of 1.3687.

Account Income
Cash $1,564
Margin $2,344
CA Retirement $2,731
US Retirement $1,609
Total $8,248



I received dividends from the following stocks and ETFs:

  • Blackrock Inc (BLK)
  • Brookfield Corp (BN.TO)
  • Canadian National Railway (CNR.TO)
  • Canadian Tire Corp (CTC.A.TO)
  • CT Real Estate Investment Trust (CRT.UN.TO)
  • 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)
  • iShares Balanced Growth Core Index ETF (XGRO.TO)
  • Lockheed Martin Corp (LMT)
  • Meta Platforms Inc (META)
  • PepsiCo Inc (PEP)
  • Pfizer Inc (PFE)
  • Realty Income Corp (O)
  • Vanguard FTSE All-World ex-US ETF (VEU)
  • Vanguard Short-Term Bond Index ETF (BSV)
  • Visa Inc (V)
  • Walgreens Boots Alliance Inc (WBA)
  • WisdomTree Floating Rate Treasury Fund (USFR)

I purchased shares of the following stocks and ETFs:

  • Canadian National Railway (CNR.TO)
  • Fortis Inc (FTS.TO)
  • iShares Balanced Growth Core Index ETF (XGRO.TO)
  • National Bank of Canada (NA.TO)
  • Vanguard FTSE All-World ex-US ETF (VEU)
  • Vanguard Total Stock Market ETF (VTI)

I sold shares of the following stocks and ETFs:

  • Discover Financial Services (DFS)
  • Walgreens Boots Alliance Inc (WBA)

How did your month go? Did you buy or sell any stocks or ETFs?

Dividend Income