• LateSaver

Dividend Report (first ever) Feb 2019

Updated: Mar 1, 2019

I woke up last December on Christmas eve and I had an epiphany of sorts. I was suddenly aware that my financial life was in shambles. I am the kind of person that likes plans. I plan for five, ten years in advance at a time depending on the subject and I just realized that as far as my money was concerned I had not done it. I have two kids for whom I had not started RESPs, my RRSP was near empty, my TFSA non existant.

In January, I opened an account with Questrade (affiliate link which gives you some goodies) and started investing in dividend stocks and ETFs. The first account opened was a margin account, which I don't want to continue contributing into for tax reasons, and the second was a TFSA but with the same philosophy.

Now without further ado here is my report for these first months:

January : CAD 2.435

February: CAD 7.3346

The increase is observed due to the date I purchased the stocks and the payout date. The difference being that when a company decides to release dividends they set a day of record of the ones owning the stock and therefore will get the dividend on the day of payout. When I purchased some of those the day of record had passed and I therefore didn't get anything on their payout date.

How I pick my stocks

I pick stocks that have consistently been paying dividends for at least 5 years, and have been increasing their yield. I was lucky in that I decided to start investing when the market was in a dip. Henceforth, I have a portfolio that is up, and since I reinvest all of the dividend it keeps on with the cycle of growth.

However, this is the most important part, I really don't care if the stock dips or values. I am in it for the long term and the dividends don't follow the stock valuation, but should a stock stop paying out, then I will reevaluate if it has growth potential or not, and thus keeping or selling.

Furthermore, even though I may have picked stocks of individual companies, I also have delved into ETFs. The reasons that pushed me towards those was that they are free ( well, almost, just couple of cents) to purchase on the Questrade platform; plus they allow for greater diversification which you should always strive to have. The ETFs that I chose follow the same rule, they give out dividends and have been doing so for quite some time.

Lastly, I chose some REITs. The ones I chose were mostly based on their actual market capitalization which should be more than a billion and having been paying dividend. I admit I didn't get into deep in their numbers but I wanted to start somewhere so I took just those two data points and I will be reviewing to make sure that there aren't some better ones out there.

My next update will be different since I have already started switching up things a bit.

Looking back, the amounts that I have gained are not that extraordinary, but they are a start and are poised to increase. The money that I used to invest was just sitting around in my checking account earning close to nothing. Don't make the same mistake !!

Now, onward toward #fire !


I just checked the account and it turns out my February Dividend payout is CAD 8.3346. I apparently managed to buy a stock before the record date, which paid a WHOLE DOLLAR (woot). That is a nice surprise.

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©2018 by LateSaver.