DRIP finally on!

 

After what seems like an eternity, I finally got my first share from a Dividend Re-Investment Program! I received $27.26 in dividends from Sun Life which covered enough for one share. I automatically purchased a share at market value ($22.80) while the difference was added to my TFSA at Questrade. It was a long journey with some bumps in the road but I finally have the compounding machine in motion. Hopefully before long, I'll have DRIPs running for all my positions so that I can accumulate shares quicker.

The plan is once the dividends being distributed becomes a large enough amount, I'll turn off the DRIP and use the money to add to positions at my discretion. This way I'll be able to control what price I'm buying at as opposed to being forced to buy at market value which could be higher than I would like at the time of purchase.

-the Paperboy

DRIPing with Questrade...Again

I've planned to DRIP my positions in Questrade for quite some time now. After a couple of setbacks, I finally have it set up. The form that Questrade provides only allows the registration of 3 positions at a time so instead, I checked off the box that enrolls every eligible position in a DRIP. Now that that is out of the way, I can focus on increasing my positions so that the dividends distributed will be large enough to cover the price of one share. Then the compounding will start picking up and I'll start amassing wealth quicker. Let's just hope that everything is processed without a hiccup this time.

-the Paperboy

DRIPing with Questrade

I recently received dividends from my position Sun Life Financial and the amount was high...too high. In fact, the distribution was high enough to cover one share of SLF which means the DRIP that I set up wasn't actually set up. I contacted them through their online chat to see what was going on. Turns out that I wasn't enrolled in the DRIP (this was probably because I filled out two DRIP forms when I went in to their offices; they may have misplaced one). No problem though because the agent enrolled me in the DRIP and even bought a share for me and reimbursed me the commission charge. Great service although it did take awhile before I was connected to an agent.

One thing to note for people who plan to use DRIPs with Questrade is that they buy all the additional shares on the open market and not directly with the company. This means that all the discounts that the companies offer on their DRIPs will not be applied. The discount was a large incentive for me to start DRIPing so I'll have to reevaluate whether or not it's worth it for me. For now I'll just let my SLF DRIP run.

-the Paperboy

How I Plan to Use DRIPs

Last time I talked a little bit about the pros and cons of using DRIPs in your financial plan. Now I would like to talk about how I plan to implement DRIPs to help me achieve my financial goals. Since my main concern with running a DRIP is the fact that I can't choose when to purchase more shares (it's automatically done for me), I decided that I would have some criteria that would have to be met in order for me to DRIP a stock.

Thinking about DRIPing

If you're new to dividend investing, there's no doubt that you'll come across DRIPs when you are doing research. Some people swear by DRIPs while others wouldn't touch them with a 10-foot pole. What exactly are DRIPs and how will you know if they will help you reach your financial goals? Let's take a closer look at Dividend ReInvestment Plans.