Dividend Progress Report: September 2012 Edition

Total yield of portfolio - 4.49% (- 0.03%)
Actual dividends received - $1025.61 (+ $79.26)
Expected dividends return if the current positions are held for 1 year -  $1716.87 (+ $34.40)
Average dividends received per month: $113.96 (- $4.33)

After the recent purchase in my portfolio, the expected dividends return if the current positions are held for 1 year advanced into the $1700 territory. In terms of dividends received, September was the second worse month after the horrible June I had. This brings down the average dividends I get per month to almost $114 which still isn't bad for just sitting around and not doing anything; when you're a poor university student every little bit counts and $114 is more than what I would earn for a full day's work. So if I look at it that way, my portfolio essentially worked 1 day for me every month which is nothing to complain about... let's just try to make it work overtime for the rest of the year!

-the Paperboy

Dividend Progress Report: August 2012 Edition

Total yield of portfolio - 4.52% (+ 0.04%)
Actual dividends received - $946.35 (+ $101.81)
Expected dividends return if the current positions are held for 1 year -  $1682.47 (+ $77.54)
Average dividends received per month: $118.29 (- $2.36)

My total yield inched higher last month even though I purchased units of CLF which lowered my average yield. This was due to increases in dividends by four of my holdings! This is great news especially after the hit from CFX I took last month. Again I was caught off my game as I missed the announcement of Royal Bank increasing dividends, but before I could rectify the issue in this update, the company hiked its dividends again! Now everything should be accounted for.

Dividends received this month were a little below average bringing the average dividends/month down to $118.29. Due to all the dividends increases and the purchase of CLF, the expected dividends return if current positions are held for 1 year climbed back up after the hit from CFX. I'm really hoping to reach $2200 by the end of December but I'm doubtful it will happen. I'll just keep putting away as much as I can and see how close I can get to my goal.

Overall, August wasn't a bad month. Here's hoping September will be good to me as well.

-the Paperboy

Dividend Progress Report: July 2012 Edition

Here's the recap of my dividend progress for the month of July.

Total yield of portfolio - 4.48% (- 0.22%)
Actual dividends received - $844.54 (+ $212.00)
Expected dividends return if the current positions are held for 1 year - $1604.93 (- $27.08)
Average dividends received per month: $120.65

There was a minor setback in the yield and expected dividend return department last month due to Canfor cutting its distributions (again). This was offset by an increase in my position with Canadian Oil Sands (now large enough for my DRIP to be active) as well as an additional share of Reitmans due to my DRIP kicking in after the share price dropped. The extra share of Reitmans is a good example of the Dividend Re-Investment Plan helping me buy low since it wouldn't have happened if the share price was higher. This helps lower my average cost and increase my yield.

I have to remember that the flip-side is a possibility as well; as my positions get larger I'll be able to DRIP shares at higher prices too. This will increase my average cost (which isn't exactly what I'm looking for). So when it gets to that point in my investing career (hopefully sooner rather than later) I'll turn off the DRIPs and re-invest manually. Sure I'll have to pay commission fees but being able to allocate the money where and when I want to should means that I save money in the long run.

I'd like to note that July was the most productive in terms of receiving distributions. $212.00 last month makes up for the horrible showing the month before. You may have also noticed that I put in a new measure of my progress - I decided to track the average dividends received per month which should more accurately reflect how much I'm getting because all the companies have different distributions dates so good months like July and bad months like June don't really mean anything when the whole year is considered together. Hopefully I can bounce back from the Canfor cut and keep heading towards my goal of $2200.

-the Paperboy

Dividend Progress Report: June 2012 Edition

Here are the numbers for last month:

Total yield of portfolio - 4.70% (+ 0.03%)
Actual dividends received - $632.54 (+ $46.43)
Expected dividends return if the current positions are held for 1 year - $1632.73 (+ $10.42)

As you can tell from miniscule changes, there wasn't much happening in June. The only move I made was close my position in a bond ETF to fund a purchase of CIBC shares in my TFSA. Not making a play wasn't due to not finding what I thought were deals; on the contrary, I found many stocks at attractive prices because there were a couple days where the market decided to take a dip. It always decides to do that when I have no money to capitalize on the opportunity. Eventually I'll have money at the right time though.

Last month was also dismal in terms of dividend. At first I thought I may forgot to record some distributions but I seriously only got $46 in dividends last month. I was use to getting a little over $100 so $46 is a pretty big drop. This was due to some companies shifting their payment dates. On a single day (July 3rd) I received more dividends than the whole month of June combined. Hopefully July will be a good month to me.

-the Paperboy

Dividened Progress Report: May 2012 Edition

May looked like it was going to be one of the lower months in terms of dividend distributions, but the last day of the month was very generous and put the whole month over the top. This resulted in the best month yet.

Total yield of portfolio - 4.67% (+ 0.13%)
Actual dividends received - $586.11 (+ $137.06)
Expected dividends return if the current positions are held for 1 year - $1622.31 (+ $108.42)

Positive numbers all around for last month! Grabbing Rogers and BMO really helped with the yield while increasing my position in Weston raised my average yield as well. June marks the halfway mark for the year. The goal of $2500 expected dividends return looks to be very difficult to achieve especially with my coffers empty. I'll have to turn to liquidating my ETFs to fund my purchases. Of course saving money and working as much as I can would also help me pick up some more shares. even with discipline it'll be tough to reach $2500 and I honestly think that I'll fall short... but I'll go down swinging.

-the Paperboy

Dividend Progress Report: April 2012 Edition

I'm slowly getting to my goal of $2500 in dividends. In the month of April, I took positions in BCE Inc. and George Weston Ltd. so I have even more money flowing to me in the future. I also put some funds into a corporate bond ETF for short-term safe keeping until I need it (most likely to buy cheap stock).

Total yield of portfolio - 4.54% (- 0.09%)
Actual dividends received - $449.05 (+ $121.36) *
Expected dividends return if the current positions are held for 1 year - $1513.89 (+$245.58)

The lower yield on George Weston and the ETF brought the average down ever so slightly, even with BCE giving my 5.49%. Right now I'm getting around $100 a month in dividends which is nice but I'm looking for a lot more in the long run. I still have a little bit of money sitting on the sidelines so hopefully I can get it to work for me soon. The $2500 mark is still pretty far away. I know it will take time to get the compounding started but that snowball will really start rolling down the hill eventually. I just need to be patient and keep working at it.

-the Paperboy

*edited from the previous post because I missed the last dividend distribution that CIBC gave me before I transferred my position into my TFSA account.

Dividend Progress Report: March 2012 Edition

March was the first month of 2012 where I actually made a move in the market. I took up a position in Kinross Gold, with the intention to make a quick trade. That was a month ago and I still have the position. No worries though because it actually gave me some cash to wait for better days. On to the numbers:

Total yield of portfolio - 4.63% (- 0.25%)
Actual dividends received - $327.69 (+ $92.91)
Expected dividends return if the current positions are held for 1 year - $1268.31 (+$32.64)

The yield took a bit of a hit because of the lower yield of Kinross weighing down the average. Initially, I didn't want to include Kinross in the calculation because it's a trading experiment. It doesn't contribute to my goal of reaching a dividends return of $2500 (I know i said that $2500 was ambitious before but now it seems like a monster of a task) if all my positions were held for a year because I don't plan to hold this long-term. However, it does distribute a dividend and that should be considered in every calculation that involves dividends.

Over the summer I'm hoping to get the time to fix my spreadsheet so that I can extrapolate the amount of cash I going to get by the end of this year rather than just have a number of what I would have "if I held the current positions for 1 year". This is because many things can happen in 365 days so having my portfolio have the same positions for a whole year is unrealistic so a better metric should be used.

-the Paperboy

Dividend Progress Report: February 2012 Edition

Not much has happened since January in terms of positions... by not much I mean nothing happened at all. However, some companies took it upon themselves to help me reach my goals of getting $2000 in dividend by the end of the year (I just went back and read the past dividend progress reports and I realize that I didn't put a goal - and that's no fun right? So I'm hoping to reach $2000, I may not receive $2000 by the end of the year, but I want to get to the point where if I just held my positions for a full year without doing anything, I would receive $2000).

Dividend Progress Report: January 2012 Edition

This is the first update of the year for the new series where I keep you guys posted on my dividend income. Maybe I've been busy with life or I feel that I can't find good deals, but for the first month of 2012, I didn't make any purchases. This is very unlike me, especially since I'm sitting on a little bit of cash. I usually just throw whatever I can into my portfolio (I heard compounding is suppose to be pretty good) but I feel that the more important factor is that I shouldn't overpay for anything. Anyway, because of the fact that I didn't change anything in my portfolio, all the numbers are the same.