This 2017, for dividend income only…

I managed to pull in for the year..

$4652.05

Or an average of …

$387.67 a month

..which is pretty much enough to cover my share of the condo fees per month.

I really want to concentrate more on this income stream this year, but I have a few things to do on my side, namely pay my corporation taxes, my personal taxes, and then decide how I want to go about investing most of my money with a plan that is both stable but also risky (I think dividends are both stable AND risky but I wouldn’t put all my money in this basket).

It all cycles back on itself with a DRIP

I reinvest all of my dividend income under a DRIP (Dividend Reinvestment Plan) which basically means whatever money I earn from dividends, I plow back into buying more of the stock, kind of like a snowball effect but with throwing the money into more equity instead of clearing debt.

Current capital invested to obtain this income stream

$146,997.63

Keep in mind that the dividends I earn are not specifically stocks I bought for dividends, but from all of my investments.

I am hoping this year to try and keep a better track of dividend-specific income versus general invested income, to get a more accurate view of how much capital I have invested to obtain specific dividend amounts.

As a rough calculation….

I didn’t track specifics month to month, but I just took one of my accounts that was MOSTLY invested in dividend-producing stocks and this is the outcome:

Investment in Dividend-specific stocks:

$36,105.54

To earn in dividends:

$2421.63

Which is a yield of around:

6.7%

Not terrible, right!? I need to work on this income stream, but I have to tidy up my accounts first.

I have been raiding them left and right due to the year-ish of not working and as a result, they’re all wrecked.

Some of my capital is tied up in oil bets…

To be frank with you, a lot of my money is tied up in the bet I made on oil a few years ago, thinking it would be one of those cyclical dips (where I buy at a low price), and fast rise (where I sell for capital gain).

I have been waiting a good 3-ish years, and only NOW am I finally starting to see gas prices climb a tiny bit. It might take another year or two before I can release the capital tied up in this which thankfully is not a ton of money, but still something (~$7000).

The rest, is in cash. Cold hard cash. I need to invest it. I need to figure out my contribution rooms this year and then just plow money into these accounts.

Don’t forget to transfer your investments instead of liquidating them!

Don’t forget that if you have cash or investments in Margin accounts you can transfer these funds to your TFSA rather than selling them, realizing the capital gain / loss and then moving the money.

Just move the funds directly. I’ve done it for my Margin –> TFSA accounts for 2018 already, and the contribution limit is $5500.

So, I transferred ~ $5500 worth of Margin account stock into my TFSA.