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August 2014 Dividend Income / Monthly Highlights

Here is my August 2014 dividend income.  August has been another strong month and we are well on our way toward meeting our annual goals of increasing our net worth to $700,000, being mortgage-free in early 2015, and hitting the $4,000 in dividends mark.

This year, my family opted for a “staycation” and this saved us a ton of money that went onto the mortgage.  The lump sum payments, in addition to our regular, weekly-accelerated, mortgage payments knocked the principal down by just over $8,500!  At this rate, being mortgage-free in 2015 should be no problem.

The stock markets were still on a tear for much of August, with the TSX hitting another all-time high on August 29th when it closed at 15,625.  I thought that by now we would for sure have some kind of a correction.  But nothing seems to be holding this Bull market back…which is kinda scary.  While I’ve been making my regular investment contributions in my RRSP and DRIP portfolios, I’ve also been patiently accumulating cash quite steadily over the past few months.  I’m waiting for some kind of buying opportunity that will come this Fall (hopefully) so I can deploy it.

As I’ve said before about the cash, I’m not about to deploy it all at once while the markets are at all-time highs.  Yes I’ll be giving up some of the compound growth, but I also believe that the price you pay for an asset should be reasonable!  I continue to make my automatic share purchases and reinvest my dividend income, but I won’t be making any big moves unless something compelling comes along.

I continued with my plan to make regular monthly and quarterly share purchases in my dividend reinvestment accounts (DRIPs).  I bought more shares in Emera, Bank of Nova Scotia and Bank of Montreal.  In these accounts there is no point in trying to time the market – I contribute small amounts on a regular basis, regardless of what is happening in the market and I let compounding and dollar-cost averaging do their work.

August has been a great month in terms of getting dividend raises!  Bank of America (BAC) raised their quarterly dividend by 400% (from 1cent/quarter to 5 cents/quarter).  Finally things seem to be slowly turning around for this bank.  Luckily I moved BAC, along with Citigroup (C) to my RRSP…just in time for the divvie raises.  Manulife Financial (MFC) also raised their quarterly dividend over 19% and Scotiabank (BNS) raised theirs for the second time this year by 3.1%.  I love being a dividend investor.  Beyond this, I did not initiate any new positions – I just made the same, regular investments into the same collection of stocks, ETFs and index funds.

August hasn’t been a very remarkable month with regard to dividend income.  Here are the numbers:

EMA – $9.49

BMO – $30.54

REI – $3.84

CPD – $44.31

XRE – $30.31

VSC – $18.90

VSB – $ 14.84

TOTAL = $152.23