Hi guys, it’s been a while… I’ve been pretty busy with my new job recently. There is a lot to learn and I don’t have a degree in the domain (usually accountants are doing the job they gave me) so I have to study a lot to be able to follow what they are trying to teach me.
I feel a little down these days too. I don’t get enough sleep. It’s gray and freaking cold and I feel pretty stressed about that job. I will have to perform and learn that job very fast if I don’t want to be laid off and honestly, I don’t like the job they gave me so it’s hard to find motivation… Too much paperwork… it’s too micro… I will need to take my car to go see customers and handle hard negotiation processes… I was elsewhere in my career and I feel like if I was starting over at the bottom of the ladder… not cool! But it could have been a lot worse.
Anyways. That’s why I haven’t been very active here. Also, just to frustrate me even more, I have a problem with Aksimet. It seems that someone or a couple of persons out there have flagged me as a spammer. The weird thing here is that I don’t spam so I don’t know who did that or why but I can’t comment on any blog using aksimet anymore (hundreds of millions of blogs)… This prevents me from commenting on most of the blogs I use to comment on in the dividend growth investing community including Jason Fieber’s blog even though he unlisted me from his spam folder where his spam prevention software automatically sent me in.
I have contacted them to get my name unflagged. They gave me a very quick response and took me off their spammer list so that was really great service from them. But… it lasted only for a week or two as I still can’t comment anywhere again… I’m not really happy with that since I can’t reach out in the community anymore. I’ve been blogging here for a year, have put a lot of energy and time in that website only to get banned for a reason I can’t explain… it’s really frustrating and it demotivates me a lot honestly. I don’t feel like starting over with a new dot com and Aksimet told me that they would only unban me once.
I think it’s a little too much power in the hands of a few people… maybe someone is using my name to spam… who knows? And I get penalized. I don’t know if it’s a permanent or temporary ban so I guess I’ll wait and see.
I don’t know who flagged me and why but I’d like to know. I’m really sorry if someone was harmed or offended by one of my comment but that person could have told me instead of flagging me as a spammer. I’m not a bad guy and I have no intention to hurt people. And even though I’d like to make money online, I wouldn’t use black hat or dishonest methods to do so.
So if you don’t hear from me on your blog anymore well… you know why. I can’t comment anymore.
Anyways… back to business. As you might know if you came here before, my goal is to retire early at or before my 45th birthday and in order to reach my goal I mainly invest in dividend growth stocks. Now it seems that with every month passing by I feel even more the urge to reach my goal as fast as possible. I can’t wait to be financially free to get more control over my life.
So, yesterday I bought 24 TD banks shares at 50,54$ CAN that I will hold in my tax free saving account. This adds 45,12$ CAN net or 0,12$ per day to my dividend income. This brings my forward daily income to 1,88$ US and 1,03$ CAN or 1064,50$ per year. It does not take into account the exchange rate which currently favors me for the dividend income but which is against me for buying new shares in US funds… Nothing is ever perfect in life!
Given the current circumstances I might focus more on Canadian stocks for a while. The canadian dollar is not doing great recently…
Also, while my forward dividend income is still above 1000$ per year, it is still lower than what it was two months ago. This is due in part to the ARCP mess where I lost a lot of income and even though I still own a 100 shares of that REIT, they recently announced a dividend halt so I have put zero in my forward income column for now. I also “lost” some income with the Tim Hortons/Burger King deal since part of my shares were converted into new shares of Restaurant Brands Intl and they don’t pay a dividend for now. I could sell them with a profit and buy dividend growth stocks with the profit but I prefer to keep the shares for now…
I really have a hard time selling stocks… This is something I will have to overcome eventually. But it is really due to something deep in my personality. I get attached to things, people, places and animals and have a hard time getting rid of something or even someone… it’s almost a personality disorder! 🙂 We are all crazy in a way…
Anyways, things are moving up again and that’s positive!
I should also receive a great tax return, a 6,5% raise and a bonus by the end of may so this should bring a lot (I expect near 10k) of fresh money into my brokerage account and help me boost that dividend income. I’d like it to reach at least 2000$ per year by the end of 2015. But, until may, I might not be able to buy stocks more than once a month and for 1500$ or less per month… But at least, every buy brings me closer to my final destination.
Now about TD bank… Well, what can I say? It’s a great bank for sure. They have paid a dividend every year since 1857 and they have raised it almost every year over at least the past decade. In fact they raised the dividend every year since 2009 and between 2008 and 2009, the dividend has been maintained at the same level for two consecutive years which is not bad considering that we were experiencing one of the biggest market crash in history.
At current price, it sells at a p/e, price/sales and price/cashflow below its 5 years averages. And its dividend yield at 3,7% is well above its 3,3% five years average too.
Its five years dividend growth rate, which includes 2008-2009, has been at 6,5% per year while its 3 years and 10 years average rates have been at 9,9% and 10,8%. So, overall, TD as a great record even though it didn’t raise the dividend for one year during the crash.
Its balance sheet is strong, the payout ratio is reasonable and I like the dividend history here.
I was looking to buy shares of TD bank for a while and I’m pretty happy with my buy.
Did you buy anything in january yet?
25000 Dividends
Sorry to hear about the Aksimet.
I’m also getting sick of cold grey winter.
Always hard to start a new job. Hopefully there wasn’t a pay reduction.
Keep at it, $2K in dividends this year would be amazing!
Allan
Hi 25k dividend, nice to hear from you and hope you’re doing well.
yeah changing job without my will is not cool but I actually complain with my belly full. I will in fact earn more and will probably reach my 100k goal this year (2 years before my projected goal)…
I’m sorry to complain. I really shouldn’t. I know that my situation is far from bad and it’s even actually a great situation and I know that billions of people on this planet would love to switch position with me anytime.
But I’m human… and humans tend to complain without putting things in perspective when something “negative” happens to them. I feel pretty tired these days and have a tendancy to complain when I’m tired. The cold, the grey sky, the fact that many of my colleagues and friends lost their job… the fact that someone has decided how my career would evolve without consulting me… by summing all of this up I guess that someone like me could find a reason to complain… even though I shouldn’t.
But I feel less tired today and with some perspective, I’m pretty sure that a couple of months from now I’ll probably be happy with my new job. I will learn new stuff and it might get me somewhere else that will be better for my career and that could even help me reach my freedom goal faster than I thought possible. We’ll see.
About the dividends… 2000$ by the end of 2015 would be great. 2500$ would be even better! 🙂 I’ll do my best and hopefully I’ll reach my goal. I’m also putting a lot of capital on my mortgage to bring it to zero for 2020 and on my car loan too to bring it to zero for 2018. This will help me boost my future contributions to my freedom fund while making me feel rich already. When you have no debts you are rich after all!
The Can/us exchange rate is not helping though… At 1,25 I am a lot less tempted to invest in the US for now. My canadian money is worth pesos again… I guess I’ll concentrate more on Canada for a while. There are great companies I which to invest in like Fortis, Suncor, Potash corp, TD, RBC, CP, CN and some more. That’s going to be fun to explore a new market a little more.
Keep investing my friend. You’re a star! I can’t believe how fast your dividend income is growing!
Get Rich Brothers
The exchange rate is definitely a prohibitive factor at the moment for adding new funds to my U.S. account, but I fortunately switched over a sizeable chunk a while back when we were sitting around par with the U.S. dollar. I was actually tempted to convert some of it back just to get the boost with my Canadian accounts!
Don’t fret the new career situation, brother. Just keep working with your head up and remember that you’re working for a reason. You have a goal in mind and every day you punch the clock, you are headed toward your end goal which is financial freedom by 45. Keep that in mind with every decision you make and every time you take a blow. Keep the faith.
Get Rich Brothers recently posted…The Closer You Look
Allan
Hi GRB,
Yep! The can/us exchange is getting prohibitive for sure. I’ll focus on Canada for a while I guess. I still have 30k of free room in my TFSA so I don’t mind focusing here for a while. 🙂 I might even implement partly the strategy of 25000dividends.com for my TFSA. He invested a lot in REITs and high yield slow growth dividend grow stocks to maximize the income he could get from his TFSA. I could then reinvest the dividends in lower yielding higher growth dividend growth stocks. 1800-2000$ in dividends from 35000$ invested sounds like a good balance. It comes with some risk but I think it’s an interesting strategy since the income in the TFSA will never be taxable.
About my new job, I’m starting to have a more positive view of it. It could really bring me somewhere else and it will give me a great income “protection” in case I lose my job. I could more easily replace my income with the new knowledge and experience I will get. I just didn’t choose that path by myself and would probably not have. But sometimes things happen for a reason beyong our understanding.
Take care
debt2retirement
Hey Allan,
I’ve been following your blog for a while now! I was actually thinking about buying some TD as well in January. I had about 1.5k lying around in my roth ira, but I decided to invest it in some energy stocks, and I bought 30 shares of COP. They pay strong divs and it seems like the energy sector is finishing up on it’s dip, so we’ll see where it goes. Anyways, I definitely want to quit my day job! I’m in pharmacy school and I’ll have tons of debt by the time I retire. If you want to follow my story and see how I’m doing, check me out at debt2retirement.weebly.com, I’d really appreciate it! Anyways, take care. cant wait to read more of your blogs!
debt2retirement
Allan
Hi Debt2Retirement,
Thanks for passing by. I’ll follow you for sure and add you to my blogroll. I might not be able to comment though but I’ll be there! 🙂
I’ve read your “about me” page. I would have loved to be as informed as you are at 21 (12 years ago). At that age I knew that all of this system was wrong and stupid and that I had to find a way out. But I didn’t know what to do. I read tons of books about real estate investing and the stock market. I read tons of books about starting a business and eventually did start one but I was unprepared to the reality. Quiting a day job to start a business is a stressful moment and everybody around me was pushing me back in the system. My girlfriend, my friends, my parents… ultimately, with no support from my loved ones, too much stress, too much debts and not enough capital to face my monthly payments, I had to quit and go back to a full time job. It happened to me at 27 years old. It was a total failure. I had more debts and I had to start fresh with 2 weeks of vacatioh per year…
That’s when I decided to get promotions to increase my salary. I climbed the ladder super fast and now make near a 100k. I’ll probably break that line this year. But it didn’t make me happy. Like you said on your about me page, all those years… all that time… to enrich someone else who’s surfing while I dig… it’s stupid and unfair. So I decided to read more and start this journey. I still have twelve years to go but who knows… it could be less!
And about education. I was like you too… I thought that getting a diploma was necessary for success. While it has almost nothing to do with it. I need to be a professional accountant to be able to do my new job. That’s what they ask for. Most of my colleagues have a master degree in finance or a MBA or a CFA level 3 and are also accountants.
While I’m just a relatively smart guy who learned something very important at a young age : HOW TO READ! So that’s what I’m going to do. Accounting is not black magic. I went to the library and borrowed books.
Anyways, I realized that even though you have a great diploma, in most jobs, you’ll probably use less then 5% of what you’ve learnee and use it in a loop again and again… just learning what’s in the loop is enough.
I now think that in life, there is the education we give to a man and the education a man gives to himself. And I always thought that in life you are a lot better served by yourself. So I think that the education that a man gives to himself is far more important. Anyway, university education is like buying a music CD. There are 2 great songs and the rest is only there to fill the album to make it look better and sell it at a greater price.
We lose a lot of time because they want to make it look important.
I’m someone who reads a lot and who has always read a lot. I ask a lot of questions and I’m very curious by nature. That’s something that helped me more in life than any diploma I had.
But this does not apply to every field I guess… Maybe pharmacy is one of them. I took a course for fun about the pharmalogical effects of psychothropes (I just translated it from french litteraly so I’m not sure that it is how we say it) when I was 20 or 21. That was interesting. But too many long boring words to keep in mind for me ahah 🙂
Anyways, finish your diploma, get a great paying job, live frugally, pay down your debt at the speed of light while investing a lot, avoid debts on depreciating assets like cars, furniture, dvd players and big screen tv and you should be able to realize your dream of being free by age 35! It’ll be a long journey, but it’s going to be worth it in the end!
Cheers,
Get Rich Brothers
Hi Allan,
TD is a legacy position for me. It was the first stock I picked up when I started on the road of DGI and it has paid me faithfully ever since. Through the financial crisis they held steady and have been on a hurried streak of increases ever since.
This is a position I never intend to part with so long as the fundamentals remain in place. I love getting paid from a company with so much upside if they’re able to execute in the U.S. as well.
Really sorry to hear about your troubles getting flagged as a spammer. I’ve always enjoyed your comments on my site and hope you’re able to get things straightened out and come again soon.
Take care,
– Ryan
Get Rich Brothers recently posted…The Closer You Look
Allan
Hi Ryan,
TD is a great bank for sure. I plan to invest a lot of money there over the years. I’m happy to finally have initiated a position. I might also consider investing in other canadian banks too.
About being tagged as a spammer, there’s not a lot I can do… Aksimet already unbanned me once and they told me they won’t do it twice… ah well. I’ll continue commenting on your blog and will let you know in your email if my comment don’t go through. If you use aksimet you can manually unban me.
Cheers