2016 Year In Review

Hey folks how are you? For today’s post I thought it would be fun to go back and review last year. 2016 was my second full year of becoming a dividend investor and I am very happy with the results and I wonder why didn’t I make the move sooner. My TFSA (Tax Free Savings Account) account had a terrible 2015 was I able to turn it around in 2016 well keep on reading to find out 🙂 I hope everyone was able to achieve what they wanted to last year or at least came close to.

Let’s dig into the numbers shall we?

TFSA

Before I start telling you about last year for my TFSA let’s go back to 2015. Above I mentioned that I had a terrible 2015 as an investor I committed a sin and got punished for it, I purchased a stock in 2014 without doing any research and took the advice of someone on tv.

It did not end well for me that stock was Long Run Exploration (no longer exists company was purchased in 2016). Entering the new year I only had two holdings a mutual fund and the stock I just mentioned. In February I made the decision to smarten up and focus on improving my account. I sold my mutual fund and started investing in stocks again.

Long Run Exploration left my TFSA in July when the company was purchased and I received cash for the shares I held at the time. Now let’s get to the positive stuff.

2016 saw me give my account a makeover I made 8 purchases and you can check them out here. My account increased 34.2% in value and I received record dividends. At the end of 2016 my TFSA had a value of $21,500.67

To help makeover the account I invested a total of $12,416 into my TFSA. So now let’s move onto my RRSP (Registered Retirement Savings Plan) account.

RRSP

2016 was a another good year for this account, it increased in value 21.6% and saw dividend income increase 17.7%. At the beginning of the year the account had a value of $63,446.63 and ended with $77,147.68.

I added some new stock to my portfolio as well.

• Magna International (sold it in Oct)
• Power Corp
• Potash Corp
• BMO US Dividend ETF

I also added to my position in four stocks

• Royal Bank of Canada
• Canadian Utilities
• Westjet
• Telus

Sold some stock as well.

• JP Morgan
• Proctor & Gamble
• Magna International

I sold JP Morgan and Proctor & Gamble to better diversify my account and used the funds to purchase the ETF mentioned above.

I invested a total of $1,800 into this account in 2016.

Yearly Dividends

Here is a look at my dividends when I combine both accounts.

Dividend Increases

I guess this isn’t a surprise since I have added quite a few more stocks into my portfolio but 2016 saw me receive a record amount of increases. I get money for doing nothing who doesn’t like that. Last year I received 16 regular increases and 1 special distribution these increased my forward income by $66.17.

Here’s a list of who I received increases from.

	Increases
The Keg Royalties Income Fund	2 Regular, 1 Special
Telus	2
Bank of Montreal	2
Alimentation Couche-Tard	2
Algonquin Power & Utilities	1
Power Corp	1
JP Morgan	1
Pizza Pizza Royalty Corp	1
Royal Bank of Canada	1
Fortis	1
Inter Pipeline	1
Canadian Utilities	1

I have a page to show all of the increases I have received to date since becoming a dividend investor you can find that here.

So that wrap’s up my 2016 I hope I can continue my success in 2017 🙂

Thanks for reading please feel free to share this and  comment I always enjoy reading them.

Matthew