2022 Dividend Income Update and Year-End Portfolio Review

Happy New Year!  I hope you all had some time to relax with family and friends since my last update. 

What a year we had with the markets in 2022.

I remember in May, our portfolio was up over 6 figures since the beginning of the year, and we were excited to see where the markets would take us. Two weeks later those paper gains had vanished, proving once again there's no predicting what the markets with do.

Despite the volatility, I'm happy with our investing strategy... buying long-standing, dividend-paying companies that have weathered many storms.

Portfolio Year-End Review

Our portfolio delivered a lot of positives in 2022, despite the market nose-dive.

For instance, our dividend income grew by 33% year over year. This meant, we were able to surpass our goal of $35,000 and we earned a total of $36,556.74 in dividend income for 2022. This works out to an average of about $3,046 per month. 

As you know, some months are much lower than others depending on when the companies pay their dividends. February, May, August, and November still remain the lowest months of the year for us. 

Our 2022 dividend income is split up in the following manner: 

As you may remember, I am slowly reducing the value of my RRSP by making annual withdrawals. This means the RRSP dividend income will decrease annually moving forward.

Dividend Increases/Decreases

We received a total of 14 dividend increases, 2 special dividends, 2 dividend cuts, and 2 new dividends in 2022. You'll notice that some companies increased their dividend twice during the year (highlighted in grey in the chart below).