Welcome to the quarterly update for Q3 2016. This is part of a series where I track our financial progress on a quarterly basis. I present four parts in this series: (i) Investment & Portfolio Update, (ii) Passive Income Update, (iii) Blog Update, and (iv) Goals Update.
1. Investment & Portfolio Update
Q3 2016 saw a lot of activity in our portfolio.
We initiated/added to the following positions.
- Algonquin Power & Utilities Corp (AQN.TO) – 2 share DRIPped
- B2Gold Corp (BTO.TO) *New position*
- Omega Healthcare Investors Inc (OHI) – 1 share DRIPped
- Pan American Silver Corp (PAA.TO)
- Silver Wheaton Corp (SLW.TO)
- US Equity Index (Seg) Fund
- Intl Equity Index (Seg) Fund
We closed the following positions.
- Bank of Nova Scotia (BNS.TO)
- IAMGold Corp (IMG.TO)
- Jean Coutu Group (PJC.A.TO)
- Magna International Inc (MG.TO)
- Qualcomm Inc (QCOM)
- Realty Income Corp (O)
- BMO S&P/TSX Capped Composite Index ETF (ZCN.TO)
- Vanguard All-World Ex-Canada Index ETF (VXC.TO)
Q3 saw 4 dividend increase announcements in our portfolios. The companies from our portfolios increasing their dividends and details of portfolio changes are summarized below.
2. Passive Income Update
A great quarter on the passive income front. During the quarter, we managed to earn a passive income of $1,965.95.
Year | Q1 | Q2 | Q3 | Q4 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
2013 | $383.65 | $516.32 | $718.33 | $1,063.97 |
2014 | $1,322.47 | $951.18 | $1,055.79 | $1,803.90 |
2015 | $1,546.87 | $1,960.10 | $2,076.81 | 2,256.01 |
2016 | 2,167.95 | 2,404.43 | 1,965.95 |
You can read our previous quarterly updates here.
“Other” Passive Income
Passive income that we achieve is split between investments from dividend paying companies and what I call other sources of passive income, which includes cash back rewards credit card, advertising revenue from this blog, interest on cash and writing premium articles for Seeking Alpha. As you can see from the chart below, our other category has performed well. Our passive income from the ‘other’ sources saw continued traction in Q3 2016, providing us with some great overall passive income – which we proceed to invest into stocks and funds to compound our growth.
I realize that some of our sources of passive income are not completely passive, as it requires us to put some time and effort into it. However, I consider these sources to be semi-passive and I wrote an article to capture my thoughts on the scale of passivity of each income type. Be sure to check out Passivity of Income.
3. Blog Update
Based on the pageviews, the following were the most popular posts on Roadmap2Retire.
- Recent Sell – The Big Reset Edition
- Do you Love Your Investment Holdings
- Where to Get Good Dividend Investment Ideas
- Reading Between the Lines
- Simply Wall St Review
I am currently averaging 12-13K pageviews per month and hope to bring that number up in the coming quarters.
4. Goals Update
Right. Onto the goals that I set and see how we did overall on that front.- Earn $9,000 in annual passive income On target, but will probably miss goal
- As of Q3, we have achieved $6,538, which achieves 72.64% of the goal. We are still tracking close to the target, but after selling a big portion of our portfolio, I am almost certain that we will fail to achieve this goal for the year.
- Achieve better balance across asset classes and sectors Completed!
- For the time being, I am happy with our asset allocation…we are close to 1/3 cash, 1/3 real assets (gold/silver and real estate) and 1/3 in other DGI stocks. I have detailed the reasons for picking this in this post. This is a short term allocation, and I will be slowly adjusting our portfolio going forward to align with our long term goals.
- Take atleast two finance related courses On Target
- I took one course so far. The course is Financial Markets taught by none other than Robert Shiller, Sterling Professor of Economics at Yale University. Prof Shiller is a Nobel Prize winner in Economics (won the prize in 2013). I am learnt a lot about diversification and other theoretical aspects. In addition, Prof Shiller discussed some very interesting aspects of behavioral (psychological and sociological) aspects in human beings which affect investing – something I wasn’t expecting from the course. It’s a fantastic course and I highly recommend it.
- I am still undecided on the second course…something that I will need to look into during the second half of the year.
- Blog Growth: Achieve 15K pageviews consistently through 2015 Needs Improvement
- Blog traffic continues to lag and the consistent 15K pageviews remain elusive. Needs further improvement.
- Write an e-book On Target
- I have started putting some of my thoughts down on certain ideas. I still don’t have a firm idea on when I will finish, but thinking back to last year where I failed on this goal – the hardest part has been just getting started. I have overcome that hurdle and once I got started, some ideas have started flowing. Stay tuned for updates on this front in the coming quarters.
Stay Connected / Subscribe
You can now follow Roadmap2Retire on Facebook, Twitter, or Pinterest. Be sure to subscribe to the newsletter to stay on top of the latest investment articles. In addition to sharing my journey of financial independence, I also publish weekly links every Saturday morning to share the best articles from the investment and personal finance blogging community. Click here to subscribe.
That’s all folks! Thanks for reading. Be sure to leave a comment at the bottom – I love to hear from the readers on your thoughts and opinions.
This article was written by Roadmap2Retire. If you enjoyed this article, please consider subscribing to my feed at Roadmap2Retire.com/feed
