This is my second net-worth updates report for the year 2017. For those new to my finance journey, net worth update is a simple report I post every month which tracks the progress of my journey to reach my financial goals.
My ultimate financial goal is to become a self-made millionaire by December 2024 (10 year plan) by saving and investing in stable dividend paying blue-chip companies.
I am posting all my financial information in this website because I love to inspire and motivate people to start their own journey to reach their financial freedom.
You could learn from my successes and failures (experience) and improve your financial IQ.
Along the way, I make financial mistakes and will share my experience here with you. So, you could learn something, avoid those mistakes and save money.
Also, I like to publicly track my progress and get valuable advice from like-minded people.
In February 2017, my net worth increased by $4500 (+2.78%), mainly due to the performance of my Canadian dividend portfolio.
As many of you know, my net worth is more depending on the performance of my investment assets than my saving/spending rate.
Saving a few dollars here and there won’t make a big different in my net worth, but a small percentage changes in my investment assets will give big impact in my net worth.
Therefore, my net worth is not easily predictable. But it is moving in a positive direction. Hopefully, the trend will continue.
I didn’t have any major expenses last month, but I will have a big expensive next month – my property tax.
It will affect my net worth for the month of March 2017; however, I will be getting record high dividend income in March (hopefully).
So, everything will get balanced-out well.
I don’t make monthly payments for my property tax. I make first payment in March and the second one in June, and forget about property tax bill for a year.
I don’t like recurring expenses, but I love recurring income, especially recurring passive income 🙂 .
Now let’s talk about my net worth and financial numbers in February
Last month, my net worth increased by $4500 or +2.78 from my last update.
Net worth update as of February 28, 2017 ()
Assets: $489 500 ()
- Cash: $400 ()
- Home: $275 000 (no change) – Yearly adjustment with average inflation rate of 2%
- Canadian Stocks: : $163 500 ( )
- U.S. Stocks: $40 200 ()
- Employer’s Pension Plan: $10 400()
Liabilities: $323 200 ()
- Mortgage :$182 500 ()
- Student loan: $24 000 ()
- Margin loan: $78 000 ()
- Credit card 1: $8300 () (low interest credit card – 0.99% special rate for 10 months – will be expired in September 2017)
- Credit card 2:$0 () (paid-off)
- Credit card 3:$0 (paid-off)
- Line of Credit 4: $8900 () (low interest balance transfer – 2.99% special rate for 12 months – will be expired in May 2017)
- Credit card 5: $3000 (no change) – (low interest credit card – 1.99% special rate for 10 months – will be expired in November 2017)
- Credit card 6:$500 () – (regular expenses)- high interest rate of 19.99%.
- Line of Credit 1 :$10 100 () – (low interest credit card – 2.99% special rate for 12 months – will be expired in April 2017)
- HELOC:$7900 (no change) – (low interest of 3.20% – prime + 0.5%)
Net worth :$166 300 () as of February 28, 2017
My net worth up by since my last update.
Note
- all amounts are rounded to the nearest $100;
- all numbers are in CAD; and
- Conversion rate 1.00 USD = 1.34 CAD
I have a huge credit card debts because I take advantage of low balance transfer promotion rate and invest in high quality dividend stocks. Learn, earn, save,invest and leverage your skills are the keys to become wealth.
Thank you so much for being in my finance journey and for your support.
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Hi FJ’, great to read your investment journey blog and the recent March update.
Is the $203,700 portfolio of US/Cdn non-registered investments & if so , based on that $900 dividend that you recently received (fantastic BTW) $900 x 12 = $10,800/yr/$203,700 = 5.3% annualized gross before servicing costs, again a really nice return… well done.
Would you mind posting back the total liability in dollars of any margins/loans on the $203,700 investments, as well as what the interest/service cost/mth is to get to the net current annualized return on those investments?
Thank you for any reply
Hi John,
Thank you for stopping by,
Actually it is not 5.3% annualized income. $900 for the March 2017 only. I receive higher dividend in March, June, September and December and bit of lower dividend income in rest of the months.
My estimated yearly dividend income is $7600 as of March 2017. Thus, my current portfolio yield is around 3.7%.
Investment related loans = Total liabilities – Mortgage loan – Student loan – regular expenses = $116 200
Best Regards,
thanks for your reply FJ.
For your portfolio of Cdn & US investments of $203,700, minus investment loans $116,200 = $87,500 of net investments.
Would you mind posting the current annualized dollar amount that you are paying on the investment loan against the estimated yearly dividend income of $7600?
Thanks
Hello John,
As of March 31, I was paying around $3800 per year for the interest payments. Now, I have refinanced some high interest loan (4.25%) with with new promotion interest rate of 0.99%…
Investment loan expenses are well covered by dividend income, and the capital gains are bonus. Majority of my investments are gained over 60% in last couple of years, and some have doubled.
Please note leverage investing is very risky and it is not suitable for all investors. I would strongly recommend you to do your own research or discuss with a qualified financial advisor before make any financial/investment decisions.
Best Regards,
I have been following you for a while now…Good work…Keep it up….I am just a bit ahead of you…Not by much…So I know what it’s like…I recently paid off my investment loans by selling the investments…I took a loss and next year will pay a capital gains tax…Sucks bad….My point is I think you are too leveraged…I would focus on paying off your debt right now…While interest rates stay low….I could go into more detail but it would be a long post…Just trust me…No more debt and pay some of it off….Leveraging is a good strategy…But for people who can afford to loose it…I would suggest you should be more conservative…It will take longer to achieve your goals…Bit it’s worth it…
Hello Scott,
Thank you for your suggestions,
Actually leverage strategy helped me to build my wealth this far; however, you are correct. I can’t afford to loose. That’s why I avoid risky investments and select stocks that pay dividend for longer time.
I will consider paying down some debts, but not all of them 🙂
Best Regards,
Hi FJ,
I believe that you had a link to opening an brokerage account with Questrade…
Do you still have it?
Thanks
Hi Cris,
Thank you for asking.
Here is the link Questrade.
Disclosure: Please note above is a affiliate link, I will earn a commission if you decide to sign-up their service (at no additional cost to you).
Best Regards,
Hi,
I have been following you now for almost two years. You could say that I am your twin with zero investment atm ( mortgage, gta, one income family, 7 month old, osap, etc etc. I would like to start investing but need some insight. If I could talk to you in private or on the phone that be greatly appreciated.
Hello Awais,
Thank you for stopping by, I totally understand your situation, but still you could make different in your financial life by learning as much and as you can and start control your expenses and make smart investment decisions.
I love to help you, but please understand that I am not a professional financial advisor. My advises may not work for you. Thus, please discuss with a qualified financial advisor or start learn about investments by reading good books and websites, and do your own research.
Best Regards,
The right time to start investing is always as soon as possible. As FJ said, you should read books about investments or discuss with a financial advisor but don’t wait until you feel that you know everything in order to start investing because you never will, there are always new things to learn and most of what you could learn you would learn from your own experience and mainly from the mistakes you will do. You will need to find the investment method that works for you, a method that works for someone else won’t necessarily work for you and a method that would work for you won’t necessarily work for someone else and this is due to different goals, different character, different risk tolerance, different time frame, different lifestyle, etc.
The earlier you start to invest the better your situation will be in the long run and the more you wait the harder it gets to begin, so take the advice you need, reed some books and start investing despite your first, you might not do it right at the beginning, you might lose some money in your first investments due to making mistakes in your analysis but don’t let it hold you, learn, correct your mistakes and move on, this is the only way to become successful in investments.
Good luck.
Great advise Alan, Thank you so much 🙂
Best Regards,
Hi Awais,
Congratulations for the decision to start saving for a better future! First step will be hardest.
It will be hard to get a straight and personal advice about how to start investing as the financial situation and tolerance to risk is different for each person.
There are many sites/blogs were you can find advices and steps to start your own journey but, I don’t think that somebody will talk in private with you about this.
From my experience I will recommend a few considerations:
-understand what type of investing account you want to use: TSFA (recommended at the beginning as is more flexible), RRSP or non-registered, as the taxes will be treated different
-decide which brokerage account will use because the fees are different
-decide if you want to invest in ETF, mutual funds (I don’t like them) or equity
-select one or 2 of the blue-chips companies for each of the sectors (normally 10 sectors). Most of them should be on TSX 60 list.
-check their prices, performance, fundamentals etc. You can get recommendations on various sites, blogs, newspapers, banks recommendations list…
-buy your first stock.
-from here everything will go on…
Do not expect that that after you bought a stock the price necessary will go up… sometime will go down or up and down or up.
Have patience… if you invested in a strong company, soon or later the price will go up.
Right now the market seems to be considered at the top and many people saying that is possible to be a correction soon… but most of the best investors said that you cannot time the market so, myself, I am still buying.
Also, don’t forget about diversification… at the beginning buy stocks in different sectors and I will avoid materials and healthcare as they are the most volatile.
As final and the most important advice: read, study, analyze… try to understand where you are investing in.
Good luck!
Cris
Thank you Cris for valuable advise!
Best Regards,
Congrats on a nice increase. If only our net worth would always go up this much every month.
Hello IH,
Thank you for stopping by,
I will be more than happy to see if my net worth increase like this every month, especially with middle income earning and with 100% stock portfolio 🙂
Cheers,
nice work, always nice to see it go up!
keep it going
cheers
Hello Passive Canadian Income,
Thank you for stopping by and your feedback!
Best Regards,
Hello,
I want to start off by thanking you for taking your time and writing about your investment journey. It hasn’t only given me the confidence to dive into the market myself at a young age, but you have also given me the opportunity to learn from your strategies and ways of thinking.
I took your advice, bought Intelligent Investor from Benjamin Graham and it was an incredibly insightful read about value investing and investing in general and hence my question to you: what is your honest opinion and thoughts about Bonds? I can see that neither your US nor your Canadian Portfolios contain any select bonds or bond ETF. How are you leveraging the risk of equities in case of a market turn down if there are no bonds within your selections? Or do you consider the fixed income ETF as bonds?
Thank you for your time, and I hope to be following your journey till your reach your goal in 2024!
All the best,
Anthony
Hello Anthony,
Thank you for stopping by, I so glad that you had a chance to read Intelligent Investor by Benjamin Graham. It is a Investors’ ‘Bible’.
Regarding bonds, I had few bonds ETFs, but I sold them all in November 2016 after I joined and built a decent amount of money in my employer Define Benefits Pension Plan. I consider my employer pension plan as my fixed income portion, and start to focus on equities alone.
As you know, I invest for long-term. By history, equities outperform all other assets classes. I may consider adding some bonds after I build a decent size of portfolio.
Diversification is a key to minimize investment risks. If you don’t have any pension plan, you may consider adding some high quality bonds or bond ETFs in your portfolio to avoid unpleasant market surprises. In this ultra low interest rate environment, ladder ETFs would be my first choice.
Please do your own research or discuss with a qualified financial advisor before make any financial decisions.
Best Regards,
Fantastic increase, I hope you can continue to keep this increasing for many years to come. Cheers
Hello BHL,
Thank you for stopping by,
Always nice to the numbers go in the positive direction,
Cheers,