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Welcome to September’s edition of money while you sleep. September has been a pretty busy month work wise as we are in the bulk of our busy turnaround season. Every year many oil refineries take on large maintenance prior to the colder season. Being in this industry can be exhausting and a big reason into why my family and I set out on a path to financial freedom.

A little story

In 2016 at the age of 33 it was time to build a foundation that could allow us to spend more time doing the things we want to do. The last 5 years have been amazing but not without challenges. I know many of you may think wow he started late, you would be right about that. However I don’t like to look at it that way, I’d prefer to look back and say wow look how far we have come in such a short time. In 2017 we started making a goal list and our journey into the dividend investing world. This included small financials targets in order to get us that much farther to a life of “Choice”. I used the word choice as its the one key word that really sticks out to where we want to be. I’ve never set a target on a specific age to retire because personally I had no idea what that meant or what was needed to get their, I just knew that we had to do things differently if we wanted our visions to become our reality.

2020 was a big test as we have a large amount of our net worth in the stock market. Watching your portfolio drop upwards of 30-35% can quite frankly be scary which it was! As I started to panic a bit and my brain telling me sell and get out, I had my wife that kept me in control and said this is what you have been waiting for. She continued. Your always talking about you can’t wait for the markets to drop so you can add to great companies that are on your watch list, this is one of those moments. She was right! So in those scary times I really took a good look at what we owned and got rid of some companies that quite honestly we probably should of never owned in the first place and added to other companies that you could say are recession proof and have made a habit of performing strongly in uncertain times. This included banks, insurance companies and a small amount of technology companies. Honestly I couldn’t have been more thankful for my wife’s words that day as those portfolio decisions saw increases of over 100% gains. I’m telling this story so those out there that have struggled along the way or maybe started late have hope and know your not alone. Stay consistent, learn from your mistakes, keep learning and believe in yourself. Trust me it’s worth it!

Before I go into the monthly update here are a few things my family and I have been up to.

• Spent plenty of hours at the driving range working on the swing.
• Kids went back to school and C had his first day of kindergarten.
• Celebrated another year around the sun turning 39.
• Started reading Extreme Ownership (A must read).
• Z started competitive dance and guitar lessons.
• C started “Can Skate” which really should be called “Can’t Skate”.

Portfolio details:

This month our portfolio was quite flat which is not surprising with seeing the markets come back a bit. This month we added to one of our favorite growth companies. The TSX dropped from 20,582 to 20,070 or 2.5% in September. These type of pullbacks are healthy.

Quick trades:

No quick trades in the month.

Please note: I only do this with companies I’m comfortable holding for a long period of time.

Sold:

No sells this month

Bought:

Added to our AQN.TO position by purchasing 97 shares at $19.70

Who is Algonquin Power & Utilities Corp:

WELL Health Technologies Corp. owns and operates a portfolio of primary healthcare facilities in Canada and the United Algonquin Power & Utilities Corp., through its subsidiaries, owns and operates a portfolio of regulated and non-regulated generation, distribution, and transmission utility assets in Canada, the United States, Chile, and Bermuda. It generates and sells electrical energy through non-regulated renewable and clean energy power generation facilities. The company also owns and operates hydroelectric, wind, solar, and thermal facilities with generating capacity of approximately 2.1 gigawatt; and regulated electric, natural gas, water distribution, and wastewater collection utility systems. It serves approximately 306,000 electric connections; 371,000 natural gas connections; and 409,000 regulated water distribution and wastewater collection utility systems in the states of California, New Hampshire, Missouri, Kansas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Georgia, Illinois, Iowa, Massachusetts, New York, Arizona, Texas, and the Province of New Brunswick. The company was incorporated in 1988 and is headquartered in Oakville, Canada.States. The company also provides digital electronic medical records (EMR) software services; and telehealth services. As of March 29, 2021, it operated 27 medical clinics; and provided digital EMR software and services to approximately 2,200 medical clinics across Canada. It also engages in developing digital health applications. The company was formerly known as Wellness Lifestyles Inc. and changed its name to WELL Health Technologies Corp. in July 2018. WELL Health Technologies Corp. was incorporated in 2010 and is headquartered in Vancouver, Canada.

Our why:

Its no secret that both utilities and renewables have under performed the market this year. AQN gives you a nice mix of the two sectors and one of the best companies in their respected sectors. AQN continues to increase the dividend by reaching the 10th consecutive year of increasing dividends with an average increase of 9.7% over that time. As of writing this they have a healthy 48% payout ratio allowing for future annual increases. If only we could get a 10% increase at our jobs each year! Currently trading at a PE ratio of 13 well below the 5 year average of 23. As we see the world continue to invest in renewables AQN gives you a piece of that which I’m sure will help revenues continue to climb long term. With this purchase we will receive an additional $66.19 in dividends and we will be able to DRIP 4 shares per quarter.

Dividend increases and decreases

• Received a special dividend for the second time this year from Barrick Gold (ABX.TO)
• Freehold royalties (FRU.TO) increase dividend by 25%
• Fortis (FTS.TO) announced an increase to their dividend of 6%

2016 – 2021 Dividends received

We had another strong month of dividends by receiving $369.30 which is a nice increase of 15% YOY. This keeps us on track to beating our 2021 goal of receiving at least $3,400 in dividends. If nothing changes we would beat our goal by 9%, 1% higher last month numbers. Hopefully banks will be able to increase the dividends before the end of the year to really help jumpstart 2022.

Dividends received

Stock List	Dividend	Drip	Account
FRU.TO	$5.85	No	TFSA 1
EXE.TO	$7.44	No	TFSA 1
CSH.UN	$16.37	Yes, 1 share	TFSA 1
ALA.TO	$5.58	No	TFSA 1
PLZ.UN	$10.45	Yes, 2 shares	TFSA 1
NPI.TO	$14.10	No	TFSA 1
SIS.TO	$5.40	No	TFSA 1
EIF.TO	$6.84	No	TFSA 1
ENB.TO	$68.47	Yes, 1 share	TFSA 1
MFC.TO	$103.04	Yes, 4 shares	TFSA 1
XTC.TO	$33.10	Yes, 3 shares	TFSA 1
SU.TO	$13.86	No	TFSA 1
ABX.TO	$38.97	No	TFSA 2
FTS.TO	$32.83	No	RESP
ATD-B.TO	$7.00	No	TFSA 2
Total:	$369.30	

Current economy conditions

Canada unemployment rates % have now started to fall which seems obvious due to Canada starting to open for business. As you can see from the chart below we hit unemployment of 7.5% in July which is down slightly from 7.8% in June. August came in at 7.1% followed by a slight decrease in September of 6.9%. Governments are making it pretty clear that Canada will not be going into another lockdown and CERB might be coming to an end so going into Christmas season I would not be shocked to see this continue to driver downwards

Gold Prices

Gold continues to hang around $1,700-$1,800 USD range. With the amount of inflation were starting to see and government spending still a concern Gold should continue to stick around even with many trading in their Gold for Bitcoin.

Market

Regardless of market conditions if your a long term investor every month is good to add in. I learned the hard way in the past by thinking I could trade myself to financial freedom and trust me people only tell you the good ones. Right now like mentioned earlier the utility sector continues to underperform, I see this as an opportunity. So looking to add in this space as we go into the last quarter of the year.

Sectors I’m currently looking at

• Technology
• Utilities
• Renewables

Current Dividend watch list (Already own 2 of the 5)

• Fortis
• Quebecor Inc..
• Enbridge
• Algonquin Power and Utilities Corp
• Brookfield Renewable Partners L.P.

Current Growth watch list (Already own 4 of the 5)

• Nuvei Corporation
• WELL Health
• Good Natured Products
• Bragg Gaming Group
• BRP Inc

Thanks for reading and feel free to leave a comment!

Invest in yourself

Brian

Disclosure:  I wrote this article myself, and it expresses my own opinions. I am not receiving compensation for it. Please ensure you do your own research.