Welcome to another monthly dividend update.
I have posted a monthly dividend update report every month since August 2014. If my calculation is correct, this marks the 145th monthly dividend report.
I publish these monthly dividend reports not to brag or show off. That is never the intention. These dividend reports aim to demonstrate that, over decades, it is possible to build a sizable dividend portfolio that generates steady income sufficient to cover all expenses.
A quick reminder on what we hold:
- Individual US and Canadian dividend stocks for steady & easy-to-calculate dividend income
- Low-cost index ETFs for greater diversification
At the time of writing, we own 35 individual stocks and 2 index ETFs. You can check out what we own on our dividends page. For those curious readers, you can also see our historical annual returns on the yearly portfolio return page. Some years we did better than the indices, some years not as well. On average though, we have done better than the indices.
In the first half of 2026, we received $39,758.50 in dividend income. If you asked me back in 2014 if we could generate that much passive income in six months after 13 years, I would have told you that you were out of your mind!
But that’s the cool thing about dividend growth investing (and I suppose investing in general). The compounding effect really picks up once the portfolio value crosses over $1M. It’s very similar to rolling a snowball down a hill. At first, not much is happening, but as the snowball gets to a certain size, it gets bigger and moves faster at an exponential pace.
In July, we stayed busy with our backyard garden. We enjoyed cauliflowers, cucumbers, tomatoes, rhubarb, black currants, red currants, beans, peas, carrots, apples, and beans.
I also had the pleasure of attending my high school reunion in Vancouver. About 30 people showed up to the reunion, or about 15% of the graduation class. For the most part, everyone still looked the same and we all more or less remembered everyone’s name. It was really great to see so many familiar faces and catch up with everyone.
Dividend Income – July 2026 Update
In July, we received dividends from the following companies:
- Alimentation Couche-Tard (ATD.TO)
- BCE (BCE.TO)
- Bank of Nova Scotia (BNS.TO)
- CIBC (CM.TO)
- Canadian Natural Resources (CNQ.TO)
- Capital Power Corp (CPX.TO)
- Granite REIT (GRT.UN)
- Coca-Cola (KO)
- Power Corp (POW.TO)
- SmartCentres REIT (SRU.UN)
- Telus (T.TO)
- TD (TD.TO)
- TC Energy Corp (TRP.TO)
The 13 dividend payouts added to $9,091.60. This was the second-highest monthly dividend income so far in 2026. What a great month!
The July amount was higher than April’s mostly due to Power Corp paying dividends in July this year rather than August. The other portion of the increase was due to the Canadian banks such as Bank of Nova Scotia and TD raising their dividends in the last quarter and paying them this quarter.
Compared to July last year, we saw a 29.22% YoY increase! Needless to say, we were very pleased with this over 25% YoY increase.
Dividend Hikes & Reductions
After a very quiet month in June, it was nice to see a couple of announcements, albeit one was good and one was bad (and expected).
First, the good news. Capital Power increased its dividend payout by 2% to $0.7048 per share. Considering that Capital Power increased its dividend payout by around 6% annually since 2014, it was slightly disappointing to see a much lower payout increase this year. But an increase is better than no increase.
Second, the bad news. We finally received the bad (and much expected) news on Telus cutting its dividend payout. To clean up its books, Telus’ Board of Directors decided to reduce the dividend payout by 55% from $0.4184 to $0.1875 per share. This effectively brought down Telus’ dividend yield from north of 10% to 5%, a much more reasonable level. More importantly, the received dividend is expected to generate approximately $2.7 billion in cumulative cash savings through 2028.
Most Telus shareholders, ourselves included, have been waiting for this dividend cut announcement for months. In fact, I have been estimating a 50% cut since the beginning of the year, so I wasn’t too far off. Yes, it always sucks to see a dividend reduction but in Telus’ case, it is much needed.
Despite the dividend reduction, Telus’ share price tanked significantly (usually the share price would go up if the street expects a dividend cut for a while). When I reviewed Telus’ earnings report, I determined the price drop was likely due to weak free cash flow. Nelson, my co-host for the DIY Wealth Canada Podcast, also pointed out the same thing.
I’m pleased the new Telus CEO, Victor Dodig, is taking steps to improve Telus’ financial well-being and cutting the dividend payout can be seen as the sensible first step. Hopefully he and the board will make more changes to get Telus out of the deep dark hole they have been in for the past several years.
Since Telus is less than 1% of our dividend portfolio and we’re in the red with our holding, we don’t have any plan to sell shares right now. I will admit, this is going to be a VERY slow recovery. With Starlink discussing future mobile services (i.e., Starlink Mobile), we’ll need to pay close attention to the Canadian telecommunications sector.
The best-case scenario with Telus? Maybe they can turn it around and follow AT&T’s share price recovery.
The one dividend hike and one dividend reduction reduced our forward annual dividend by $1,432.99.
Ouch indeed. But hopefully this is short-term pain for long-term gain (I’m being very optimistic here).
Dividend Reinvestment Plans
At the time of writing, we are only dripping in TFSAs. We no longer drip in RRSPs and taxable accounts. This is because we are working on increasing our cash savings and preparing for eventual early retirement.
In July, we dripped the following shares:
- 0.7429 shares of ATD.TO
- 5.5684 shares of BCE.TO
- 0.754 shares of BNS.TO
- 2.0379 shares of CM.TO
- 1.8589 shares of CPX.TO
- 0.4164 shares of GRT.UN
- 3.494 shares of POW.TO
- 6.3459 shares of SRU.UN
- 3.7541 shares of TD.TO
- 2.927 shares of TRP.TO
In total, 27.9095 shares were dripped, with $2,386.77 out of $9,091.60 reinvested immediately.
By enrolling in DRIP, we increased our forward annual dividend by $77.47.
Stock Transactions
After a VERY busy first half of 2026, we are now saving and accumulating money for next year’s TFSA contribution room.
As a result, we didn’t make any stock transactions in July at all.
Depending on what happens with my work’s RSUs that are supposed to vest in the second half of this year, we might utilize some of that money to buy dividend-paying stocks and index ETFs. This is assuming we can find undervalued stocks as they are getting harder and harder to find these days…
Dividend Scorecard
Here’s our dividend scorecard for July:
As we have stopped dripping in RRSPs and taxable accounts, our DRIP ratio has dropped from over 90% to around 25%. This is expected as we start building our cash wedge.
It was disappointing to see Telus cutting its dividend payout by 55%, but I believe it is long overdue. Telus should have cut the dividend payout a while ago, so it’s better late than never.
Hopefully the company will stop making stupid decisions and silly investments (like BCE investing in Ziply Fiber). I think one thing Telus can do is to spin out its various arms like Telus Health, Telus Agriculture & Consumer Goods, Telus Digital, and focus on becoming a pure telecommunications company.
Summary – Dividend Income July 2026 Update
The second half of 2026 started with a loud bang. I was really happy to see July was the second-highest dividend income month in 2026. Will we beat the $39,758.50 dividend income from the first six months?
Considering there are no distributions from XAW in the second half of the year, I’m not 100% sure we can beat this number. I guess we will have to wait and see…
What’s nice to see is that we have received $48,850.10 in dividend income after seven months. This amount is getting quite close to $50,189.07 that we received for the entire 2023 and I’m pretty certain that we will pass this amount by the middle of August.
To put things in perspective, $48,850.10 after seven months is equivalent to:
- $230.42 per day or $9.60 per hour our dividend portfolio is generating for us, regardless of what we’re doing
- $1,575.81 per week or $39.40 per hour of working wage after 31 working weeks
Thank you for your ongoing and encouraging support. I really appreciate it.
How was your July dividend income?
