Dividend Income – June 2026 Update

Hey everyone, welcome to another monthly dividend income update.

A quick reminder for long-time and new readers: we share these monthly dividend income updates to share the progress on our financial independence journey. Our goal is to retire early in the near future by living off dividends.

In terms of dividend portfolio construction, we use a very simple strategy:

• We invest in individual US and Canadian dividend-paying stocks for steady and predictable income 
• We invest in low-cost index ETFs for 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. 

Throughout June, we were busy harvesting fruits and vegetables from our backyard garden. Unfortunately, this year’s strawberry harvest was a bit disappointing. We didn’t get a massive amount of strawberries compared to last year. Last year, we’d get 2 kg or so of strawberries every other day. But this year we only managed to harvest around 8 kg of strawberries. It was not enough to eat and freeze some for consumption later.

We did, however, get a lot of dill, rhubarb, kale, and raspberries from the garden in June. This summer, we anticipate harvesting cauliflowers, beans, edamame, garlic, onions, carrots, cabbages, black currants, red currants, cucumbers, and peppers.  

As you can tell, summertime is great in the Lai family because we can eat fresh produce from the garden basically every single day. 

No pictures of the garden from June though. I guess both Mrs. T and I were too busy tending it! I’ll need to remember to take some pictures so I can share in next month’s dividend update.

Dividend Income – June 2026 Update

In June, we received dividends from the following companies:

• Brookfield Asset Management (BAM.TO)
• Brookfield Renewable Corp (BEPC.TO)
• BlackRock (BLK)
• Brookfield Corporation (BN.TO)
• Canadian National Railway (CNR.TO)
• Enbridge (ENB.TO)
• Fortis (FTS.TO)
• Alphabet (GOOGL)
• Granite REIT (GRT.UN)
• Hydro One (H.TO)
• Intact Financial (IFC.TO)
• McDonald’s (MCD)
• Manulife Financial (MFC.TO)
• Invesco NASDAQ 100 (QQQM)
• SmartCentres REIT (SRU.UN)
• Visa (V)
• Waste Management (WM)
• iShares Core MSCI AC World ex-Canada ETF (XAW.TO)

The dividends from 18 different companies added up to $7,557.51. 

Since BAM, BEPC, and BN all pay dividends in USD by default and the payments get converted to CAD by our brokers, the weaker CAD resulted in us getting a higher than expected dividend income for June.

We certainly won’t complain! 

Compared to June 2025, we saw a YoY increase of 31.36%, the second highest YoY increase so far in 2026. Woohoo! 

Dividend Hikes

After a fantastic month of dividend hikes in May when our forward annual dividend income increased by $1,169.80, we didn’t see any dividend hikes in June. 

In other words, we got a big fat zero for June for organic dividend increases. That’s unfortunate, but not much we can do about it because we are at the mercy of each company’s board. The board must approve dividend hikes and that can only happen when companies are profitable. 

Interestingly, going back to our June dividend income report from 2025 to 2020, I noticed the following:

• 2025 – 1.2% dividend hike from Target
• 2024 – 1.8% dividend hike from Target
• 2023 – 1.9% dividend hike from Target
• 2022 – 20% dividend hike from Target
• 2021 – 32.4% dividend hike from Target
• 2020 – 3.03% dividend hike from Target

Since we no longer hold Target in our dividend portfolio, it makes total sense why we didn’t see any dividend hikes in June. 

I believe closing Target in July last year was the correct decision, as the stock price has taken a beating over the last five years. Furthermore, if we exclude the 2021 and 2022 dividend hikes, the dividend payout increase rates have been quite poor. 

Dividend Reinvestment Plans

We no longer drip everything in all of our accounts. Back in late April, we turned off DRIP in non-registered accounts and RRSPs. This will help us build up our cash reserve as we get closer and closer to early retirement. 

We continue to drip in TFSAs to take advantage of tax-free compounding. 

In June, we dripped the following shares:

• 2.9258 shares of Brookfield Asset Management (BAM.TO)
• 1.3959 shares of Brookfield Renewable Corp (BECP.TO)
• 0.4313 shares of Granite REIT (GRT.UN)
• 5.9463 shares of Manulife Financial (MFC.TO)
• 6.327 shares of SmartCentres REIT (SRU.UN)

In total, 17.0263 shares were dripped and $833.39 out of $7,557.51 was reinvested automatically. More importantly, by enrolling in DRIP, we increased our forward annual dividend by $32.84. 

Stock Transactions

Sharp-eyed readers are probably wondering what we did with the USD dividends from GOOGL, MCD, and QQQM that we received in our RRSPs.

As mentioned, we are accumulating cash in our RRSPs but only for the CAD dividends. For USD dividends, since the amount is typically relatively small, we have been manually purchasing more US stocks or ETFs.

With some money saved aside in June and the USD dividends received, we purchased the following:

• 6.2291 shares of BlackRock (BLK)
• 121.9481 shares of Canadian Natural Resources (CNQ.TO)
• 12.9383 shares of Alphabet (GOOGL)
• 16.0337 shares of Visa (V)
• 167.3137 shares of iShares Core MSCI AC World ex-Canada ETF (XAW.TO)

We went heavy on XAW (~$10k worth) to maximize the semi-annual distribution in June. We had some USD available thanks to the closing of VICI and WMT in May. This explains how we were able to purchase the likes of BlackRock. Alphabet, and Visa when we weren’t actively converting CAD to USD via Norbert’s Gambit. 

These purchases added around $550 toward our forward annual dividend income. 

Dividend Scorecard

Here’s our dividend scorecard for June:

The poor drip ratio was expected, as mentioned earlier, we have stopped dripping in non-registered accounts and RRSPs. Although I was very disappointed with the big fat zero on the dividend hike front, I realized that’s a parameter we can’t control. 

I was quite pleased to add about $550 in forward annual dividends from all the stock transactions we made in June. 

We usually make most of our purchases in the first half of the year. In the second half, we usually start saving for next year’s TFSA contribution. Therefore, I anticipate we will be quieter on the stock transaction front for the rest of the year.

Some Random Thoughts

#1 The Canadian banks

Who would have predicted the amazing performance from the Canadian banks over the last year? 

I certainly didn’t!

At the time of writing, these are the 1-year returns of the Big Six:

• 70.20% for TD (33.24% YTD)
• 63.06% for BNS (20.82% YTD)
• 58.59% for RY (22.63% YTD)
• 59.24% for BMO (37.34% YTD)
• 62.23% for NA (32.54% YTD)
• 67.08% for CM (32.34% YTD)

You might be wondering, what’s causing the gains? 

All six banks have been beating analyst expectations. Furthermore, the credit-loss disaster everyone was expecting hasn’t materialized – and hopefully it doesn’t. The banks have been setting aside less and less money for provisions for credit losses (PCLs). 

TD leads the way on return. In the aftermath of the money laundering scandal, the bank heavily overhauled both its board and management. This has resulted in an amazing turnaround of the stock price. 

Royal Bank’s acquisition of HSBC Canada has paid off. The integration has been running ahead of Royal Bank’s own targets and has improved RY’s return on equity. National Bank and its acquisition of Canadian Western Bank has also paid off. It has allowed National Bank to expand into western Canada and scale. 

More importantly, I think many investors and fund managers have been pushing money into “safer” investments like the Canadian Banks. The solid dividend-paying history of the Canadian banks certainly helped with the safe investment message. 

Late last year, we considered trimming TD slightly and using the money to buy something else. After a lot of discussion, we decided against it. I suppose we made the right decision to ride the winner. Since this run has been quite phenomenal, I am again asking myself whether it has gone too far. Does it make sense to trim some bank shares and reinvest the money elsewhere? 

I can’t predict the future, so I really don’t know what the right answer is. However, I believe a couple of things. First, time in the market is far superior to timing the market. Second, since we started investing in Canadian banks in 2012, every time I doubted them, they have always surprised me. What I do know is that at around 52 weeks high, it’s probably not the right time to add more new capital into the Canadian banks. 

With these two things in mind, we probably will just keep holding Canadian banks and let them do their magic. 

#2 Crazy returns of AI stocks

Although the Canadian banks’ 1-year returns have been awesome, if we turn our attention to the popular AI stocks like Micron, AMD, Broadcom, Nvidia, and Samsung, we can see most of them have even higher 1-year returns. This is very mind-boggling!

Micron’s near 700% return the past year is absolutely jaw-dropping. Both Broadcom and Nvidia had very solid returns the last couple of years but have “slowed down” compared to some AI stocks. 

But what goes up quickly typically goes down quickly, too. Take Micron as an example. The stock is extremely volatile. Micron’s 5-year monthly beta is around 2.14, indicating that for every 1% move in the overall market, Micron’s stock price is expected to move 2.14 times in the same direction. If we only look at the past 1 year, Micron’s 1-year monthly beta is around 3.07.

Short-term trading Micron stock is definitely not for the faint of heart! Even if you are a semi-long-term holder of Micron, the daily fluctuation is pretty insane and not something I can handle.

With the insane yearly return of many of these AI stocks, everyone is asking, will the AI bubble finally pop? Are we just following the dotcom bubble? If so, when will the bubble pop? 

Nelson and I discussed the AI bubble on DIY Wealth Canada Podcast Episode 35.

It’s always hard to predict when the bubble will pop or if it will pop at all. Most people I know are using AI in some ways every day, so I believe AI is definitely here to stay. The concerns about the AI bubble have more to do with companies pouring and spending a lot of money into AI-related investments. What’s even more concerning is the circular investments these companies are doing… like Nvidia investing $2 billion into OpenAI while OpenAI buys $1 billion worth of Nvidia chips.

My view is that this is all just another hype. At some point, the valuation will dictate the price. This can lead to either one of two things: the bubble pops and the stock price drops to a reasonable valuation, or the share price returns slow down or even stagnate. 

Summary – Dividend Income June 2026 Update

With the first half of 2026 wrapped up, we have received $39,758.50 in dividend income. That’s an average of $6,626.42 per month. If we were to extrapolate for the entire year, that’d put us at $79,517. However, I suspect the actual number might be a bit lower because we had the tailwind from drip in the first half (remember that we are only dripping in TFSAs). In addition, since XAW distributions are semi-annual (January and June), we won’t receive anything in the second half of the year. 

To put things into perspective, $39,758.50 after six months is equivalent to:

• $219.66 per day or $9.15 per hour that our dividend portfolio is generating for us, regardless of what we’re doing
• $1,472.54 per week or $36.81 per hour wage after 28 working weeks

Both Mrs. T and I continue to feel blessed and appreciative of what we have built since 2011. Over the years, I believe we have demonstrated it is indeed possible to build up a sizable portfolio that can generate consistent cash flow. 

Please remember, I’m writing these monthly dividend income updates to share our FI journey and progress, not to brag or boast. 

One thing that I keep getting reminded of: be patient; consistency pays off in the long run.

How was your dividend income in June?