Dividend Update: 2017 Dividend Total!

    Making a very belated update of my dividend income from 2017. I have some mixed feelings for my year of investing and building up my portfolio's passive income. While I am pleased with receiving $1,881.49 in dividends, which as I usually like to qualify against pretending my portfolio is working a minimum wage job. My little money making Wisp worked about 134 hours at $14/hr in 2017.

2017 Div's Received	$1,881.4
2016 Div's Received	$1,748.5
2015 Div's Received	$1,229.6
2014 Div's Received	$402.00
2013 Div's Received	$9.36

    The reason I am not too pleased over that amount is that compared to my 2016 dividends, the increase is only ~$133, which could pretty much be accounted for in dividend increases from my holdings, and the DRIP'ing of my Pizza Pizza(PZA.TO), Manulife(MFC.TO) and Algonquin Power(AQN.TO) holdings. 

    However going further into the reasons why my dividend increase progressed slower that year, there are two distinct factors.

1) I redirected a portion of my new contributions, dividends and holdings into non-dividend paying companies. With a portfolio weighting target cap of 10% of my overall holdings within my Tax Free Savings Account. At the time of writing that has grown to 13.76.

2) Expenses in 2017, and trailing into early 2018 went up quite a bit as I got MARRIED! We had a fair bit of lead time from being engaged in July 2016, so I had diverted a good portion of my savings into cash holdings rather than investing. The result however is that with our savings, gifts and roughly sticking to budget all of our wedding expenses were covered in cash with a good chunk of savings left over with the gifts we received. So I am very pleased with that result, and not the occasional wedding nightmares you hear of where  the Bride and Groom are left with thousands in debt from a one day event.

    2018 is looking better already for dividend income and I am refocusing away from non-dividend paying growth companies as I am over my targeted threshold of 10%. I am also looking into building up some of my current holdings in order to get them to pay out enough to utilize Synthetic DRIP'ing to continue building my dividends. Doing so will help me get back on track to my previous year over year gains in dividend income. From the end of 2013 when I just started out earning my first $9.36 and breaking over $400 in 2014 working as a 'full time' Starbucks barista which continued till near the end of 2015 when I started as a part-time teller at a bank and built up my dividends by another $800. 

My expenses have not gone up too much in the past couple years as I keep mindful of my expenses and my income has gone up as I am working as a full-time financial advisor.