About Me

    Hello there! This is my blog capturing my experience, thoughts and results since the start of my journey into dividend investing and portfolio building. I also have a Twitter account which I am active on.  I graduated university in 2013 with a BBA and found work as a coffee-slinger at Starbuck's and was living at home in Toronto, Canada. I busied myself with paying off the little debt I was lucky to have and saving money, often hitting almost 50% of income saved! My current goal for 2015 is to hit savings rates of 40%.

    Currently while working, I have been very busy looking for positions within the financial sector, trying to get a foot in at one of the major Canadian banks. My goal is to eventually work as a Financial Planner, and get the Certified Financial Planner designation (CFP). Last year I passed the Canadian Securities Course (CSC), which is a first step in getting the CFP.

    So in the meantime, besides just sharing my personal financial journey here, I also want to build on my passion for learning and sharing what I learn with others here with informative posts like: Brokerage reviews, the TFSA, Using Excel and When Talking to an Adviser. By no means am I a professional though, so when it comes to stocks and advice based on how I see things, remember to also do research for yourself and utilize your wealth management professionals who should know your entire situation and plans.

    My inspiration for starting this blog is from another blogger, Dividend Mantra, as well as other bloggers and sites which I list on my Blogroll. From first reading and following his progress month by month since around 2012, I decided to start my own blog! And I hope we all get to learn a few beneficial pieces of advice and ideas along the way together!

    My general habits and inclinations going through life definitely align to a certain degree towards being quite frugal and goal orientated in certain respects. I have never bought anything which I did not have the money to pay for. I prefer to get only what I really need and not go over the top, for example my phone, and phone plan cost me less than $30 since I didn't go for new generation smart phone with data. Why spend all that when there is WiFi at home and at work for free? Since starting my investment journey, I have found that I get a lot of satisfaction whenever I add to my portfolio, and seeing how one little purchase will earn me the equivalent of a few hours of working a minimum wage job every year. While it may not be a lot, even just $20 or $30 more a year in dividend income, that becomes money that I do not have to work for to earn. Better yet, I look for companies who's dividend will increase year over year above inflation, slowly earning me more for not working, just sitting around holding the shares!

    Since starting this blog my portfolio has grown from its very starting point of $1,500 to at the time of writing $28,684! With a 2014 monthly top dividend payment of $64, to this years highest of $208! It has been a very exciting adventure for me thus far and I intend on staying on this path with the end goal of eventually being able to have the ability to live comfortably off of my portfolio, and the freedom to have a choice on what I want to do with my time.

    And lastly, you may be asking what exactly is a 'Wisp'? Well, being a younger, or a 'millennial' I have played quite a few video games when I was younger, my favourite game being Warcraft 3: The Frozen Throne, a strategy and reaction based game requiring you to build up an economy and defeat your human opponents.

    One of the basic worker units in the game which gathered resources (like dividends are resources) is called a Wisp. Well that little worker, if defended and left alone would endlessly work hard for you harvesting lumber for your economy, and this particular worker did so without damaging or depleting the tree which it worked on. In a way, I enjoy thinking of my portfolio as that little Wisp, working away at the companies that I am 'defending' with my shares in them while steadily collecting the dividends that those companies through off every month or quarter.