Over the last couple of months, I’ve been trying to focus a little more on Asset allocation, geographical diversification and taking as much control of my portfolio as I can by selling some funds and starting to funnel everything into my direct investing portfolio.
I decided it would be fun to do a “deep dive” into my own portfolio. I had a rough idea of what I held in each fund, what % of my funds are in equity vs real estate – etc – but I thought it would be interesting to dig into each one, and take a look. I was also curious at what rate my overall portfolio was growing, my monthly dividends were growing, and how my asset allocation changed if I included my house & cabin vs just looking at my investment portfolio. I also thought it would help if I made it as visual as possible – so I created some charts & graphs to help along the way.
Investment Portfolio Growth:
Let’s start with the basics: Total Investment Portfolio. When I first started tracking my investments (January 2015), I had a portfolio valued at $160,314.49. It has been 37 months since I started tracking my journey….let’s see where are now:
At the time of writing this my investment portfolio sits at: $303,131.11. In a short 3 year period – I have almost doubled my portfolio value. Not too shabby – but before I start getting to excited it is important to understand why this happened…
This was due to a few factors:
I obviously don’t expect to double my portfolio every 3 years, in fact I am somewhat expecting the portfolio to take some big dips over the next few months – or whenever the market decides to correct itself.
The market has been red hot the last few years – and nobody knows when it will come crashing down (but it will – and that’s okay). If I was closer to retirement, I’d probably be reducing my equity % in my portfolio, and increasing my fixed income % – but I have time on my side. That said – I did start to wonder how my current portfolio looks in terms of Equities Vs Fixed Income Vs Real Estate. So let’s take a look.
Asset Allocation/Geographical Allocation:
I decided to look at this in 2 ways – first just looking at my investments, and then including my house & cabin. I will only include the equity I have in my house (deduct the mortgage) and I will include the full cabin, since it has no mortgage.
Let’s see how it breaks down.
I am sure 99% of financial advisor’s would cringe at the low fixed income %, however to be honest what worries me most is how over exposed I am to the Canadian market. In fact, prior to switching one of my Mutual funds to direct investing and swapping it to XAW (All world, EX Canada) my Canadian exposure was closer to 60%. All my accounts are registered so there are no tax implications right now – or need to have a higher and more preferential Canadian % of equities. My plan is to slowly try and get to:
I was curious to see how much this would change, if I included my real estate (just what I actually own). Results are:
When I include my physical real estate (minus mortgage) the real estate % jumps up to 35% of my assets – which I *THINK* is normal – but I could be way off. Let me know if these numbers seem about where they should be.
Passive Income:
The number one thing most people online who blog about finances/investing (at least the people I follow) seem to cover/focus on is there monthly dividend/passive income streams. If I am being honest, I never paid too much attention to my monthly “passive income” and probably still don’t as much as most bloggers I follow. I’ve always been more interested in overall total portfolio growth/gains. I always figured – as long as my overall gains are beating the markets, eventually I can switch my portfolio to more income producing assets – and the larger the portfolio – the more income i’ll get. That said – I’d be lying If I said I didn’t get a thrill from seeing monthly income going up – or seeing a stock I own getting a dividend raise. Also now that I am getting older I think it is important to start thinking about how much income i’ll need each month and looking for ways to grow my monthly income.
I only have 3 years of data to look at – but I figured I should look at how my monthly dividend income is coming along. Here are two ways to look at it:
Monthly Gains Year over year:
Total Monthly Dividends:
*One important thing to note, 40% of my total portfolio is currently in a fund that pays ZERO dividends. Once I inevitably switch this fund to my direct investing, my monthly dividends should increase substantially (an extra $275-$400 per month depending what I invest it in).
The good news is – that even though monthly passive income hasn’t been a priority for me over the last 3 years – it is still going up each month(for the most part) . When you look at the year over year growth it looks even better.
Account Allocation:
Lastly, I wanted to look at what types of accounts my investments are held in to get a better understanding of if I am on the right track – specifically from a taxable income in retirement view. Here is what the numbers say:
My RRSP accounts for over 80% of my total investments, while my spousal RRSP is currently under 2%. If this keeps up – it clearly won’t be the most efficient use of savings in retirement as my taxable income will be pretty high. Our TFSA’s currently account for 16% of our investments which will be nice in retirement. The kids education fund doesn’t have anything in it yet – as I just opened it – but this will be a focus over the next few years as well.
A couple takeaways:
Some questions for other bloggers/investors:
As always – Any other questions or concerns/comments? Let me know in the comments!
The value of your portfolio is pretty impressive! I remember watching the marijuana stocks and thinking they’d be a dream come true for swing traders. I never did find the courage to buy any though!
I don’t own any property, but about 27% of my portfolio is in REITs. I’m hoping to decrease that over the next couple of years.
My current yield is about 5.39%. My main focus is on monthly income, and that’s because I hope to quit my job in less than five years. If I had a longer time frame, I would probably focus on capital gains instead.
I’m not sure how to answer your last question. A high exposure to Canadian stocks isn’t necessarily a bad thing. If your money is spread out over all the different sectors, you’re still pretty diversified. So I think you’re OK there. I’d be more concerned about your low fixed income allocation.
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Hey Five more Years!
Thanks for stopping by. You plan to quit your job in 5 years but you have no property? Your portfolio must be huge…or your expenses extremely small..either way – if you can pull it off – kudos to you! How large do you expect your portfolio to be in 5 years?
Your portfolio has a nice yield – are you comfortable its sustainable? If I had the same yield as you my yearly dividend income would be just over 16,000 (still not enough for me to retire unfortunately..but more then double what im making now)
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My living expenses are very low! I’m only spending about $17,000 a year right now. My portfolio should be around $400,000 to $500,000 in five years. I’m planning to slowly move my money out of REITs and into dividend growth stocks. That means that my yield will drop initially, but I’m hoping that getting more dividend increases will balance that out.
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Wow – that is impressive. I am jealous….Do you have a house or do you rent?
I almost spend that much on Jets Season tickets/Beer at games..ahahah
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Jordan, I deep dive my portfolio about once a year. We do it in a similar manner. With the run up in stock prices, my personal yield is about 2.75%. I like to shoot for about 3%. Like you, when I was younger I focused more on net worth and capital appreciation. Around age 40 I switched to a yield focus slowly transitioning more of my assets to dividend stocks. I think good dividend growth stocks can give one the best of both world’s. Tom
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Thanks Tom!
My plan (which I’ve slowly started) is to reduce all higher cost fee funds, replace them with low cost similar funds and increase my fixed income %.
For individual stocks in my TFSA – i’ll continue to look for solid Dividend growth stocks. (recently upped my position in AQN)
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I’m renting a one-bedroom apartment for about $752 a month, all utilities included.
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Nice -sounds super reasonable. #jealous
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Wow sweet breakdown man. My equity in my house is still way greater than out portfolio, so we would be like 70% real estate if we factored that in.
My current yield on my stock investments is 4.04%. Actually higher than I thought as I have been buying lower yield / higher growth stocks recently.
As for the Canadian Exposure, it could improve and so could mine. The tfsa kinda keeps ya in that Canadian space, although Im looking into uk stocks as we speak for the tfsa. With such a huge percentage of your portfolio in rrsp though this can be a easy fix for you. Right now about 75% of my portfolio is in our tfsas. This will change once my wife returns to work and we pump her rrsp up next year. I don’t hold any canadian exposure in our rrsp.
Its the million dollar question. do you go for growth or income? I like income because it not as much a question of when to buy/sell. Its actually an advantage when the market corrects. And solid companies like cnr could have a great yield on cost in 20-30 years.
I skipped shopify at 34 bucks because it had no dividend…… womp womp
I passed on teck resources at 4 bucks because I thought coal was dead…..
I skipped Dollerama at 90$ because its yield was under 1%
I thought amazon was overvalued at 1000 bucks…….
haha clearly those would of put out some good capital gains.. Its all good though, Im hooked to the income side of things! Stacking them Div’s
There’s no question though man, your doing great.
Keep doing what your doing
Cheers.
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Hey PCI
You know what’s funny? I did the exact same thing on Dollorama AND Teck..haha
I think the home equity % of portfolio will depend a lot on what part of the country you live in….
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Hey Jordan,
My primary real estate exposure is the equity in my primary residence, at about 15% of my net worth. I have some REITs as well, which contribute another few percent to the real estate column. I’m comfortable with this allocation. Your real estate allocation seems somewhat high, but that is probably just an artifact of the rental property (which most people may not have). I’d expect your real estate percentage to naturally drop over time unless you plan to invest in more real estate in the future.
My personal yield is currently about 2.8% for my dividend portfolio (after recent market declines), but I would say it’s probably closer to 1.5% if you included all my accounts. I currently focus more on growth than income, as I don’t have a need for the income yet. However, I can see transitioning more towards income once I quit working. In the end, it’s all about total return, or the growth + yield.
I would not be too concerned about your Canadian equities exposure, as long as you are diversified within that group. Working on adding to your fixed income percentage would be the direction I’d go. Of course this can be a gradual transition, too.
All that said, I think it was terrific of you to perform this deep dive. I always feel it’s wise to evaluate your current financial standing and steer your financial ship on the course that you want to go. Nice work!
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Thanks! I’ll probably do a similar dive once a year or so – mainly to make sure I actually follow through on what I say I will..haha
Sounds like most agree – upping the fixed income should be a priority.
Thanks for stopping by.
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Good job on the $300K portfolio! I will be there soon hopefully 🙂 This is a very detailed analysis, thank you for sharing and good job on doubling your portfolio in 3 years!!
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Thanks for stopping by GenY!
Good luck getting to 300k soon. I don’t expect to double every 3 years – but would sure be nice..haha
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