Saying goodbye to my student loan debt really soon

I am going to New Brunswick for a few vacation days soon, right on time for the hunting season - yeah! - and the beautiful autumn colors. For all of you who cannot make it to New Brunswick, I promise a few pictures. I recently catch the first sign of autumn in Montreal somewhere close to McGill University.

Its hard to believe, but just before my vacations, I will be finally paying off my student loan debt, which is about $3 100. Not that much, but anything exceeding 1k begin to make a lot of funky cash. Of course, I am all getting exciting because following what, the student loan topic will be no more. Sincerely, I never taught I would feel that much exciting about paying down my student loan... At now $68 442, my margin debt is a bit high, but at least, its tax deductible. If I put myself into it, I could pay it off in a bit more than 3 years, but only if I don't invest. And that's barely possible. I could sell off my portfolio but its not something I would like to do. My margin debt is not something that really bother me, but I see its currently too high for my taste. If I could lower it by half, it would be great. My margin is like candy, its what make the game all fun. And did I have fun with my money? Oh yesss. But I don't want to see that  margin debt of mine exceeding the 68k.

Margin debt is not a bad thing, but while enrolling into it, you should set your mind in a certain limit. I have no problem dealing with the market volatility but seeing my portfolio going down from time to time is always a pain, but I can deal with the pain. One thing for sure, lowering my debt is a way to deal with the market volatility, in a certain way.

By the end of the year, if I am not tempt to invest in anything, which I doubt, I would like to lower the usage of my margin to $65 000.

There's currently a few cool stocks that could be a good acquisition: Royal Bank of Canada (RY) - another bank stock that I don't currently have in my portfolio. I know no stocks are 100% safe, but for me, a bank like Royal sound like a safe investment for me. From time to time, I like to invest in Canadian National Railway Company (CNR). Its one of my favorite stock. If you invest in CNR now, you probably get hungry because of its tiny low dividend distribution but this stock will pay on the long term. And currently, the capital gain that I made on CNR are enormous. I could be tempt by another 1 to 2k investment in CNR soon. RY could be a good fit for my TFSA. 

Talking about my TFSA, I have a contribution room left of exactly $21 238.83. Its a shame, I know. RY could be add in my TFSA as well as a little investment in CNR. Really recently, s tock that I hold in both in my non-registered portfolio and in my RRSP account, Emera Incorporated (EMA), has announced a 6.9% increased of their dividend. And they say they are looking forward to have an increase of 6% for the next 5 years. This could sound like a good news at first, but I find the increase of 6% every year for 5 years is a bit to high to what I like. I now try to invest only in stock that pay a reliable dividend - not more than 5%. A stock that pay more than 5% in dividend year could be more dangerous than a good pay off. So I really don't know what to think about that dividend increase.

 

Currently, I didn't come with very new investments ideas, but for that, you can always rely on Susan Brunner who had set up a nice little stocks list purchased for September.