Welcoming an annual $12,040 dividend income

It's now official, my dividend income now exceeds $12,000! This happens this past Friday. In my non-registered portfolio, Enbridge Inc. (ENB) is one of my major holders, and on December 1, I received some fresh new dividends coming from ENB which roll over to create more baby shares - and more dividends - because of the magic of the DRIP. In my investment portfolio, everything that I can put on a DRIP is on one. Over the years, the DRIP that I enroll on really paid off. One of the most recent investments that I can now enroll on a DRIP is BCE Inc. (BCE). 

Unfortunately, with National Bank Direct Brokerage (NBDB), the DRIP is a one-on-one stock thing, which means that as soon as one of your stocks qualifies for a DRIP, you need to call NBDB - or write them an email via your account online. And that needs to be done every single time. When it comes to the DRIP subscription, things were a lot easier with TD Waterhouse - or TD Direct Investing, where the DRIP was an account situation, where you just needed to ask to be set up for a DRIP for each of your accounts, non-registered, US, RRSP and TFSA account and voilà, you were all set. Some little things like that differ from broker to broker. 

I used to have only had TD Waterhouse as a broker, so now I can say that I am somewhat "experimented" with both TD Waterhouse and National Bank Direct Brokerage (NBDB). I have to say, between National Bank Direct Brokerage (NBDB) and TD Waterhouse, I prefer TD Waterhouse because it was easier to have access to customer service with TD Waterhouse (back in the days), and also, with TD Waterhouse, I could view the value of my portfolio in real-time. 

With National Bank Direct Brokerage (NBDB), I never can see the value of my portfolio in real-time and I have to say, it's quite extremely annoying and not satisfying at all for me not to be able to view the value of my investment portfolios in real-time. There's always a 15 minutes delay with NBDB. Let's say that the opening, the TSX gains, I don't know, 200-300 points - it doesn't happen frequently, but it happens. However, when those beautiful events arrived, National Bank Direct Brokerage (NBDB) deprived me of getting any feeling of major satisfaction when an actual "event" happens.

However, I can live with that. But I feel that  National Bank Direct Brokerage (NBDB) is depriving its retail investors of something that is extremely important: self-satisfaction. And for me, it seems like  National Bank Direct Brokerage (NBDB) is not taking their retail investors very seriously. I am not a millionaire, but I am not garbage, and I deserve the same treatment as any millionaire. And so do any retail investors, no matter the number of dollars they have in their account. I don't regret my switch from TD Direct Investing to NBDB because with NBDB, I don't pay any commission fee. I buy and sell stocks for free, which is a huge benefit.

I also received lately some dividend distribution inside my TFSA This past Friday, I invest that money in one share of each of the following companies: Canadian Imperial Bank Of Commerce (CM), The North West Company Inc. (NWC), BCE Inc. (BCE), Enbridge Inc. (ENB), Telus Corp (T), Bank of Nova Scotia (BNS) and Goodfellow Inc. (GDL). Those new investments make it possible for me to push my dividend income to the $12,000 and even exceed it a bit, which is quite nice. It feel like a glass ceiling had been broken.

Several years ago, Enbridge Inc. (ENB) was Derek Foster's stock. Back in the days, we had both Enbridge, and a .UN associated with Enbridge. At one point, I had both ENF.UN and Enbridge Inc. (ENB) in my non-registered portfolio. Eventually, the two entities merged into one, which makes a lot of sense. I never understood why we had Enbridge and an Enbridge .UN fund - the old ticket used to be ENF.UN if I remembered correctly run over the TSX. So we had both ENB and ENF.UN as an investment option when it came to Enbridge. There are actually a lot of things I don't understand about the stock market, but obviously, that doesn't stop me from investing.