Happy New Year you money monsters! I hope it will be a good year for you and your family, both in health and with your finances. Let’s start off this blogging year with a look at how we did in 2025. For today that means the 2025 dividend overview! Dividend Income Simply put, 2025 was a good year financially, the dividend front was not any different. We did shuffle some stocks around, which had it’s effect on the monthly totals. But fortunately, and that was the whole point of the shuffle, the total dividend went up in 2025. It should furthermore continue to do so in 2026. This is stilll a little bit of cash to deploy, but I have not figured out where to put it yet. 2025 Dividend Overview: Monthly Overview When you add all the monthly dividends up for 2025, and convert to Euro’s, you get the grapth below. Unfortunately due to significant exchange rate changes in 2025, we just missed out target of this year of an average of €1.000/month in dividends. Bit of a bummer, but considering that we are not taking any money out of this account just yet, it’s not a problem at all! Fortunately, the growth in CAD is really good. Hope to keep that going in 2026. 2025 Dividend Overview: yearly totals History and organic growth This dividend portfolio is (currently) our self-managed actual pension plan (all shares are held in Registered Retirement Savings Plans (RRSP’s) in Canada). We need it to improve on a yearly basis otherwise we are screwing our future (retired) selves. Albeit we can access this money before age 65, we don’t want to touch this until we have very little Box 1 income (likely when we are about 55-67). This is due to the withholding and income tax to be paid once we withdraw money from these accounts. With no other income, it is very tax efficient to withdraw from this portfolio. When you take out the European shares we shortly held back in 2016/2017 (leaving Canadian shares only) and take away the Exchange rate fluctuation, you get this organic growth (funds were only added in 2015 and all dividends were reinvested since). The total for 2025 came in just under $19k for the year. An growth of 7.3% in dividend income for the year compared to 2024, well above inflation, which is good. 2025 Dividend Overview: yearly overview (organic growth) Want to see more of these pretty graphs, have a look at what Bob did! Those graphs are pure magic. Sector distribution We have a fairly conservative portfolio with many boring companies. At the end 2025 it looked like this (graph making in LibreOffice is still not a pretty as with our evil Micro$oft friends, but it will have to do): We shrunk our Real Estate part of the portfolio and increased our position in the VDY.TO ETF during 2025. We are still considering what to do with the remaining real estate holdings.

In 2025, bitcoin returned -6.33% in US dollar terms based on a buy-and-hold approach of buying the “opening” trade on January 1, 2025, and selling the “closing” trade of December 31, 2025. Those trades were, respectively, $93,425.10 and $87,508.83. That -6.33% return came after a blistering 120.98% return in 2024 and 155.41% in 2023. 2025 was a volatile year for bitcoin. On October 6, 2025, bitcoin set a new all-time high with a trade of […]

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year! The Christmas season (ending January 11th this year) coincides with the beginning of personal finance’s Backdoor Roth IRA season.  Many readers look forward to New Year’s Day not to watch the Rose Bowl but rather to contribute to a traditional IRA, the first step of the Backdoor Roth IRA.  […]

Comic books aren’t just for entertainment, they’re also a growing asset class for collectors and investors alike. From vintage Marvel and DC classics to modern limited editions, comic books can appreciate significantly over time, especially when properly preserved and graded. If you’ve ever wondered how to start investing in comic books, this beginner’s guide will help you take your first steps with confidence. Whether you’re a lifelong fan looking to turn your collection into a […]

Selling investments to pay taxes was always part of the FIRE plan. I just didn’t expect how uncomfortable it would feel when the moment actually arrived. The post Selling Investments to Pay Taxes Felt Harder Than I Expected appeared first on Millers on Fire.