The CDI Newsletter 2023 Recap

As I’ve mentioned approximately 4,892 times, I recently spent some time in Japan.

(For those interested, I summed up my feelings about the country in this Twitter thread, which went semi-viral)

I love to travel because I get to immerse myself into another culture and see things in the same way as they do — at least for a little while. I also get to try new food, see the best the world has to offer, and learn the history of some weird and unusual place. But ultimately, travel is so valuable because it changes your perspective, forcing you to look at everything in a new light.

So I generally become pretty reflective when I travel. I spend large swaths of time just thinking, trying to reconcile what I’m learning compared to my life back home. Travel usually has lots of downtime as well, whether they’re from long plane rides to a destination, moving about the country once you get there, or from simply taking rest days and letting your mind wander while you relax.

In fact, this post was largely written during one of those rest days, a day where I had a lot of thoughts swirling around in my head. One of the reasons why I write is because putting words to paper really helps sort out those random thoughts, helping me make sense of everything going on up there.

It’s also been about a year since I retired, and I thought it would be useful to sort out some of those thoughts as well.

So without further adieu, allow me to present a year in review of both this newsletter and my early retirement life in general, with a little preview of a few changes you can expect around here for 2024.

Retirement

They say you must have something to retire to, or else you’ll get bored and seek out something to fill the gap.

I’m not 100% sold on that wisdom — I know plenty of people who retired and just kind of found stuff to do as they went along — but I still took it to heart.

I proclaimed 2024 the Year of Nelson, modelled after the Summer of George, even though the summer of George went pretty poorly for Costanza. It was a year dedicated to my own selfish pursuits, mostly in the form of this newsletter, travel, and golf.

I succeeded in two of three. The amount of golf I played was a little lacking. I got out consistently and all, but I will play more in 2024. In fact, I’ll likely cut out some of the travel in exchange for more golf in 2024. I broke 90 for the first time in 20 years in September, and I’m officially addicted again.

In fact, I have a golf spending goal next year — even though I think spending goals are usually pretty 🤮. A certain percentage of my dividends have been earmarked for golf.

Go ahead and make fun of me for that. I sure would.

The travel part of early retirement, meanwhile, was an unmitigated success. In 2023 I traveled to the following places:

• Netherlands

• Germany

• England

• Scotland

• Washington, DC

• Black Hills South Dakota, Yellowstone, and Montana

• Ottawa

• Japan

Pictures? Okay.

I also did a bunch of day and weekend trips to places around home, including my home town and various other small communities around Alberta.

I don’t think I’ll travel as much in 2024 as I did in 2023. I plan to cut the time away from home from about 10 weeks in 2023 to around 6-7 weeks going forward. I also plan to spend a little more ensuring I’m comfortable when I travel, buying things like nicer airplane seats and more Ubers/Taxis at my destination.

I’ll also incorporate golf into more trips in 2024, which will keep me a little closer to home. I’m thinking I’ll take one or two golf trips along with doing my best to play around Alberta.

One area I struggled a little bit in my retirement is switching from a saving to a spending mentality. I consistently felt the urge to buy more dividend-paying stocks as 2023 went on, despite already achieving my desired dividend income by about March. Partly this was because so many stocks were on sale over the summer, but mostly it was because I struggled with not growing the proverbial snowball. I still get a little antsy whenever spare cash shows up in my brokerage account. I itch to put it to work.

The worst part is I identified this as a struggle before I retired. I spent hours thinking about this particular problem and ways I could avoid succumbing to this bias. And it still didn’t work. I think I’m getting better, but time will tell.

At least this came with an upside. Because I invested so aggressively throughout the spring and summer, I reached both my 2023 and 2024 forward passive annual dividend income (PADI) goals by about March and August, respectively. Which means I’ve only put minimal amounts of new cash to work in the last few months, instead transferring much of my dividends into my bank account for 2024 expenses.

Perhaps most importantly, as my first year of early retirement comes to an end, I have no desire to return to traditional employment — no matter how much my former employer might hint towards it. Don’t get me wrong, I appreciate those hints — it’s nice to be wanted, after all — but at this point I’m really enjoying what I’m doing. Besides, having a regular job feels a little bit like putting your hand up to go to the bathroom. I’ve never had an employer tell me I can’t go pee, but I still don’t want to ask, dammit. Being able to enjoy that type of freedom is a big reason why I left traditional employment, and that hasn’t changed.

I’m also having way too much fun with this here newsletter to go back to regular work. I’m really happy with the progress I’ve made on it and it’s easy to get out of bed each morning knowing I get to sit in a comfy chair and write all day.

The newsletter

Coming into 2023, I didn’t have many goals with this newsletter. I knew I wanted to monetize it at some point, but had no firm plans on when I was going to do that, how it would happen, or even what price I’d charge.

I simply wrote for a few months, trying to put out as much free information as I could. That worked in terms of subscriber growth, but it’s easy to get free subscribers. The big test would be when I monetized.

After a few months of debating when the best time would be to turn this into a business, I realized there would never be a best time. There would always be a reason to put it off, to try and gain more subscribers or to reach some other milestone, or whatever. So I announced CDI would be a paid publication on May 1st, officially putting up the paywall on June 1st. I then gave everyone a free preview of the paid part of this newsletter for two weeks, meaning it wasn’t really paid until June 15th.

A couple interesting things happened when I put up the paywall. For the most part, people were great. I got a ton of supportive messages, with far more people than I expected pledging they’d buy a subscription. This support was a huge boost, and I still can’t thank those folks enough. It was just what I needed.

But it wasn’t all sunshine and rainbows. The day I announced this newsletter was going paid, dozens of people unsubscribed. It was, by far, the biggest setback in terms of subscriber growth in this newsletter’s history. I also got several nasty messages from subscribers that felt betrayed I would no longer be sharing my best ideas for free.

Some of the unsubscribes were from people I’d consider friends, folks I’ve supported in various ways over the years. I won’t sugarcoat it — that fucking hurt.

Still, those were all ultimately pretty minor setbacks. The paid part of this newsletter has wildly exceeded all my expectations. A bunch of people have shelled out their hard-earned cash for my twice-weekly exclusive ramblings, and I’m eternally grateful. I work diligently to ensure these folks are getting their money’s worth and it’s a responsibility I take seriously.

Ultimately, I want to build a resource here that exceeds subscriber expectations, to be the place Canadian investors go to find out about dividend stocks.

Which is why we’re going to see a few changes in 2024.

Changes in the paid newsletter

As it stands today, paid subscribers get two deep-dives on individual stocks per week, individual names that come across my radar and I think are interesting. I try to make these deep dives long enough folks get a good grasp of the company, but not too long as to put in a lot of unnecessary information.

But I kept getting two pieces of feedback. Firstly, subscribers want to hear my thoughts on more than two stocks a week. The investing world is filled with interesting names, and they want to hear about them. And secondly, subscribers wanted more visibility into my own portfolio.

These are two great pieces of feedback so, starting in 2024, paid subscribers will get the following:

• One deep dive and one dividend roundup each week. The dividend roundup will allow me to cover many different names on a weekly basis in an equally entertaining and educational manner. I’ve already written a couple of them and I’m really pleased at how they’re turning out

• Updates on my portfolio, including my buys, sells, how much dividend income I expect to earn, and a breakdown of my portfolio ranked by dividend income

• Continued updates on the model portfolios (we made one change a couple weeks ago)

• Dividend strength scores, dividend growth predictions, and buy/hold/sell ratings for 200+ Canadian dividend-paying stocks, updated as news impacts their long-term prospects

• Dividend increase alerts (sent out with the dividend roundup)

• Continued to be sent out on a Tuesday/Friday posting schedule

The one-page reports will be eliminated, since they weren’t well received anyway. Paid subscribers also will be officially separated from free subscribers, meaning this will be the last free newsletter paid subscribers will receive. More on that below.

Finally, I’ve employed someone who is a little better at design than I am to pretty up both the free and paid newsletters. I work hard to put these things together, and I’d hate to see people not read these because they struggle with a wall of text.

Changes to the free part of CDI

One thing I’ve struggled with ever since turning on monetization is the value I give free subscribers versus paid.

The best stuff will always be shared with paid subscribers. After all, they’ve paid. But I need to do a better job creating value for free subscribers, and that’s a major goal of mine next year.

2024 will see the free part of the site undergo a transformation.

First, the free newsletter. Free subscribers will continue to see a once-weekly post in their inbox every Sunday, which will include:

• Various big picture investing topics

• Quick thoughts on stocks I might find interesting

• Highlights from various articles published on the site

• Interesting stuff I read that week

• Previews of paid content

• Much, much more

Think of the free newsletter as the lite version of the paid one. It’ll still be valuable and be jam-packed with good stuff, but just in a slightly different form than today.

Basically, I want to go back to my blogging roots, and spend more time on the blog part of this newsletter. I’m looking to write regular pieces of content that’ll be hosted on the free part of the site, highlighting things like interesting names in each sector, monthly-paying dividend stocks, and a whole lot more.

The free newsletter will still come out Sunday morning, and yes, it will be the best part of your weekend.

Looking forward to 2024

I’m really excited about the changes I have planned for both the free and paid parts of the newsletter. I think the newsletter has always been a solid value; now I think it’s a great value.

I’m also quite looking forward to another year of golf, travel, and randomly wrapping up my day at 11am to work on my Miami Marlins franchise on MLB: The Show.

But most of all I want to thank each and every one of my subscribers. It’s a privilege to be allowed in your inbox, and I continue to take it seriously. Thank you for your attention, your ideas, your encouragement, and everything else. See ya in 2024.