Ep 50. Dividend Investing

On this episode, my guest is Nick McCullum of SureDividend.com.

We talk about dividend investing as a strategy. Everyone likes the idea of passive income and dividends are about as passive as it gets. Money comes in monthly, quarterly, or whatever frequency the company pays it out. Sure there are risks, but over the long term, dividend paying stocks have had lower volatility than the overall stock market.

In this episode we go over the basic terminology (yield, growth rate, DRIPs, etc.) and pros and cons, and how you can use this strategy. I am not trying to convince you to use this strategy but it is a valid one, if you are looking for income especially in your retirement years. We have all heard stories about retirees who live off their dividend checks because they bought the stocks many years ago and reinvested them. The key with this type of strategy as with others is to try to do it as early in your investment life as possible and continue to contribute throughout. The power of compounding is amazing, but the numbers are minor in the first decade, solid in the second decade, and downright impressive in the third decade. By the fourth decade, they become ridiculous. Let me give you an example of this in action.

If you invested 10k in Pepsi (A solid non tech American company) in Jun 2005 and held till Jun 2015 without any additional investment you would have had around $22.5 k (not accounting for taxes). With a monthly $100 additional contribution, your total would be around $42.4 (nearly double). If you would have put in the same 10k ,10 yrs before in Jun 1995, your total would be $68.3k (Nice, but not jaw dropping). With the additional monthly $100, it would have been $131K. Now instead of 1995, you put it in 1985, this is where it becomes amazing, your total would be over $700k, with the monthly $100, it would have been nearly $1.1M. And if you had the ability to buy in 1975, your 10k would be $2.6M, with the $100/mo additional it would be over $5M by Jun 2015.

I used 2015 as an end point because it is in the approximate middle of this bull market and the ten year period prior included 3 years before the 2008 financial crisis rather than at the beginning when asset prices were low (ie if you used current trailing 10 yr returns). But the reality is over long terms, these trends appear to hold with some variance

I am NOT a financial advisor and neither Nick or I are telling you to use this strategy for your investments. If you are interested in learning more there are many good resources including Nicks newsletter.

If you do pursue this strategy, make sure you do so in a tax efficient manner. I do this by placing my highest dividend paying holdings in my tax deferred accounts (401k, IRA, roth IRA, etc) so they can grow unimpeded.