How to Retire Early on $500K

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How to Retire Early on $500K

$500K can be enough money to retire on. Even as early as age 50!

The trick is to convert the pile of cash into cash flow that can pay the bills. I’m talking about $35,000 to $40,000 per year or more in dividend income on that nest egg, thanks to 7% and 8% yields.

These are passive payouts that show up every quarter or, better yet, every month. Meanwhile, we keep that $500K nest egg intact. Or, better yet, grind that principal higher steadily and safely.

Got more in your retirement account? Cool—more monthly dividend income for you!

We’ll talk specific stocks, funds and yields in a moment.… Read more

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Alert: A Key Insider Just Bought $150,397 of This “Megatrend” Dividend Stock

We contrarian dividend buyers love it when an insider loads up on their own (ideally washed out!) stock. Especially when that stock is:

  1. Throwing off its highest yield in years.
  2. Growing its payout at a 9% annualized rate, and …
  3. Tied to one of the biggest megatrends there is: our never-ending addiction to mobile data.

We’re seeing all three of the above with cell-tower REIT Crown Castle International (CCI), which has been knocked down some 37% in this selloff. That’s driven its yield up to 4.4%—just a shade below all-time highs!

A Megatrend Stock With a Mega-Yield

The insider? One Matthew Thornton III, a member of Crown Castle’s board who has a lot of skin in the game.… Read more

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This “ETF-Beater” Portfolio Yields 9.7% (With Big Upside in ’23)

Rarely do we get a buying opportunity in high-yielding closed-end funds (CEFs) like the one we have now. Thanks to the selloff, many CEFs trade at deep discounts and pay outsized yields upwards of 9% today.

With this market rally likely still in its infancy, we still have time to act here. But we don’t want to wait long, as this bounce has already started to whittle away CEFs’ discounts.

I’ve got three perfect funds for us to target below. This trio is intriguing because, taken together, they basically mimic an S&P 500 ETF, but with two key differences:

  • They pay a 9.7% average dividend, so you’re getting more of your return in cash than you would if you bought an S&P 500 index fund (which would get you a mere 1.7% payout).

… Read more

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How to Make $71,000 to $149,000 Annually From Large-Cap Stocks

Vanilla investors are selling. Which means we income-focused contrarians are buying.

Our goal, after all, is to retire on dividends. So why would we run from the biggest dividends that Mr. and Ms. Market have presented us in years?

Yields, yields, yields. We recently discussed 29 income funds yielding more than 8%.

How about stocks? Glad you asked. Let’s chat about 16 sweet large-cap cash-machine stocks paying up to 15%.

If you didn’t catch it, I recently chatted with Moe Ansari on his Market Wrap program. You can read more about it here, but in short, I said the time to sell was over—we’re flush with cash and ready to buy.… Read more

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This “Barbell” Strategy Pays You 7.8%

The Vanguard Dividend Appreciation ETF (VIG) is the largest and most popular dividend ETF on Wall Street. It boasts an amazing $60 billion in assets under management, and holds about 300 of the largest dividend stocks.

And it yields a miserable 2.1%.

That’s because, like many index funds, VIG weights stocks by size. That means companies like $450 billion drugmaker Johnson & Johnson (JNJ) and $1.8 trillion Big Tech icon Microsoft Corporation (MSFT) alone represent about 7% of the portfolio – even though they pay relatively light yields of 2.5% and 1.1%, respectively.

The false promise of index funds like the Vanguard Dividend Appreciation ETF is that you can “set it and forget it.”… Read more

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Here’s Our “Recession 2023” Game Plan (for Cheap 8.4% Dividends)

It’s nearly 2023, and we’re on the precipice of something that’s never happened in our lifetimes: a recession is coming—and when it does, it will surprise no one.

Believe it or not, that’s good news because it lets us buy stocks—and high-yield closed-end funds (CEFs)—cheap right now. We don’t have to wait months for the recession to subside.

I’ve got an 8.4%-yielding CEF for you to consider below. It’s discounted twice: once because the stocks it holds, which include S&P 500 standouts like Visa (V), UnitedHealth (UNH) and Amazon.com (AMZN), have sold off, and second because the fund itself trades at a rare discount.… Read more

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The Cheapest 8.8% Dividend on the Planet

The Bank of England has recently aroused financial animal spirits with its on and off and on again buying of long-dated bonds. Which has this 8.8% payer—and more like it—ready to rally like crazy.

But wait, isn’t this a bear market? Brett, the financial media is telling me that interest rates are going to the moon. And that my cheap bonds are about to get even cheaper.  

They don’t call us contrarians for nothing! It’s our job, as original thinkers, to identify inflection points in the market. And we have one that is setting up for a big bond bounce.… Read more

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Play This “Fed Bounce” for Dividends Surging 73%+

Utility dividends haven’t been this generous in years. Thank you, stock market selloff!

These yield machines have been expensive for a while. Today, utility stocks are finally cheap—and their dividends are finally high enough to get our attention!

That makes right now our time to buy. The Federal Reserve created this deal, and hey, the Fed could easily take it away with any hint of a policy pivot.

History tells us that cheap utility stocks don’t stay in the bargain bin for long. I’m staring at two in particular that are likely to bounce back next year. Both of these stocks are likely to deliver double-digit payout hikes, too.… Read more

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3 Selloff Buys Paying 13.5% (With Big Price Upside in 2023 and Beyond)

These three little-known funds yield up to 13.5%—and their payouts are actually safer than they’ve been in years, thanks to the Fed-induced selloff.

Now is the time to buy them. Patient investors who do so will be nicely set up for annualized returns north of 14% in the long run, with most of that gain in dividend cash!

These three timely buys—all closed-end funds (CEFs)—are winners now because they let us buy stocks (and real estate, in the case of one of the funds we’ll discuss below) at a rare double discount: one discount on the CEF itself and another because investors have oversold many of the investments these funds hold.… Read more

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3 Dividend Dogs About to Become Analyst Darlings in 2023

I love dividend stocks that analysts hate. For two reasons:

  1. By definition, they can’t be downgraded.
  2. In weak moments, they are candidates to be upgraded.

And since vanilla investors, for whatever reason, listen to analysts, upgrades can provide a nice “pop” in the stock price.

So give us the stocks that can only “fall out of the basement window”—yielding a fat 14.6% on average—that carry this ultimate contrarian indicator:

They’ve lost the typically rosy analyst community. Which means it’s time for us to find them.

Does Wall Street Say “Sell”? That’s a Big “Buy” Signal

Wall Street’s “pros” are an optimistic bunch.… Read more

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