The $55,000 “Retirement Salary” Portfolio: Too Good to Be True?

Our Archive

Search completed

What’s better than monthly dividends that add up to 7.2% to 15.4% yearly yields?

Cheap monthlies thanks to a high level of fear amongst vanilla investors.

Source: CNN Fear & Greed Index

We contrarians do our heavy shopping when the crowd is fearful. We have some attractive dividend opportunities today in quarterly payers.

But hey, why settle for every-90-day divvies when we can get paid on the month, every month?

Monthly dividend stocks pay us on the same schedule we receive our bills, which is convenient no matter our age but downright helpful once we hit retirement.

But when it comes to explaining the difference, I find a visual really helps the message sink in.… Read more

Read More

Let’s talk about monthly dividend payers today because, well, why waste our valuable time with stocks that only pay quarterly?

I selected five for our review. We’re talking sixty dividend payments per year from this group. The most generous stock dishes an elite 8.6% annually. (The “laggard” yields a respectable 6.5%.)

Why don’t more companies pay monthly? The answer is predictable and disappointing.

Wall Street runs on a quarterly system. US-listed companies are required by the SEC to provide quarterly financial updates. So, most management teams pay their dividends quarterly as part of this process.

Hence, we salute the suits in shining armor who make the extra effort to pay us every single month.… Read more

Read More

We income investors like REITs (real estate investment trusts) because they are obligated to dish most of their profits to us as dividends. Today we’ll discuss five with fat yields between 8.3% and 9.3%.

When to buy REITs can be tricky. Generally speaking, we don’t want to buy them before rate hikes. Higher rates make money more expensive. REITs thrive on cheap money. So, the recent rate hiking cycle has been bad for REITs-at-large.

Rates and REITs Moved in Opposite Directions

Rate hikes appear done, which usually means it is time to buy REITs. After all, the Fed’s next move is likely to be a cut.… Read more

Read More

Today we’ll discuss five monthly dividends with yields between 7.3% and 16.7%. But let’s be careful—market participants are showing signs of greed right now.


Source: CNN

Monthly dividend stocks can help settle down a seasick portfolio. First, they pay every 30 days. What a concept! Their payments line up with our bills. Brilliant.

Quarterly payers aren’t as nice. Let’s look at a $500,000 portfolio split evenly among a group of five mega-cap dividend payers. This is a set of wildly popular blue chips you can find in the top 10 or top 20 holdings of just about every major large-cap fund—and despite this, they deliver a downright miserly sub-1% yield!… Read more

Read More

Ten percent dividends are no joke.

We’re talking $50,000 in annual payout income on $500K. Or $100,000 in yearly dividends on a million dollars.

This is serious cash flow. And best of all, we’re talking yields—which means, if we buy right, we can sit tight, collect these payouts and keep our nest egg intact.

Generous yields give us a big advantage over vanilla investors, who fawn over traditional blue chips (paying 2% to 3%). That’s not enough. It’s easy math.

Let’s reference the million-dollar portfolio again. If we invest in the “broader market,” the S&P 500 yields 1.5%. It’s proxy, the SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust (SPY), pays a meager $15,000 in annual income.… Read more

Read More

To paraphrase the great Jerry Maguire:

Show me the money. Monthly!

I don’t know about you, but my bills come every 30 days. So, I demand the same from my dividends.

Monthly dividend payers are a “must have” in retirement. After all, who has the time to track down a quarterly payment? Afternoons are for craft cocktails, not accounting.

(My buddy makes a dangerously tasty absinthe old fashioned. Would wait until after sundown on that one.)

Speaking of bitters, that’s life as a quarterly dividend receiver (sorry, couldn’t resist). Monthly payouts are magical, and not just for passive income. These income vehicles also hold three core advantages against all other stocks and funds that pay less frequently:

  1. Better overall returns thanks to compounding: If all else (performance and yield) is equal, a monthly dividend stock, with dividends reinvested, will always return just a little more over time than stocks that pay quarterly, semiannually or annually because you can put your cash to work sooner, which means it can compound faster.

Read more

Read More

There’s a famous experiment called “the marshmallow test.” In it, scientists give little kids a marshmallow along with a choice: Eat the treat immediately, or wait 15 minutes to get a SECOND marshmallow to snack on.

The test has been repeated several times over the years, and the results are pretty simple: Kids who delay their gratification for bigger rewards are typically more successful and more well-adjusted in the long run.

And let’s face it, we all know kids who wouldn’t even listen to the instructions and simply stuff that marshmallow in their face as soon as the adult leaves the room.… Read more

Read More

If the past few weeks are any indication of what’s ahead, we’d better buckle up for a volatile 2022.

Which means we should invest in the relative calm provided by monthly dividend stocks before the mainstream crowd starts looking this way. After all, what’s more soothing than thousands of dividend dollars paid every single month?

Monthly dividends are great because they line up with our expenses. Most blue-chip income stocks pay quarterly—not enough! These “lumpy” payouts result in equally lumpy retirement income. For instance, we might have a big January, but that’s followed by an OK February and a lean March where that check alone wouldn’t come close to covering the bills.… Read more

Read More

Almost every corner of the market is overpriced today. That includes dividend stocks, which cost too much and yield too little.

The S&P 500 is at multi-year highs in almost every valuation metric: P/E, P/B, P/S … you name it. And a lot of that froth is coming from traditional income sectors. Yardeni Research’s latest sector study shows that utility stocks, for instance, trade at 18 times estimates, at the very high end of its 10-year range. The sector’s typically high yields, meanwhile, have dried up to a mere 3%.

Hey! Where’d the Dividends Go?

The real estate industry is getting pricey, too, with the iShares U.S.Read more

Read More

Almost every corner of the market is overpriced today. That includes dividend stocks, which cost too much and yield too little.

The S&P 500 is at multi-year highs in almost every valuation metric: P/E, P/B, P/S … you name it. And a lot of that froth is coming from traditional income sectors. Yardeni Research’s latest sector study shows that utility stocks, for instance, trade at 18 times estimates, at the very high end of its 10-year range. The sector’s typically high yields, meanwhile, have dried up to a mere 3%.

Hey! Where’d the Dividends Go?

The real estate industry is getting pricey, too, with the iShares U.S.Read more

Read More

Categories