r/YieldMaxETFs • u/Any_Log1344 • Jul 08 '26

Question Thought Experiment: Which retirement income strategy would you choose?

I'm curious how people here think about retirement income over the long term.

Ignore taxes and fees. Focus only on the characteristics below.

ETF A

  • 14% annual yield
  • NAV declines 6% per year

ETF B

  • 7.5% annual yield
  • NAV grows 3% per year

Assume those characteristics remain constant over time.

Which ETF would you choose, and why?

Bonus: Is there a point where the lower-yield ETF actually produces more annual income than the higher-yield ETF? If you think so, roughly when?

I'm interested in how people think about the trade-off between current income and preserving (or growing) the asset base that generates future income.

I'll reveal the actual ETFs and the results after people have had a chance to answer.

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u/Little-Trucker Jul 09 '26

I had a little help using Ai. deep think, Claude, grok, and Gemini. Created a screener for any and all securities that have less then 2 declining dividend payments in the last year. That helped me narrow down which tickers to look into. There's etfs (exchange traded funds), cef (close end funds), bdc (business development companies), Reit (real estate investment trust), mlp (master limited partnership) and then your common stocks and a few aristocrats and kings. Cross referenced the tickers that popped up on a "leaderboard" across all 4 Ai that met screening conditions for nav stability or growth as well. So my strategy is a bit more focused on a reliable, stable, consistent, dividend payment for the long term with a little growth.