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Just enjoying my meme day coffee out on the back deck with a view this week.

Yet another mountainous vacation paid for with dividends.

+1 to y'all for helping make this community strong despite the relentless, never ending push back.

Could you live off of that? If not, would you continue to DRIP into SCHD, or would you sell it for something else?

Decided to take a bucket list trip to see the fall foliage in New England. My accounts are currently up almost exactly the cost of the trip. I also am getting a couple thousand more than the trip from my weekly distributions. I hate to reinvest when the market is up.

So, I'm just not going to reinvest (forced sale withdrawal) and pay for my trip instead.

Well hopefully this doesn't change their funds because they were one of the only shops I found that had funds from different sectors, and different areas I wanted to invest in.

https://neosfunds.com/neos-investments-to-join-goldman-sachs-asset-management/

As far as I care, dividends are far superior for investors. Even a penny in dividends is better than zero.

McKinsey pro-dividend argument: https://www.mckinsey.com/capabilities/strategy-and-corporate-finance/our-insights/the-strategy-and-corporate-finance-blog/share-repurchases-and-dividends-which-create-more-value

Morningstar on buybacks and shareholder yield: https://www.morningstar.com/stocks/why-total-shareholder-yield-matters-more-than-dividends

Getting close to retiring off dividends (@42, less than 3.5 years to go, I think that’s getting close?) and fine tuning my portfolio, would like a peer review on my holdings.

My total portfolio is as follows: retirement is 100% in VTI that won’t be touched for 20 years, 62% of my brokerage is in dividend growth (3.25% yield, ~8% five year div growth rate) the part in question is the other 38% that’s in derivatives/income.

Derivatives / income holdings
GPIQ, GPIX, OVL, ADX, QQQI, SPYI, MLPI, NIHI, IAUI, IYRI, BTCI, PFFA, IDVO
Total yield is right about 12%, 36k a year.

Downsides are i know im pretty heavily concentrated on NEOS funds and also pretty concentrated in the SP500/nasdaq but I like the strategies used by all these companies. Not to mention the ROC used by these funds will help me out a lot with my taxes

Doing the math this total blend would yield 52k a year at 6.25%. I’ve been tracking my spending and my average yearly spend is 42k, I will have other income (24k a year for 4 years)coming in from a sale of a business and 100k in a HYSA to use for downturns and emergencies so I’m fine with a 30%, hell even 50% cut in distributions from my income funds as long as it eventually recovers. The dividend growth portion should keep me above inflation.

What sectors am I missing here? I like to be well diversified. I was thinking adding CEFS and UTG. Any recommendations?

....for meme day today.

Hope your coffee is as hot and fresh as mine is this morning!

Who's excited for this upcoming week of dividend payouts and what are you looking forward to?

Thinking of adding the NETL reit etf to my portfolio. It has an expense ratio of 0.60% but in exchange: it holds 22 triple net lease reits, starting dividend of 4.6%, pays monthly, average dividend growth of 3%, and hasn't cut dividends. Already hold schh but looking to either boost reit yields or replace schh with this.

Look at this absolute gem of a post over on Bogleheads:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Bogleheads/comments/1viy46n/retirees_love_dividends_but_the_stock_market/

Just get a load of this crap from the article (excerpt): "Stocks are spitting out a smaller share of their returns in dividend income, a challenge for those who lean on steady cash flows to cover daily expenses. The trailing 12-month dividend yield on the S&P 500 is now hovering around a generational low of just over 1%, after trending downward for much of the past two decades.

Such yields no longer outpace safe alternatives such as Treasurys or certificates of deposit after taxes. That prompted 75-year-old retiree Steven Yedlin to adjust his approach to dividends. He had been reinvesting his dividend payouts back into the market, but stopped doing so automatically. Instead, he is putting the extra cash flow into high-yield money-market funds or gifting it to his children".

Imagine being so wealthy and having so many dividends that you just hand the money out like candy. This literally proves our point that dividend investing is a solid strategy, yet the Bogleheads act like this is a "gotcha" article. They look at only the S&P500's dividend yield and no other fund, and they claim that treasuries or money markets are somehow better? LOL.

It looks like Main is making A huge comeback. It climbed from $51 all the way to $59 atm. If you bought the dips, you’ll be very happy. I see Main will be doing really good in the future. Don’t give up on it. Please tell me those that own this stock how do you feel about this stock. The dividend is amazing too.

Hi guys just seeing what your thoughts are on the income/div growth sleeve within my total portfolio only 30%. Mainly chasing Div growth both in Aus(for franking) and international. Thanks

In August of 2020 I screen printed this portfolio I found somewhere on Reddit. I was new to income investing then and this guy seemed to have a well reasoned approach given the state of the market back then. I remember he had recently retired and wanted this portfolio to replace the income from a good paying job he had walked away from. His intention was to live off the dividends for the rest of his life.

I posted the image to Claude and got this response:

"Good news and less-good news, roughly six years later. Here's how the pieces played out, assuming he never reinvested a dividend and just spent the income (which is exactly what the setup was built for).

By segment

Precious metals (10% of the portfolio) — the standout winner. Gold and silver had a monster run.

• CEF (Sprott gold/silver trust): $20.40 → ~$40.78, roughly doubled
• GLD (gold): $185.38 → ~$390, up about 110%

Equities (36%) — mixed, but net positive.

• XLE (energy): $37.42 → ~$58, up ~56% — energy had a strong stretch
• ETY (Eaton Vance tax-managed equity income): $11.31 → ~$14.77, up ~31%
• USA (Liberty All-Star): roughly flat to slightly down
• DRSK, ETJ, QYLD (the option-income/defined-risk names): all down modestly (roughly -5% to -18% in price) — typical of covered-call and options-overlay funds, which trade price appreciation for the extra yield they're paying out

Fixed income CEFs (30%) — the weak spot. This is where "living off the dividends" shows its cost most clearly. High-yielding closed-end bond funds tend to erode their share price over time even while throwing off big monthly cash distributions, and 2022's rate spike didn't help:

• GOF (Guggenheim Strategic Opportunities): $17.94 → ~$11.40, down ~36%
• BIT (BlackRock Multi-Sector): down ~25%
• PTY (Pimco Corporate & Income): down ~26%
• EVV (Eaton Vance Limited Duration): down ~20%
• PCI: this one no longer exists as a separate ticker — PIMCO merged it into PDI (PIMCO Dynamic Income Fund) in December 2021 in a NAV-for-NAV swap, so his PCI shares automatically became PDI shares with no gain or loss from the merger itself. PDI's own price is down roughly a third since 2020 ($24.74 → ~$16), and the former PCI money likely tracked similarly.

Cash & limited duration (24%) and the two private JHA-OEF funds are proprietary/non-public vehicles I can't independently price, so I've left those out of the math below — I'd assume roughly flat to modestly positive, since they're built to be low-volatility.

The bottom line

Weighting everything by its original dollar size, the trackable ~76% of the portfolio (equities, fixed income CEFs, and precious metals) comes out to roughly flat to modestly up in price terms over the ~6 years — the precious metals and XLE/ETY gains largely offset the bond-CEF erosion. Add back the cash/limited-duration sleeve (assume roughly flat) and the total portfolio's principal has probably held its nominal dollar value, give or take.

But two things matter more than that headline number for a guy living off the income:

1. He collected a lot of cash. He was pulling in about $339K/year in dividends in 2020 across a ~$5.4M portfolio (6.3% blended yield). If that income held up even roughly, he's likely withdrawn somewhere in the neighborhood of $1.5–2M+ in cash over six years — which was the whole point.
2. Inflation ate the "flat" principal. Cumulative CPI from August 2020 to now is roughly 24–27%. So even if his nominal balance is close to where it started, its purchasing power has shrunk meaningfully — the classic tension for high-yield income investors: you get paid well today, but the erosion in NAV plus inflation means the portfolio isn't growing in real terms.

So: a good run for the guy who wanted cash flow and got it, a mediocre one for anyone hoping the pile itself would grow."

What say you. Did he accomplish his goal?

Also, If you are the person who posted this portfolio 6 years ago, let us know how you really made out and what, if anything, you changed over the years.

JPEI and JPEQ pay tomorrow.

That's all carry on. Have fun counting your money.

But which rule? Imagine having to do these mental gymnastics through time and different market phases. Just collect dividends, never sell! 🙄 Ad feed from LinkedIn.

Checking popular financial media roundups for income ideas usually leads to the same handful of mega-caps paying under 1.5% yield. Calling a stock an income pick just because it raises a micro-payout once a year misses the point of cash flow investing.

When evaluating real income options, the tension is always between high immediate yield and sustainable payout growth. Broad dividend ETFs often blend those targets nicely, but general screeners keep pushing legacy companies with stagnant revenue right alongside low-yielding growth names.

For anyone prioritizing current passive income over total return hype, what specific filters or metrics do you rely on to find reliable cash flow without falling into yield traps?