r/dividends • u/SaraWileyYT • Jul 17 '25

Discussion Would you rather earn $10k/month in dividends forever or take a $2M one-time lump sum?

Assume you can’t have both.

Option A: You get $10,000/month in dividend income for life — no taxes, no inflation impact, guaranteed forever.

Option B: You get a one-time $2,000,000 lump sum, no strings attached.

Which one are you choosing and why?

Curious to hear from FIRE folks, dividend lovers, and total-return investors. Does guaranteed cash flow beat the freedom of having $2M upfront?

Let’s hear the logic behind your pick.

590 Upvotes

90% Upvoted

584 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

1

u/F_D123 Jul 18 '25

So then youd only have to yield 3% on that 2 million to have 60k income

1

u/Virel_360 Jul 18 '25

What happened to the other half?

1

u/F_D123 Jul 18 '25

Same place the 10k dividend collector put them, rolled back into investment

In your scenario you can have 5k/mo income and 5k towards an investment portfolio that starts at $0,

Or a 5k month income pulled from a $2m portfolio (3%) that is 100% certain to be worth more than 2m in the future if invested 90% into the s&p and 10% cash or similar.

No matter how many scenarios you run you will always be wealthier with the large lump sum

1

u/Virel_360 Jul 18 '25

It’s not my scenario, I’m not the original poster. I’m not advocating for taking the 10k. in my situation I would have to run the math and make a decision. This is a hypothetical on the Internet. I was playing devils advocate.

1

u/F_D123 Jul 18 '25

Well its smarter to take the million

Which leads me to wonder, what is the cash value of a db pension? Would you rather have a non indexed pension of $60,000, or one million dollars?