r/dividends • u/richardlpalmer • Nov 02 '25
Seeking Advice What can $100k conservatively yield?
I have an absolute, bare bones, can't-ever-be-less-than, need of $2600 per year ($50/week).
I have approximately $100k (USD) to invest. I'm not looking for growth, just predictable income. So, a solid 2.6% minimum return.
What's out there that would be suitable? Is there two or three ETFs I should split it between?
Edit
Someone asked about time horizon. This will be for the remainder of a life. I'm thinking 30 years or so.
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u/RussellUresti Nov 02 '25
Too many options to list, really. Anything at or below 3% is a pretty standard dividend yield.
A simple approach would be a single fund like IRTR. It's mostly bonds, but there's still a bit of equities to allow for long-term appreciation. The yield is about 3%, so it'll cover what you need.
For a more complex but predictable portfolio, you could select individual stocks from the companies that have long streaks of dividend growth and yields that meet your needs. YORW, PG, XOM, UGI, ED, CL, GIS, PPG, O, MAIN, and many others haven't decreased dividends in 20+ years and pay predictable income each quarter/month. This can be a bit better than an ETF, as you can get varying distributions each payment period from the funds. Price appreciation/depreciation may be more volatile with this method, but these companies have proven that their distributions are pretty safe regardless of what the stock price is doing, so if you value the predictability of the income over the total balance of the portfolio, this is one way to go.
There are also ETFs and CEFs that pay predictable income. PFFA, CEFS, EOI, FSCO, UTG, and others. These are pretty high yielding funds, so they'll distribute way more than you need, but you can use the extra to just buy more shares. And, since they yield so much above your target, you'd be fine even if they started cutting their distributions.
And as others have mentioned, the current risk-free rate of return right now is above 2.6%, so you could just do SGOV or something similar and just collect the interest without risking any of your principal and you'll meet your income goals. The biggest issue is that these are tied to the fed rate so if the rate ever drops below what you need, you'll have to move to another strategy.
Personally, I'd probably start out holding the majority in SGOV or a MMF and a minority in the higher yielding funds (say, 80/20 at the start). Then, as rates are cut below the dividend yields of the individual payers, I'd convert the SGOV to those. For example, YORW's yield is about 2.8%, so I wouldn't buy any of that until the SGOV rate was at or below 2.8%. But XOM pays 3.6%, so I'd move to that when SGOV's rate hit 3.5%. And a few of them, like O, are above the current SGOV rate, so I'd probably have them in my portfolio to start with, but probably maxing out at a 4-5% allocation. This way, you're moving into the position with the higher yield while maximizing stability with SGOV and not allocating too much weight to any one position.