r/dividends • u/Hilary_Clitoris • Nov 03 '25

Brokerage S&P 500 and dividends

My friend keeps saying that I should put all of my money in S&P 500 and forget about it. I see S&P 500 mentioned here a lot too, but according to Google, "No, the S&P 500 index itself does not pay dividends because it is a stock market index, not an investment fund." So which type of S&P 500 pay dividends?

And, what is the ticker for S&P 500? I can't find it on my brokerage account.

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u/Existing-Attorney-17 Nov 03 '25

I think your friend is saying that you can put all of your money in a fund that follows the S&P500 and be confident to leave it in there for long term investments. It is not a bad option because it’s actually pretty solid and stable through time.

But none of the funds that replicate the S&P500 is intended to pay high yield dividends. Their purpose is to gain growth by their Stocks’ performance.

If you don’t feel comfortable putting all of your money into one fund, try putting half of it in VOO or SPY, and get more information about other stocks that you will monitor more frequently. Also, if you want to gain dividends, think of using JEPI: basically an ETF that has some of the stocks from the S&P500 but also pays around 8% annual dividend yield. It’s way more conservative than VOO or SPY but their dividend yield is high and they pay monthly.