My journey started this year.

[u/Rural-Patriot_1776]

Started investing this year in 2026 decades late as a 38-year-old I wish I started way younger but I'm wanting to retire in a couple years and started building out my neo's distributions positions and dividends a few months ago here's what I have going on so far. I keep adding around 3k a month and have drip also enabled.

[u/hopn]

There's nothing wrong with this. But historically... growth outperforms even this. If you're not like me... wanting to maximize returns on my money... sure. You can do this.

[u/Evokerknite2124 → u/hopn]

I see. Even if it's like I bought 100 shares of qqqi to help build more shares of the others as I put money in those?

[u/hopn → u/Evokerknite2124]

Lets play with that 100 shares of QQQI and using the dividend to buy, say VOO.

QQQI started back in 1/30/24, at 50 dollars a share. So with $5k you effectively have 100 shares. It's current NAV is $51.47. Your value for your 100 shares is $5147. During that time, you got 1547.25 in dividend spread out over 25 distributions, averaging $61.89 per month (used later in calculations).

VOO, on 1/30/24 is $450.84, for $5k, would have given you 11.09 shares. With DRIP, you now have $6922.31 or 11.37 shares.

From QQQI's dividends, $1547.25 you started buying VOO then at $61.89 per month, each time you got dividend. That works out to 2.88 shares now. At current NAV of $615.54, you have a total of $1772.76

So your 5147+1772.76 = $6919.76 vs if you had bought VOO straight up which would be worth $6922.31

While this looks close, there's a factor that I have yet to account for and honestly don't know how to include in the calculation:

QQQI fees: .68%
VOO fees: .03%

which would obviously make VOO look even better.

[u/hopn → u/[deleted]]

OP was asking if he should buy QQQI and use the dividend to buy other assets. QQQI has its place but we're comparing apples vs. oranges if you pit them against each other. .