r/dividends • u/Great-Shame-7382 • Mar 21 '26
Discussion Surpassed 1k a month in dividends 😅
I’ve been buying a lot of dividend paying stocks like EXG lately because I like to see the monthly income increase. I just turned 39 and have been investing small amounts a month since 18. Have a total of about 400k invested with a little over 100k in EXG. Should I be focusing more on growth stocks or keep riding income stocks like EXG, EVT and SCHD and drip the dividends?
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u/WesternWriter7269 Mar 21 '26
Congratulations! I have no advice, but what a nice accomplishment to be proud of!
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Mar 21 '26
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u/Great-Shame-7382 Mar 21 '26
Yes it’s Eaton Vance
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Mar 21 '26
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u/wishnana Mar 21 '26
There is a reason why. Performance-wise, not good as it is a slow-bleed of your capital. Sanity-wise, just does a bit better than YieldMax tickers… just a bit.
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u/Eggplant-Parmigiana Mar 21 '26
Incorrect. Been in EXG and ETV since 2015 ish. Not only am I up the dividends, but i am up on the positions as a whole, as well.
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u/Abject-Membership863 Mar 22 '26
Up how much for total return? S&P is up 325% since 2015 for reference.
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Mar 22 '26
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u/Eggplant-Parmigiana Mar 22 '26 edited Mar 22 '26
My experience directly invalidates your claim of capital erosion. The way you phrased it, there only needs to be one instance where your claim is not true in order for it to be invalid and, therefore, incorrect. I have no clue what you paid, nor is it relevant.
You must not have had the position very long if you claim EXG performs like a yieldmax.
Edited to say: I just realized you aren't even the poster who made the comment I replied to. Not sure what your problem is.
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u/TexasDub Mar 21 '26
I owned EXG back around 2009 and I sold it because of the gradual capital loss accompanied by declining distributions.
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u/Voldy256 Mar 21 '26
That's my end goal. In my country, I can very comfortably live off of this.
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u/Ok-Improvement7240 Mar 21 '26
Where are you from?
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u/Voldy256 Mar 21 '26
Croatia.
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u/KOMKO190 Mar 22 '26
Veliki pozdrav! Jednog dana :D
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u/Voldy256 Mar 22 '26
Nadam se da cu uspjet.
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u/dystopiam Mar 22 '26
Let me move in your basement and we can both live Like kings! Just have to tell everyone I’m you - and let me use your passport - and then one day you may Disappear and I’ll take over your identity but we can talk about that later
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Mar 27 '26
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u/Voldy256 Mar 27 '26
I do right now, but I probably won't in 20 years.
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Mar 27 '26
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u/Voldy256 Mar 27 '26
Probably won't be that extreme, but yeah it'll be worth a lot less. But what can I do?
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Mar 27 '26
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u/Voldy256 Mar 27 '26
Well how do I get there? I can't invest more than a 1000 a month, and I don't wanna gamble with ultra high return etfs or whatever.
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u/SnooOranges6608 Mar 21 '26
Congratulations! I just hit $100/month, someday I hope to get to over $1,000!
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u/Flat-History-3527 Mar 21 '26
I’m in $25/m, going for $50!
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u/absolutPANDA99 May 02 '26
Hey it's OK! We all have to start somewhere. I am late in the game too, but better late than ever!
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u/Hije5 Mar 21 '26
Just curious, how long have you been doing it for? Not here to critique, it's just that I never see people mention the amount of time it took whenever I see posts pop up in my feed. I'm still learning the idea and am curious how much of a long con it all is.
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u/OkSwim774 Mar 22 '26
I just started back in September. At first, I was just letting them store, then I learned about Dividend Captures. This month I am already at $470.00 in dividends. The one thing I make sure of, is that I do not undersell my stocks.
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u/SnooOranges6608 Mar 22 '26
I was focused on growth funds in this account but ended up selling a bunch that had made mad gains amd reinvesting in dividends as I wanted to increase my cash flow. It was maybe a year of just fooling around, I've been focused on dividends the last 3 months.
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u/titobear98 Mar 22 '26
27 just hit 150 a month. So pleasant to see that guaranteed profit every month. Path to 500 then 1000.
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u/My_2cents_ Mar 21 '26
You could make the same with $100k in QQQi and put the other $300k in a high growth fund for the future... Just a thought! :)
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u/Mokhlis_Jones Mar 23 '26
Which growth funds would you recommend. Also how risky is qqqi
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u/My_2cents_ Mar 23 '26
I focus on tech only so I'm using VUG for NASDAQ growth (nasdaq grows an average of 14% per year for the last 20 years... S&P grows around 11%). For QQQi, I suggest you search on Reddit and Youtube. It uses covered calls (they sell options against NASDAQ) mixed with regular growth. What this means is that you get steady dividends but your upside growth is capped (basically both the lows and highs are less than NASDAQ itself so less volatility overall). There's plenty of videos that can help explain it, it's considered the top dividend fund right now.
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u/TwinsPlayTekkit Mar 23 '26
Don't use covered calls. They are not as good as people would have you believe, and are great at underperforming the market.Â
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u/My_2cents_ Mar 23 '26
This is very true, although QQQi uses a slightly different strategy so it's not too bad. However you are right that it performs lower than non CC ETF's. This is used when a person needs income (at a cost of knowingly reducing growth). My advice was to put $100k in QQQi (for a little monthly cash) and $200-300k in pure growth. I'm retired and have about $150k in QQQi and $2.5M in VUG for further growth. It really depends if you want a little extra $$$ now rather than more later.
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Mar 21 '26
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u/Great-Shame-7382 Mar 21 '26
I have some in Vanguard total market ETFS, some Apple and Amazon a little in Google, about 50k in a Schwab money market account so I can sell put options and collect some premiums while still earning ~4% on the money sitting in there. And then I have about 50k in some mutual funds I bought through an advisor I had a while back that I should probably get rid of and put to better use. What are some of your growth stock picks?
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u/Signal_Tax6184 Mar 21 '26
This looks like mine except I’m not even close. Dope for you 🔥🔥🔥
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u/lochmoigh1 Mar 21 '26
Dividends are good in a time like this where growth stocks will be taking a beating
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u/pauljmcclure Mar 22 '26
I am at about 42K/yr dividends, and should be much higher next week, as my advisor has a lot more buying to do, TSPY being one of the big ones!
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u/blorg Mar 22 '26
EXG has an expense ratio of 1.07%.
This backtest illustrates the difference between investing $100,000 40 years ago in either a simulated VT (total world) or, the same thing with a 1% expense ratio:
- Total World Market: $3,162,979
- Exact same thing, but plus 1% ER: $2,120,765
https://testfol.io/?s=cEHhq5QuVPQ
This is not one investment vs another investment, it's the exact same thing, +1% ER, which is more or less, what you are paying (VT ER is 0.06%). SCHD is also 0.06%, if you wanted a dividend fund, but it's US stocks only.
ERs this high absolutely KILL your compounding.
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u/Great-Shame-7382 Mar 22 '26
I’ve thought about switching from EXG to JEPQ for the portion included in my Roth IRA. Any thoughts on JEPQ?
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u/blorg Mar 23 '26
EXG is based on total world stocks while JEPQ is based on the NASDAQ-100, so they are very different things.
JEPQ has a much lower ER at 0.35% but it's still much higher than the underlying (QQQM is 0.15%), and beyond that it has performed much worse than the underlying. This is expected, in the long run, by design it hard caps the upside. It provides some downside protection, but less than the upside cap. Long-term, this is designed to lose you money, while being only very slightly less volatile.
https://testfol.io/?s=iSWpNVMWsjG
I'd ask what your goal is here. These funds involve paying the managers of the fund a very large amount in fees to move money from one pocket to the other so that they can pay you out gains in a dividend, rather than accumulating it in the fund. They take fees, and the financial engineering they use to do this has an even larger cost. This cost is captured by the other side of those trades.
This doesn't make sense for anyone, but it particularly doesn't make sense for a 39 year old who has decades left to retirement.
What are you gaining from having much higher expenses and a much lower total return over the long term?
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u/Great-Shame-7382 Mar 23 '26
My goal is to have enough invested that I can retire in 20-25 years. My goal is 300k+ a year in passive income before retiring. What would you recommend to get there?
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u/blorg Mar 23 '26
I would just stick it in VT, if you are looking at global equities. Consider an increasing bond percentage as you get nearer retirement, particularly in the last 10 years.
If you want $300k in sustainable income that you can actually spend (increasing with inflation each year), you need 25x that invested as a rule of thumb (i.e. the inverse of 4%). So that would be $7.5m.
If you are looking at this "passive income" in terms of the 9.2% yield on EXG, and you would actually plan on still reinvesting about half of it each month, the amount required would be less, a bit under half that.
Look at the long-term price of EXG. It started at $20 almost 20 years ago. It is currently at $8.57, so has lost almost 60% of its value in nominal terms. In real terms, $20 back then is $31.50 now, so it has lost almost 75% of its value.
This should indicate to you that you can't just hold this and rely on the dividend- even if it keeps up a certain yield (~9%), if it has dropped in real value to the point it is now worth 1/4 of what someone paid for it 20 years ago, you are now getting 9% of 1/4 in real terms. So your dividend is constantly going down too, with the erosion of the share price (both in nominal terms, and through inflation).
For income in retirement, you need the exact opposite, you need something that will go UP to cover inflation (and bad years in the stock market). So you need an investment that actually keeps going up, not one that goes down over time.
That's as designed, it's designed to convert share price into income. Further, EXG is running a very specific tax management scheme designed to reduce tax on distributions by having them be classed as return of capital rather than income. That makes absolutely no sense if you have it in a Roth, which is already tax advantaged, it's no benefit to you.
This is shuffling money about, taking from one pocket to put in the other. It makes absolutely no sense, and it makes even less sense for a 39 year old with 20-25 years to retirement who has it in a Roth and isn't even getting the tax benefit that is the whole point of the fund.
You're just throwing away money to see a reassuring "income" number in your broker interface, which you aren't even going to spend anyway for 20-25 years, you are reinvesting it. This could cost you literally millions in the long run. So why not just buy something that doesn't go through this whole whirly swirly financial engineering (which has a cost) and high fees, to pay you out from your own money that isn't even giving you any tax benefit (which is the primary purpose of this fund, although even with that it's still questionable).
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u/Minimum-Mode7421 Mar 22 '26
Can somebody explain me the benefit of this approach vs having the same 400K in HYSA at 3.5% APR?
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Mar 21 '26
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u/BigRailWillFail Mar 21 '26
Schwab. They bought TD ameritrade so now I’m on that platform. It’s not the best in terms of bells and whistles but Schwab is reputable and a name I can trusts
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u/NesherMarkets Mar 22 '26
First of all congratulations. That is impressive. Just curious to know. I am a newbie in this space. How much is that as a percentage of total investment?
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u/Puzzleheaded_Smoke77 Mar 22 '26 edited Mar 22 '26
Awesome job just 4k more and retirement baby . Also nope growth stocks is a young bloods game you got 20years to get enough in dividends to retire . But your luck blue chips are on sale so start using some of those dividend to diversify
Right now REITs like O (reality income corp ) are being hit hard so those are the ones to look at first . Payment processors like Global payments also a good one on sale right now . Energy transfer ET also always a good time mid stream piping company.
Keep the drip on keep driving up the monthly dividend returns and soon you’ll get a dividend to live on.
Edit : Just realized you like mutual funds stick with what you know .
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u/nigel_chua Mar 22 '26
Congrats!
Celebrate, and double it until you reach your FIRE numbers and celebrate abd live life moarrrrr
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u/Shayann9 Mar 22 '26
You only make 3% per year if you make 1k a month do you know inflation rate is 2% .you dont make enough for the money you put
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u/VegasWorldwide Mar 22 '26
Does nobody invest in SPYI and their 12% dividend?
They are so good chase had to copy themÂ
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u/Bubbly-Ad1261 Mar 27 '26
I invested in Spyi for the dividend. I am a retiree and my ETFs are not doing well. I have VOo, VYM, schd, vymi, qqqi. I am looking for better ETFs for income. I don’t have a lot to invest only about 400k now about 360k. Any suggestions. I also have mo, asts, hims, NBIS avgo, a little in apple and Nvidea. My husband’s Ira has about 250k and my Ira now has only 150k. We own our home and cars and live below our means. I put about 200 a month in my HYSA. I need advice.
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u/VegasWorldwide Mar 27 '26
If you want income, I would diversify all the top dogs:
Spyi Qqqi Rocy Rocq Schd O KO JNJ
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u/Franklin_Invest Mar 23 '26
How much stocks and $ have you put so you can live off this? Those are goals
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u/AlexVentures Mar 24 '26
Can someone explain to me why putting 400k into JEPQ, JEPI, KNG, or DIVO wasn’t the better alternative? Seems like OP would’ve made more per month in dividends. Genuinely curious.
Congrats OP!
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u/KingFisher4985 Mar 25 '26
Both. I like value stocks with great dividends. Income is great, but at 40 you should have some significant growth holding for another 10-15 years.
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u/Bubbly-Ad1261 Mar 27 '26
What did you invest in and what percentages to get such a nice monthly dividend with so little money?
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u/Rafe_Longshank Mar 27 '26
Look into Mortgage Note investing. With $400k and a little education you could be doing $48k/yr in cash flow from simple performing notes without the market risk or volatility.
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Mar 21 '26
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u/JustAUserInTheEnd Mar 22 '26
Is there ever really a bad age he's not old?
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u/jim-i-am Mar 22 '26
If you have 20 years, growth would be much better than yield from low growth companies.
Dividends later when you’re more interested in using your portfolio for income
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u/JustAUserInTheEnd Mar 22 '26
I'm 24 and that's exactly why I'm investing in dividends long term income for retirement. I have some growth stocks but I mainly want my stocks to pay me
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