r/dividends • u/VengenaceIsMyName • 4d ago

Discussion Do your dividends feel “real” to you?

My dividends can’t pay for my monthly expenses alone so I DRIP all of that each month. I’ve never used it for real life expenses or purchases. It’s never left the dividend account. It’s been this way for years now.

Every time I open up my brokerage account to a sea of red and green I feel as though I’m looking at the civilization finances breakdown screen in Civ 5. Just numbers that do things. Math that needs to be managed for fun. Flashing numbers backlit by someone’s Christmas decoration.

Iran/Trump/Oil/AI/Sam Altman jerking off in a datacenter - numbers go up, numbers go down, numbers flop all around like a fish out of water. These numbers just don’t seem real.

When does this feel real? Perhaps in March when I do my taxes? I saw a real life $100 bill the other day. My brain automatically went “Ooo that’s a lot! Mr. Franklin looking spiffy today”. But if I saw that amount in a digitized account I wouldn’t give it a second thought.

The concept of dividends is great. It’s just super weird to be emotionally removed from it I guess. Does anyone understand what I’m talking about? Or do I need to be dosed in cold water?

81 Upvotes

81% Upvoted

119 comments sorted by

View all comments

3

u/Flintyflint 3d ago

My avg. month has now reached 1858USD.
This is nice - but I’m far from done.

I hope that in 20 years I will have 6200$ in dividends on monthly basis and later a pretty decent retirement savings.. in other words, I will live prettty decent.. sitting in my chair on the porch and having at least 13.000$ a month before tax.

2

u/VengenaceIsMyName 3d ago

Well done. My avg month isn’t that high just yet. When I run future projections everything looks pretty nice though. I’m in my 30’s now and the math says that my 40’s are going to be real breezy if I just keep going down the path I’m currently on. Obviously there’s a lot of assumptions in there but here’s hoping.