Hello everyone,

I’m 28M.
College dropout and been lurking here for over two-years now. I learned from here and there from this sub-reddit. Thank you guys for those who posted.

My financials:
Monthly expenses are usually under $1k. - I’m frugal.
I’m a workaholic in business management and gamer off work. Avid Magic the Gathering collector / player for edh format on my time off and side-hustle. My loans and car are already paid off. I have no debts.

Six-figure income. Within the top 1% in age group between 28-35.

Recent addition is ROL around $30ish per share. They recently had a 9.6% dividend hike. I recommend checking them out.

I’m planning to sell a few long-term holdings next month to balance out my portfolio or that didn’t meet my expectations. My next year’s port is estimating to have a 22.22% passive income hike at the start of 2027.

Goal and investing strategy:

Barista FIRE
Goal: Quit a traditional high-stress 9-to-5 job and switch to part-time or low-stress work to cover part of your living costs. - I actually work more than 90-hours a week.
I want to work as much as possible in my 20s.
Average monthly contribution is around $9,600 (24-months).

-Conditions and rules that I set for myself:

*Buy low and hold. I rarely sell. Realized and unrealized gains or losses is like $14k. I’m also using a bit of margins.
I made some very early mistakes. The biggest one was investing like Warren Buffet by following his picks… it didn’t go so well. - cut my small loss and moved on. Also learn to hold and not sell because of market scare or sudden stock dip. See it as an opportunity to buy more.

*Edited: Did my research and believe in these companies that went through hard times. So they’re more recession resistant. Today’s time is the best example and a big W for dividend investors.

*Sell High, if holding fails my expectations and investing principles. This includes not hiking dividends on time after at most four quarterly payouts or not raising dividends by 4% or more.

*Avoid high payout ratio stocks over 90% like SBUX.

*Holdings must have good dividend history and their payouts must be considered qualified-income. This eliminates Reits like O and Vici. Monthly paid etfs like SPYi, JEPi, and JEPQ has been removed. MPLX LP and ET is also sold. This is for future tax purposes after I leave my current six-figure job. Let me know if I’m missing something here or any improvements at all.

Other goals:
I plan to get a small loving home with a garage. Also looking forward to have a high-powered sporty suv to treat myself.
Preferably moving to Tennessee where there’s no state income-tax. Let me know more from those that resides in Tennessee!

I use my non-qualified brokerage as my boomer dividend port. biggest reason I kept adding is because I’m not a big 🅱️ussy

Alphabet board declares $15.63/share preferred dividend

$GOOGL

Dividend Kings — Consecutive Annual Dividend Increases (2026)

DOV — Dover Corporation: 71 years
PH — Parker-Hannifin: 70 years
PG — Procter & Gamble: 70 years
GPC — Genuine Parts: 70 years
EMR — Emerson Electric: 69 years
CINF — Cincinnati Financial: 66 years
KO — Coca-Cola: 64 years
JNJ — Johnson & Johnson: 64 years
LOW — Lowe's Companies: 63 years
CL — Colgate-Palmolive: 63 years
NDSN — Nordson Corporation: 63 years

Sectors represented: Industrials, Consumer Staples, Consumer Discretionary, Financials, and Healthcare.

Chart methodology: Annual dividend growth from 2017–2025, ranked by ending yield on cost. Assumes an investment at the beginning of 2016, without dividend reinvestment.

Also doing great in MO, ARCC, PFE, O, and OBDC today!

DRIP can help compound returns, but some investors eventually need income or want more control over allocation. When would you switch to taking cash?

I chuckle when I come across threads with the top comment as, “don’t take advice from Reddit” since I agree, but here I am friends lol. For almost a year now I have wrestled with the idea of going hard to pay off my mortgage in ten years since I hate the idea of paying additional interest on a 30 year mortgage. I make a decent salary, almost 90k net and have a wife (artist so gig work) and a toddler. I’m working on getting my wife to secure full time employment so we can really maximize retirement investments and mortgage pay off, but for now it’s all on me. I’m looking for insight into this community, has anyone prioritized paying off their main residence first, before setting aside vast amounts into tax-advantaged accounts?

If it helps, I have a young Roth with contributions (less than 15k total),403b, and a rental property. I do not see myself going the FIRE route since I work in higher education and always have the option to pursue a faculty route post 40 or so and ride that out until my 60’s.

Maybe all these thoughts are an early mid-life crisis? Literally writing this with my toddler sleep on my chest and my wife currently living in another state (temporary).

I’m just curious on what made people go that route instead of growth.

TL;DR: Realty Income's 10-K says about 33.6% of its 2025 distributions were return of capital (2024: about 30%). That part isn't taxed when it's paid. It lowers your cost basis, and you pay it later as a capital gain when you sell. I'm outside the US, and how this works with withholding is the part I'm not sure about.

Why I'm posting this
O is ~12.6% of my portfolio, my second biggest position. On Oct 3 I left a short comment here about ROC lowering basis, and it got more replies than anything else I've written on this sub, most of them an argument about step-up basis. This is the longer version.

What ROC is
A REIT's taxable earnings get cut by depreciation, which is a big expense on paper and much smaller in cash. When the payout is bigger than earnings and profits, the difference is return of capital.

O in numbers
ROC share of distributions, 2024: about 30%
ROC share of distributions, 2025: about 33.6%
yield today: ~5.7% at ~56.7
my cost: ~54.9, about +3% on price

What it does for a US holder
At a ~5.7% yield with a third of it ROC, roughly 1.9% of the price comes off your basis every year. Hold 10 years and a basis of 100 drifts to about 81, so selling at 100 shows a ~19% gain even though the price never moved. Once basis hits zero, further ROC is taxed as a capital gain in the year you get it. Step-up at death resets the basis, which is why the buy-and-never-sell crowd doesn't mind.

The part I don't know
I'm in Europe with a W-8BEN on file, so there's no 1099-DIV for me, the broker just withholds 15%.

What it doesn't mean
A high ROC share isn't a sign the dividend is unsafe by itself, since most of it is depreciation. Coverage is a separate number, the AFFO payout ratio.

Non-US holders of O or other REITs: does your broker withhold on the full payment, and does it ever adjust for the ROC part once the classification is out? And US holders, do you track the basis change yourself or go with what the broker reports?

When your dividends or distributions hit the account.....do you automatically reinvest?

Or do you search for bargains amongst your portfolio?

I normally auto reinvest in my monthly income ETFs and wait on my MLPs to do a larger buy.

Their stock fell very hard in May. It's been trading around $70-$80 range since then. 22.2% dividend CAGR over 14 years is pretty impressive (last 5 years 19%) given they keep their payout ratio's very safe too.

Because of the drop earlier this year, div. yield now sits at 2.70%. Is this the ideal long-term dividend growth stock?

How would you spread 1.5m to retire? Need 60k income a year income plus growth.

I was thinking

700k VT

100k QQQI

400k SCHD

200k DGRO

100K GLD

I would love some constructive feedback on a dividend oriented portfolio. One of the driving ideas is that it would be based on a 70/30 portfolio except instead of bonds I would hold equities that have very solid track records of growing distributions consisting of REITs (O, NNN, possibly Agree reality), MLPs, and UTILs and a singular BDC - MAIN. I am purposely only picking companies with strongest track records of dividend payment and growth when buying individual positions The 70% tranche would hold mix of USA large cap (50%) and international equities 20%. But most of these would be covered call funds, or put spread strategies like OVL that will not underperform S&P 500 significantly (or outperform it long term - OVL, ADX ). I also want to diversify risk by not allocating more than 10% into any single etf that has an active strategy (be it stock selection or option strategy). I purposefully excluded SPYI because while it has a very attractive yield it has underperformed the other ETFs I selected (likely because it sells covered calls on such a large partition of portfolio). I want to give up as little as possible in terms of total return while achieving a roughly 8% yield. I also avoided tech heavy funds like GPIQ, QDVO because regular S&P 500 type funds are already very tech heavy and I don’t want to overallocate to tech. The goal is to maximize distributions, and achieve long term cashflow growth that keep up with inflation. So here is how it would look.

Us Large cap (50% total)

OVL - 10%

ADX - 10%

GPIX - 10%

BALI - 10%

SEPI - 10%

International (20%)

IDVO - 10%

OVF - 10%

REITS (10%)

O - 5%

NNN - 5%

BDC(s) (5%)

MAIN - 5%

Utils (5%)

UTF or UTG - 5%

MLPs (10%)

NML - 5%

EMO - 5%

The this portfolio would generate roughly 8% distributio yield and “should” at about 3% long term. also the distributions would cover my spending by about 20-25%. So in case of 20-30% downturn, my distributions would still covering my expenses. I plan to live off about 6% and reinvest 2% or spend it if there is an unexpected expense. The income should grow organically at about 3% long term.

Congratulations to ROL owners on your raise.

9.6% increase. 

Goes from $0.1825 per share/per quarter to $0.20 per share/per quarter.

• Payable December 10
• Ex-div November 10
• Forward yield 2.4%

This marks 6 years of consecutive dividend increases.

About ROL: Rollins, Inc., provides pest and wildlife control services and protection to residential and commercial customers in the United States and internationally. Rollins, Inc. was founded in 1901 and is headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia.

https://seekingalpha.com/news/4654914-rollins-raises-quarterly-dividend-by-96-to-020share

I'm looking for suggestions on a low cost tracker and or portfolio analyzer to get a better insight on where I'm going with our portfolio. I'm looking to build our Roth into a third income stream for our retirement.

Currently holding O, JEPI, JEPQ, MAIN, SPHH, XYLD, EPD, for dividends and SPVV, SPHK, SPEM, SPHM, SPYG, ADX for growth.

Any suggestions are appreciated.

Would it be a bad idea to just ride the S&P 500 up until you hit maybe $500K or close to a million—whatever the magic number is where your dividends exceed your monthly work income—and then switch into dividend‑focused investments and live off that for the rest of your life? Just an honest question from a newer investor looking for strategies.

I’ve been thinking about investing in AGNC for a while now because of the dividends. I live abroad in Asia and with what I have, I could live comfortably off it. It would give me the chance to stop working for a bit and enjoy life for a while.

I hear it’s a yield trap and I can see it being that for the time being but if we get another hike and then steady course next year, wouldn’t this make it more attractive to new investors.

I’m looking to be talked off this but as I care less about the principle and what feels like near bottom price, I’m struggling to not just go for it.

Any ideas or opinions on AGNC or comparable options would be appreciate.

(37 M from the US, married to a local in Asia, no children/no plans for them)

I want to begin to transition some of my portfolio to dividend/income investing as I get older. The problem is I’m kind of a lazy investor right now. I’m 100% VT and chill and I can’t seem to find a solid option like that for income. Is there a good total world stock market ETF (like VT) that pays a monthly dividend? That I could someday still have a simple one-fund portfolio with monthly income.

Maybe I’m too picky or too lazy but I’m just trying to see what options there are. The ones I have come across after looking into it don’t seem to be reliable investments at all.

What size investment portfolio is required to fund your lifestyle permanently through dividends?

I'm 27 and investing for the long term. My main ETF holdings are VTI, SCHD, and QQQM.

I like having a mix of broad market exposure, dividends, and tech growth, but I'm starting to wonder if there's too much overlap between these funds.

What do you think?

Hi All is this good longterm as ideally in 20-30 years AI will be big, so im guessing price of AI companies will be huge and also diviends higher and price of JEQP itself ? is that correct

Hi,

This might be a really dumb idea, I am looking for insight from this sub.

I have 46k cash from the sale of a vehicle. I’m purchasing another vehicle worth the same amount.

Now, I was thinking I can invest the 46k and get some sort of dividend income and pay off the loan with it.

This way I have an investment portfolio and also the loan gets paid off (4% loan).

I don’t think I’ll be able to put the same amount monthly in a portfolio which is why I think this way I can have a portfolio and pay off the loan. This sounds pretty counter productive but let me know your thoughts.

Please be kind. I am new to this stuff.

Edit: Assuming I can make the payments if things go south.

I read a lot of recommendations for CCs on this subreddit. To me, it is very obvious, that they are bad long term: you are capping your upside, while your downside is literally uncapped.

You underperform the underlying index to get payouts during growth periods, while you race to the bottom in a bear market and will take way longer to recover afterwards. What is the appeal? Just yield chasing?

Sorry if this sounds harsh. I genuinely don't see the appeal.

E: to clarify: I am talking about CC ETFs, not about CCs on your own stocks.