whisperonthewind

The 10 Best U.S. Dividend Stocks

I'm with Iowa Corn, a steady monthly income holds a big draw - both in replenishing a hungry portfolio as well as helping some of us survive on unemployment. Currently, almost everything I own has a dividend of 6% or more, and those dividends are reinvesting in 50% of my holdings and building a money market account for the other 50%. That way, when I find a stock that is doing exceptionally well, I can pull some cash from that well instead of from my economy-stressed income. And should things get worse, I have a readily available cash pot to look to, rather than a credit card.

Dividends Get No Respect

One other point that bears repeating - when I was young, banks had savings accounts that gave 4% interest. This was explained to us as the way to make our hard earned lawn mowing money grow, and it was a terrific idea. Kids everywhere put their money into those savings accounts, and were successful at earning quite a bit of money.

Now, your typical savings account for the common person bears somewhere around 1/2% and for some reason everyone thinks this is a good interest rate. I know CDs have better interest rates, but with those you have to have a minimum deposit, which doesn't help the young kids. If we really want to encourage our children to learn to save, we need to give them a healthy reason why. We need to begin to increase the interest rates on ordinary savings accounts. It would encourage more people to save money, which benefits all of us in the long run. Spending has its place, but saving has a future built in.

Dividends Get No Respect

The majority of my portfolio is in dividend stocks, most of which just sit there and pay me. At times, I reinvest. Sometimes, I just take the money, hold it in a money market account for a while (earning interest) and then pile a larger chunk into whatever seems to be doing well, increasing that dividend. For a while, I tolerated the drop in dividends from companies like JPM before finally selling, but now that they're close to where they were in the summer of 2007, they haven't had an increase in dividend and I'm still not getting back in.

I don't care that they've increased share price - we've just had a very good demonstration of what can happen to share price. I care about the payback. I used to depend on my IRA, now I'm piling money into my Roth, where it's tax free. It's all about the cash.

I tend to hold a stock for quite a while, years, if the dividend keeps coming. Some stocks have seasonal increases, and I just ride it out, because it gives me a chance to concentrate on other stocks.

On the other hand, I'm not adverse to a few risky stocks without dividends, if only because some of them have made me a chunk of money in portfolio value. All of those risky stocks had a dividend before the crunch, and if they bring it back I'll have the best of both worlds.

At some point, I may take a peek at non-dividend stocks, but after the last two years, it will be a while. I want my money up front.

These 47 S&P 500 Dividend Aristocrats Are Good Investment Opportunities

Krawler2, that's a terrific link! I love it. Thank you.

THofler, that website looks great in Internet Explorer (and I like the website), but if you're a Firefox user, give up. It just doesn't look the same. I've contacted the website owner previously, and they are aware that there is a problem. So far, nothing has been fixed. So if any of you want to view the website, use IE.