Bill Gates is the second wealthiest man on the planet with a net worth in excess of $90 billion. Just like you and me, Bill wants to earn a return on his pile of cash. Of the 17 publicly-traded companies held in the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Trust, 13 pay dividends. In this article, [...]
Have you ever wanted to receive email alerts when your holdings change their dividends, see a company's dividend yield history, track mutual funds in your portfolio, export your portfolio to a spreadsheet, or have table headers lock at the top of your screen? We've spent the last 18 months building, testing, and improving an [...]
Next week, a few adjustments will flow through to our Dividend Safety Scores to further improve their ability to identify companies that are most at risk of cutting their dividends in the future. We expect these adjustments to make the scores even more thorough, timely, and accurate going forward. However, these improvements will [...]
One of the big questions many dividend investors face early on is whether or not it's worth managing a portfolio of individual dividend stocks instead of keeping things easy and buying a dividend ETF. In fact, I recently emailed with a reader who was interested in comparing the performance of our Conservative Retirees dividend portfolio [...]
As 10,000 Baby Boomers per day reach retirement age, the question of how Americans will be able to afford a comfortable lifestyle is among the most important of our age. Over the past several decades, plenty of academic studies have been done looking at several approaches to funding retirement via different investing approaches. Let's [...]
International dividend-paying companies can be a great way to gain diversification and potentially benefit from economic growth in faster-growing emerging economies. Unfortunately, like with U.S. dividend stocks, the governments of the world will want their cut in terms of taxes. And just as with U.S. dividend tax law, the fine details of how much [...]
Long time Simply Safe Dividend readers will know that we're big fans of Dividend Reinvestment Plans (DRIPs). That's because anything that helps automate investing and keeps you focused on the long-term is great for helping you maximize the compounding power of successful dividend growth investing. However, there is an even better option out [...]
Dividend Reinvestment Plans (DRIPs) are an appealing way to put your financial future on auto-pilot. And given that the number one reason by far that most people underperform the market is overtrading, anything you can do to take emotions out of financial decisions is often a very good thing. However, as with most [...]
Preferred stock is one of the many types of high yield stocks that many income investors are increasingly turning to with interest rates remaining near historic lows. There are a number of differences between preferred shares and common dividend stocks, as well as bonds. However, many preferred stocks offer higher yields and solid [...]
One of our members emailed me after reading through my recent Verizon article, which analyzed the scary-looking drop in free cash flow that the company reported. Many investors worried that the company's dividend could be at risk. I dug through Verizon's financial statements to show why I believe Verizon's dividend remains safe and why the lower [...]
There are numerous reasons to embrace dividend growth investing as the best means to achieving long-term financial independence. Most discussion focuses on traditional income stocks, those that pay out steadily growing quarterly dividends. However, occasionally a company will issue a special dividend, which is generally much larger than a regular dividend and therefore [...]
With tax season upon us and the world of dividend investing having now matured and expanded into an ever more complex universe of business types, many income investors are understandably confused about taxes on dividends. Especially since the U.S. tax code has grown into one of the largest and most convoluted parts of our [...]
Dividend reinvestment plans, or DRIPs, are one of the most effective tools for income investors to build wealth. History has shown that a long-term, buy-and-hold approach to stocks is hands down the best way for regular people to grow their investment accounts and achieve financial independence. But what many people don’t realize is [...]
One of the most important components of Simply Safe Dividends is our Dividend Safety Score, a metric that rates the safety of a company’s dividend payment by scrubbing through its most important financial metrics. Dividend Safety Scores are available on our site for thousands of dividend-paying stocks and can help you avoid riskier investments [...]
As a dividend growth investor knows, it’s not exactly a secret that the U.S. stock market has been one of the greatest long-term wealth generators in history. In fact, between 1871 and 2015 the S&P 500 has recorded a compound annual growth rate, or CAGR, of 9.1%, increasing a staggering 285,436.41 times in value. [...]