I keep saying it because it’s true and critical to your retirement wellbeing  (or lack thereof)  – don’t take any dividends for granted today!

In a minute I’ll outline a 3-step “dividend disaster” test that you can quickly run on the stocks you own. I want to make sure you don’t hold the next Mattel (MAT) simply because “its yield looked good” or “so-and-so guru recommended it.”

First-level income hounds piled into Barbie’s plastic 6% yield. But when the firm “surprisingly” announced a sharp 61% dividend cut two weeks ago, shares completed a 36% dive:

6 Years of Dividends, Gone

Our Contrarian Income Report portfolio was, yet again, unique in our handling of this ticking toy bomb.…
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Everyone’s obsessing over FAAMG stocks, and for good reason. Facebook (FB), Apple (AAPL), Amazon (AMZN), Microsoft (MSFT) and Google, now known as Alphabet (GOOG), are on a tear for 2017, rising nearly 30%, on average.

And today I’m going to show you two funds that invest in these companies while offering higher dividends than any of these stocks pay individually.

Of course, everyone has heard of Facebook, Apple and Google. (And in case you missed it, my colleague Brett Owens revealed five individual tech stocks he likes now on June 19.)

But hardly anyone has heard of either of these high-yielding tech funds.…
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Today I’m going to show you 2 easy ways to set yourself up for safe double-digit yearly dividend growth and invite quick 100%+ upside too.

I’ll also reveal a blue chip stock that’s delivering both strong price gains and rising dividends. It will have you pocketing a nice 5%+ yield in short order.

So let’s get going, starting with…

The Dividend-Growth Signal Most People Miss

If you’ve been buying dividend stocks for a while, you probably know about the payout ratio.

It’s a sacred cow for many folks; you calculate it by dividing the total amount of dividends paid by the company’s last 12 months of net income.…
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As we speak, $376 billion is locked up in five of Wall Street’s most overrated, overloved funds. And the sad reality is that there’s a high chance a few thousand bucks of that are courtesy of … well, you.

The good news? I can show you seven far better options.

While Wall Street still rolls out hundreds of new exchange-traded funds every year, one of the greatest advantages for any ETF is age. Funds that got an early start have marketing advantages, media advantages and tend to come from companies that can compete on price, meaning bargain-basement fees that undercut the competition and keep newer fund providers from even bothering to jump into the space.…
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Today I’m going to show you why some funds are killing the S&P 500—and how you can dramatically boost your odds of doing exactly the same thing.

One way not to do it is by investing in a dying asset class: traditional mutual funds. Since most mutual funds have underperformed the market, the number of funds out there has flat-lined, while the number of exchange-traded funds (ETFs), mutual funds’ low-cost cousins, keeps exploding. There are now about 2,000 ETFs on US exchanges, and they account for about a third of all US trading.

But as I wrote on February 21 (and have said many times since), I don’t recommend you join the ever-growing crowd of ETF fans, either.…
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My friend is a young 41-year old millionaire. And the poor guy is basically broke!

Meanwhile there’s a conservative yet savvy grandma in the Midwest raking in more monthly income than my boy, on a modest $387,000 in savings.

What’s her secret? We’ll get to that in a minute. First, let’s lament my man’s millionaire curse.

His stash of cash does him no good, other than giving him something to worry about. His million-dollar problem? He doesn’t know how to turn his green pile into a steady, sustainable income stream.

And since he believes in efficient markets, he has no interest in exploring investments that could pay him 7% or 8% annually – providing him with $75,000+ in yearly income while leaving his capital intact (or better than intact) to boot.…
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Another day, another bearish article. It’s impossible nowadays to read the news without someone telling us that a crash is coming and we need to sell our stocks now!

If you’re seeing these same people urging you to liquidate your retirement accounts, you’re not alone. In fact, these stories seem to be everywhere in the mainstream financial press.

It’s all nonsense, written to grab your attention with fear-based headlines.

And if you don’t take a critical look at these stories (and here I mean going by raw numbers, not emotional appeals), you risk missing a terrific wealth-building opportunity—or worse.

Here’s the truth: behind the alarming headlines, there’s another, far more boring story: American companies are absolutely crushing it.…
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It’s usually the last place dividend fans look for big yields and surging payout growth—but it should be one of the first.

I’m talking about the technology sector. And before you dismiss me as crazy, check out this chart.

The Home of Payout Growth

What you’re seeing here is the dividend-growth rate of the Technology Select Sector SPDR ETF (XLK) compared to the SPDR S&P 500 ETF (SPY), representing the market as a whole, over the past 10 years.

Sure, the blue line is choppier than the orange one—but that’s a small price to pay for a 1,000%+ income boost!

And as I showed you on May 15, there’s a direct link between a soaring dividend and a soaring share price.…
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Residential real estate is hot right now – and apartment owners are making money hand-over-fist. But don’t worry, I’m not going to recommend you run out and buy an entire complex. Instead, I’ve got three apartment REITs you can buy from the convenience of your computer (or phone, for that matter!) for yields up to 7.3%.

Rents are now so high nationwide that no one person making minimum wage for 40 hours a week can afford to rent a two-bedroom apartment – a fact driven partly by low minimum pay, but also rising rents.

Not all REITs in the space are buys, of course.…
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The bear growl is rising.

Hot-running tech stocks suffered a huge multiday crack after Goldman Sachs raised bubble worries. The “smart money” is increasingly sounding the risk alarm. Many analysts and prominent investors say the market could use a healthy pullback … but others are now concerning themselves with the potential for an outright crash.

It’s the kind of market environment that raises comparisons to 2007-09, and the dot-com crash – periods that emphasized just how vital it is to have a stable of trustworthy, bulletproof dividend stocks like the five portfolio pillars I want to show you today.

How bad could it be?…
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