Author Archive: Brett Owens

During volatile times like these, the best thing to do is this: stay calm and keep collecting your dividends.

Fighting the urge to sell is critical, because doing so could slash your dividend income by 82% or more.

Here’s where I’m getting that number: let’s say you hold the stocks in our Contrarian Income Report portfolio, which yields an average of 7.2% as I write this. (If you bought a while back, you’re likely yielding more on your investment, thanks to our picks’ dividend growth, but let’s use 7.2% as our benchmark here.)

And let’s say you’ve got a reasonable nest egg—about $350K—invested.… Read more

Should we use this dip to load up on dividend stocks?

It is always a good time to put high quality payers in our portfolio. Especially now, when their yields are noticeably higher than they were this time just last week.

However, please do note my emphasis on quality. “Junk dividends” are cheaper, too, but we should continue to steer clear of these. To show you what I mean, let’s pick on three money-losing stocks paying unreal high yields. I’m talking about 8.3% all the way up to 16 (per year, yes, you’re reading correctly.)

These particular yields, believe it or not, are likely to go even higher in the months ahead.… Read more

If you own any real estate investment trusts (REITs), make sure you forward this article along to your tax advisor!

Historically, REIT distributions have been considered nonqualified dividends by the IRS. This means they usually get taxed at your regular income tax rate.

However, REIT investors now benefit from the same tax break that “pass through” businesses receive. As a general rule, REIT investors are now allowed to deduct 20% of their REIT dividend income.

(This tax update is adapted from our new book How to Retire on Dividends: Earn a Safe 8%, Leave Your Principal Intact. You can grab your copy here.)… Read more

At my Contrarian Income Report service, we hunt down huge dividends on the regular. Right now, our portfolio is knocking out a 6.9% average payout from 16 real estate investment trusts (REITs), stocks and closed-end funds (CEFs).

We’ve grabbed serious price gains, too: since launch in 2015, CIR has delivered a 12.5% annualized return. Not bad for a set of “boring” income plays!

Beyond Big Yields

Even though our CIR club is “high yields only,” I get that many folks look to stocks with low (or no) dividends for gains, too: names like Apple (AAPL), whose 1% yield won’t get it within a mile of Contrarian Income Report.… Read more

If you want to live off dividends in retirement, you can’t depend on “blue-chip stocks.” They simply haven’t paid enough yield for years:

Even High-Yield Savings Accounts Start to Look Good at These Levels

Source: Multpl.com

The S&P 500’s yield recently hit 1.7%. Think about it in “retirement spending” terms. If you took an entire million-dollar nest egg and put it in the S&P 500, you’d be looking at just $17,000 in dividend income per year. If you have even less to invest, like $500,000, that’s just $8,500 a year—several thousands of dollars below the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services’ poverty guideline of $12,760!… Read more

“Efficient market” believers are adorable, but they are also wrong. It is possible to make 15% to 19% per year, every year, from perfectly safe dividend stocks.

In a moment, I’ll outline this little-known yet simple formula. But first, let’s talk about what not to do–just in case you’re following bad advice today!

“Buy and hope” investing is what most of your peers do. They purchase shares and root for them to appreciate in price. Unfortunately, they have no specific plan detailing how they are going to profit from their stocks.

Inevitably, pullbacks happen, and this is their undoing. They get scared and sell, often near lows.… Read more

Today I’m going to show you how to grab two growing income streams—in just one buy. Plus, we’re going to bank double-digit price profits to boot.

The strategy? Simple: we’re buying dividend-paying stocks poised to spin off one of their businesses into a brand new dividend-paying stock. The result? Two or more quarterly dividends where there used to be just one.

Two other things you should know: our “new” dividend(s) will likely grow even faster than our original payout! And we won’t have to do anything to get this extra cash.

The Profit Power of “Dividend Splits” 

The dividend-growth wave this “dividend split” can unleash is massive.… Read more

The blue-chip corporations that make up the Dividend Aristocrats are a tribute to the power of dividends. They have raised their payouts for 25 straight years or more and, most importantly, made many of their investors quite wealthy in the process.

Unfortunately for us, everyone already knows these firms are great. And as a result, their stocks are now overpriced and these well-run firms are producing mere also-ran returns. Check out the purple line below, which shows the Aristocrats trailing the popular Dow Jones and S&P 500 indices:

The Aristocrats Even Make the 124-Year-Old Dow Look Spry!

We can do better, and I’ll show you how in a moment.… Read more

A financial friend of mine, an income-focused money manager, called me to brag about one of his clients. He’s used his CIR subscription to smartly help her turn a modest $387,000 nest egg into monthly dividend income that’s on track to last, well, just about forever.

Three years ago, he explained how he was using my “retire on monthly dividends” strategy to help this nice grandmother.

“She brought me $387,000,” he told me originally. “And wants to take out $3,000 per month for ten years.”

Well, so far, so good for grandma. She’s now 38 months into her $3,000 per month dividend gravy train.… Read more

I’m annoyed with this bubbly stock market. It’s making it nearly impossible for regular people to find decent dividends.

Sure, we’ll always take upside, and despite overdone drops due to the coronavirus, the market has handed us a 4% total return since the New Year, building on the 31% it delivered last year.

But where the heck do we invest our gains?

Truth is, if you want to deploy cash into higher payers, you’re in for a tough slog: the S&P 500 yields just 1.7% today, a low we’ve only seen a couple times since the financial crisis.

US Stocks Rarely Pay so Little

Treasuries?… Read more