I recently accomplished something that had been on my “to do” list for no fewer than three months.

I figured out how to log into my 401(K)!

You would think a simple “password reset” would not be that difficult, especially for a guy who has started a software company or three in his day. Well, I’m not embarrassed, just glad that my long personal investing nightmare is over.

What is it about 401(K) access? It’s a circus when we try to log into my wife’s retirement plan, too. (Any task that starts with “logging into her company’s VPN” is off to a rough start.)… Read more

In a levitating market like today’s, we dividend investors absolutely must have a portfolio that does three things:

1. Automatically “times” the market for us.
2. Frees up cash for us to grab bargain dividend stocks on pullbacks and, of course …
3. Pays us a growing income stream!

We’ll get to point No. 1 in a second. Let’s start with point No. 2.

Most people panic when the market drops, but we dividend investors know that volatility is our friend. It’s easy to see this just by looking at what the S&P 500 benchmark SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust (SPY) has done in the last five years.… Read more

Let’s say you want to generate a middle-class wage using only dividends, but you’ve only got $300,000 to invest. Can it be done?

It certainly can—and it’s easy to do with just three funds you can buy right now.

Drop $300K into these three income generators and you’ll get an outsized 9.8% dividend stream. That translates into a steady $2,450 every single month. And since these funds pay dividends monthly (as opposed to your typical S&P 500 stock, which pays quarterly), you’ll start getting that income in just 30 days (or less) if you invest right now.

Best of all, none of these funds force you to buy into risky small companies, toxic financial derivatives or any other speculative investments.… Read more

There are dozens of huge yields out there that no one ever talks about. I’m talking about payouts 6-times (or bigger) than the pathetic 1.4% dividend the typical blue-chip stock pays.

Swapping Dividend Yield for Shareholder Yield 

These big “hidden yields” really are hiding in plain sight. The key to finding them is to set aside dividend yield for a moment and focus on shareholder yield.

Shareholder yield is a simple measure that goes beyond dividends to show you the big-picture view of what you’re pulling in from a stock—including another way companies pay us that doesn’t get nearly enough press (or at least nearly enough positive press!).… Read more

Most people don’t realize this, but there’s a simple, two-step way to grab serious gains in high-yield closed-end funds (CEFs).

I call it the Index Boomerang Effect. And when I say it’s simple, I’m not kidding around.

It goes like this: over time, we can expect a CEF in a particular asset class to perform around as well as the index that represents it (though to be honest, the best CEFs tend to beat their indexes handily, which makes our strategy even more powerful).

But even the best CEFs do lag their indexes from time to time. The key is to spot those times and buy—then ride your CEF to strong gains as the index “pulls” its share price higher.… Read more

Oil stocks—and their fat dividends—are breaking out to new highs.

Question for you. If Fed Chair Jay Powell hadn’t printed a bunch of money over the past 14 months, would energy stocks still be this electric?

Chairman JP Prints Lots of Money

My take? No way. Their recovery would be (much) more muted.

According to the International Energy Agency (IEA)—the best and most unbiased source of industry information I know—world oil demand is projected to hit 96.7 million barrels per day this year.

Meanwhile, global supply is just 93.6 million barrels per day. Production was halted when the world shut down a spring ago.… Read more

Who’s up for speedy 80% stock gains? Believe it or not, there’s a “split secret” hiding in plain sight for us to apply.

Let’s discuss the details. And appreciate that we can tap this strategy using safe dividend paying stocks, too.

Believe it or not, stock splits can hand us a nice price bump. When a company—especially a top-notch dividend grower—splits its shares, the move draws in folks who’ve been holding off, seeing the pre-split price as too expensive.

Let’s be honest: we’ve all done this. How many times have we avoided a stock because it trades for $300 a share?… Read more

If you’re on the lookout for an expert to help you build your nest egg—and bulk up your dividend stream to, say, a 6%+ yield—you have two main choices: a professional wealth manager or an investment advisory service (or a newsletter, as they’re more commonly known).

Which is for you? Let’s break down both options. Then we’ll dive into the kind of three-fund portfolio a newsletter might tip you off to, with a healthy 6.1% income stream and a history of double-digit yearly returns, too.

Wealth Managers Charge More, But They’re a Help in a Crisis

With active wealth management, the main concern most people have is fees.… Read more

Business development companies (BDCs) are big dividend paying companies that tend to thrive as rates rise. Today, we’ll discuss three inflation-powered payouts up to 10.7%.

BDCs extend loans to small businesses and often their loans have a “floating rate” component included. So, the BDC tends to make more money as long-term rates rise.

A quick background on BDCs. Since traditional banks have backed off on lending over the years, BDCs have stepped in. They provided much-needed debt, equity and other financial solutions to small businesses.

Congress whipped up business development companies with a few pen strokes in 1980, creating a structure that’s incentivized to provide smaller companies with financing.… Read more

There’s an obvious reason why we love closed-end funds (CEFs): the dividends!

CEFs’ payouts average around 7% as I write this, and there are plenty paying well into the double digits. One fund we’ll touch on below, for example, yields more than 16%. A payout like that gets you $2,000 a month in dividends on just $150,000 invested.

But, as we often discuss in my CEF Insider service, when picking CEFs, we always need to look past those big yields.

We also need to examine the discount to net asset value (NAV, or the value of the fund’s portfolio) because buying a CEF at an unusually wide discount can net us strong price upside as that discount bounces back to normal, pulling the price up with it.… Read more