Curious readers can download the Dividend Kings spreadsheet for free. Dividend Kings are 50+ stocks that have paid and increased their dividends for 50+ consecutive years. Sure Dividend is an investing website and paid newsletter service focusing on dividend stocks and income investing. When the Sure Dividend blog started in 2014, it built a significant audience…
Though opinions vary on individual stocks vs. index funds, my own investments reflect a blend of both, from dividend and growth stocks to index funds, ETFs, and managed mutual funds. My uncle gave me one share of Chevron for my 20th birthday in 1995, and I built an individual stock portfolio from there. A retirement…
The minus your age rule of thumb is a simple math formula used in personal finance to help DIY investors and advisors determine a suitable stock-to-bond ratio for an investment portfolio. I’ve always referred to this as the 130 minus your age rule of thumb on this website, but that only tells part of the…
I’ve been investing on the M1 Finance platform since 2017. I was attracted by the intuitive way investors can design their ideal portfolio first and then fund it over time. This method differs from the traditional way of investing excess cash flow — buying individual holdings every month or so. With M1 Finance, any time…
This week’s post is a video conversation with Ben Reynolds of the Sure Dividend Newsletter. Watch it below or click over to YouTube for this 50-minute chat. Stay tuned until the end when Ben shares his top 3 dividend stock recommendations for May 2024. In tandem with this video, Ben is offering a free spreadsheet…
TD Bank interviewed me on this topic. Check out the interview on YouTube or below. I’m 48. It’s been 28 years since I invested in my first stock. Twenty-eight years from now, I’ll be 76, about the same age as my parents. My parents recently fired their financial advisor and asked me to assist in…
As New Year’s resolutions are fresh on your mind, there’s no better time than now to initiate and strengthen wealth-building strategies. To help inspire you, I’ve created a list of the best investments for long-term growth. This article is about where you can direct your money and time this year so that ten and twenty…
My best-performing investment ever is a managed mutual fund called the Fidelity OTC Portfolio (FOCPX). It’s up more than 1,100% since I’ve owned it. I wish I could say I’m brilliant at evaluating mutual fund managers and picking funds. But I only own this fund because my first employer, back in 1998, offered it as…
Today’s article is a guest post from a young entrepreneur named Preston Yadegar. Preston has built an online platform called the Shareholder Vote Exchange (SVE) to empower individual investors to generate additional income from their existing stock holdings by selling their shareholder voting rights. When you own a stock, each share represents a vote during…
A former coworker once told me how happy he was with his financial advisor. He’s made me A LOT of money! It wasn’t an appropriate time for me to ask the obvious follow-up questions: define a lot? or what are his fees? Financial advisors play a critical role for many, like my former coworker, who…
Inflation is destroying wealth and making food so expensive. The Fed keeps raising interest rates — how can the housing market survive it? The 16th largest U.S. bank failed a few months back. Then the 14th largest bank failed! The COVID-19 pandemic happened. That sucked. Now there’s a stupid war in Eastern Europe. The stock…
When I lost my job in 2017, my former employer didn’t have the means to pay me a severance. Our family had emergency savings, but our multiple income streams kept us afloat. Five years earlier, a job loss would have been much worse. But since I saved and invested while times were good, I could enjoy…
Risk-free government Treasury yields have risen dramatically over the past year. The increase was a direct result of the Federal Reserve rate increases that started in 2022. Higher short-term yields are good for retirees and give us multiple options to earn risk-free returns on idle cash while maintaining liquidity. But the fast pace of the…
My Uncle gifted me one share of Chevron stock in 1995, seeding my lifelong dividend stock investment portfolio. But I didn’t start living off dividends until I left my IT career in 2022. There were no online brokers or index ETFs making it easy to start investing in 1995. Trades cost $30+. IRAs and mutual…