Dividends for Depression Era Investing, Part 3

Continuing our series (see Part 2 here) on investing for an income stream through companies who sell products people have to buy, even in a depression, I will today be covering companies that are growing their dividends. The best part about them is that they continued to grow their dividends, and had enough money to do so over the past decade while the overall stock market lost money. How is that possible? Their share prices dropped just like nearly every other stock out there. It is because their business remained solid as they sold products people have to buy, even though the owners of the shares were freaking out and selling without thinking. Oh yeah, and they meet our other requirement - they yield more than the 10 year Treasury Bond. As you are getting used to now, I like to give examples to help re-train the way you view your investments. There are two parts to our dividend paying, publicly traded companies. There is the actual business which sells products and is run by management teams who are in agreement in thinking that we the owners should get some of the profits from the business. This is the most important part of our investment plan, as we want the income from the business. The other part of a publicly traded company is the stock price. This usually has nothing to do with the income producing power of the business in the short term, and has more to do with how your neighbors and co-workers feel that day. If they are excited, they pay higher prices for the stock. If they are sad and scared, they will sell it at any price.... Read more