Did you make last year a good year? If you subscribed to my monthly Survive & Thrive letter, we got to know each other better and gained some perspective. This year will be no different. As my father-in-law, Dick Young, would write in his monthly newsletter Richard C. Young’s Intelligence Report, “make it a good month” is a philosophy. Because this is an emotional time of year, I want you to keep your head about you. As I’ve written to you before, stock prices are qualitative. They’re opinions. Dividends are not. They are quantitative. They’re cold, hard cash. You can see them being … [Read more...]

Much of your investment success comes from avoiding disasters like crypto exchange FTX. The Fear of Missing Out or FOMO is a huge pull, like gravity, on investors. Look, I’m Your Survival Guy, not Superman, but FOMO’s like kryptonite. It saps the power of self-control and “knowing better” right out of investors, and it comes when you least expect it. If you’ve been with me, this has been a good year. But it’s been downright brutal for the non-dividend paying stocks that mainly comprise the Nasdaq and the tech sector within the S&P 500. The ride up is always more fun than the crash. But … [Read more...]

What can we learn about lifelong wealth from the passing of Queen Elizabeth II? For one, as I wrote to you yesterday, “to do nothing is the hardest job of all.” If you think about your lifelong endeavor of compounding, like I most certainly do in my life, then you rise above the day-to-day noise like a heavenly spirit. You see life for what it is, a gift. A gift to be cherished. Because your gift can live on forever in the name of your children, your children's children, and theirs. When you separate your emotions from your money, you’ll find it will be difficult to separate it from … [Read more...]

Do you have dividend religion? Do you need some? Stock trends come and go, but dividends meet the test of time. Put father time on your side and put the miracle of compound interest to work for you. Karen Langley and Gunjan Banerji report in The Wall Street Journal on the market’s big boost for dividend stocks, writing: Cash is king right now. The latest evidence: the market’s embrace of dividend-paying stocks over another longtime favorite, firms that do buybacks. Investors are rushing to companies promising regular payouts to shareholders, a sign of Wall Street’s hunger for cash in … [Read more...]

Do yourself a favor. Take a vacation (everyone else is, trust me). Turn off your phone, your computer, your TV, and take a mental break from your investments for a minute. Because in times like these, and they’re quite the times, it never ceases to amaze me how all of a sudden investors get “serious” about their money. They stay up late, study hard, and pull all-nighters trying to figure it “all” out. Come on. Are you kidding me? One of your greatest assets as a successful, long-term investor is the ability to keep your cool while others lose theirs. And as Your Survival Guy, I’m not going … [Read more...]

You know how I feel about Fidelity and Vanguard. Great custodians, but there’s a better mousetrap than the mutual funds and ETFs they sell for stock investing. That’s why I favor individual dividend-paying stocks with a track record of consistent dividend increases. Do not take this as a call to immediately sell your mutual funds/ETFs, but it may be time for a revisit. How? Maybe look at your lazy money sitting on your couch, eating your ice cream, and doing nothing. Let’s go. Wake up. Get it out the door. Beat inertia. Dividend investing isn’t a fad. It’s always in style if you care about … [Read more...]