Dear DTA,
My goal is to make to make a little extra money. I don’t know if you could help me beat the market, but I would like to try.
-George H.
Hey, George. Great to hear from you. Thanks for writing in to us.
Making a little extra money, and perhaps even beating the stock market in the process, is why you’re reading our site – and it’s why we share such high-quality content and resources.
I love to be able to help people. And I also love to exceed expectations.
That’s because this strategy has been proven to do just that, which can thus lead to a lot of money over the long haul.
That strategy is dividend growth investing.
Ned Davis Research has found that dividend growers and initiators – essentially, dividend growth stocks – performed better than an equal-weighted S&P 500 index over a 34-year period covering 1972-2016.
These stocks didn’t just outperform, by the way; they massively outperformed.
This shouldn’t be too surprising. After all, reinvested dividends account for the vast majority of the broader market’s total return over the last 100+ years.
What dividend growth investing does is capture this logic in a very straightforward manner, making successful, long-term investing easy for everyone.
I say this as someone who didn’t know a thing about investing as recently as 2009.
Not only did I know nothing about investing, but I knew nothing about money in general.
However, being fired from my automotive job during the depths of the financial crisis was the wake-up call I desperately needed.
I got my act in gear, studied the art of money religiously, and looked at every possible investment strategy out there.
Well, it was quickly apparent that dividend growth investing is the everyday person’s path to riches – slowly but surely.
I was flat broke in 2009. Actually, I was below broke. My net worth was less than $0.
But I personally harnessed the power of dividend growth investing to go from below broke to financially independent in six years.
I recounted that journey in my Early Retirement Blueprint, which is a road map that just about anyone can follow to financial independence and early retirement.
That road map is a classic tale of living below your means and intelligently investing your excess capital.
It’s not a get-rich-quick scheme, but these ideas can allow one to build a lot of wealth and passive income in a reasonable amount of time.
Of course, you can’t invest what you don’t have.
So you’ll have to adjust your budget and realize savings. You’ll have to have excess capital to invest.
Once you have that capital, though, you have the ultimate dividend growth investing resource freely available at your disposal.
That’s David Fish’s Dividend Champions, Contenders, and Challengers list – a compilation of more than 800 US-listed stocks that have raised their dividends each year for at least the last five consecutive years.
These are the “dividend growers” Ned Davis Research is talking about.
You’ll notice some of the best companies on the planet on Mr. Fish’s list.
Johnson & Johnson (JNJ), Apple Inc. (AAPL), and The Coca-Cola Co. (KO) are just a few of the blue-chip stocks you’ll find by perusing that list.
You know where else you’ll find these same stocks?
In the common stock portfolio for Berkshire Hathaway Inc. (BRK.B), which is managed by the legendary and multi-billionaire investor Warren Buffett.
Warren Buffett clearly likes to invest in high-quality dividend growth stocks.
You can’t blame him.
Dividend growth investing, at its core, is simply buying and holding equity in great companies that are so profitable, they end up with more cash than they can efficiently reinvest back into the businesses.
A good problem to have, which leads to paying dividends to shareholders. As those gushing streams of profits increase, so do those dividends.
I’ve followed in the footsteps of great investors like Buffett, as you can see by looking at my personal six-figure dividend growth stock portfolio that I’ve aptly named the FIRE Fund (because it generates the five-figure and growing passive dividend income I need to be financially independent and retired early).
If a regular guy like me, who was totally down and out just a few years ago, can use this strategy to become quite wealthy in a pretty short period of time, there’s no reason anyone else can’t do the same.
It’s in the name of helping readers just like you, George, to achieve these same goals that we share so many phenomenal (and free) resources.
One such resource is the Dividend Growth Investing Lessons that fellow contributor Dave Van Knapp has put together.
These lessons are a multi-part series that discuss what the strategy is, why it’s so wonderful for investors of all types, and how to successfully use it to your advantage.
And I take the time each week to reveal a compelling long-term investment idea via the Undervalued Dividend Growth Stock of the Week series.
This series highlights a high-quality dividend growth stock every Sunday.
And every stock I feature sports the strong fundamentals, numerous competitive advantages, and, perhaps most importantly, appealing valuation that warrants serious consideration for long-term investors who want to make more than a little extra money and beat the market.
This strategy has worked for me. And it’s obviously worked for Warren Buffett and his company’s shareholders.
I think it can work for you, too.
But it’s up to you to take action.
I wish you luck and success.
Jason Fieber
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Disclaimer: Jason Fieber is not a licensed financial advisor, tax professional, or stock broker. Please consult with a licensed investment professional before investing any of your money. If your money is not FDIC insured, it may decline in value. To protect the privacy of our readers, any names published in this article are under aliases. In addition, text may be edited, omitted or paraphrased for grammar or length.