BUILDING WEALTH -Part 6

Building Wealth – Part 6

By Gary John

In the past series I discussed how to build perpetual wealth, the reasons for diversifying your investments, how to approach diversification, and how to leverage different asset classes and diversification strategies to increase your wealth and ensure your personal prosperity, and how to tax-shelter your wealth.

(As a disclaimer, I am not a CPA, lawyer, or financial planner so it is in your best interest to seek differing opinions on the topics I present, so you can make your own decisions)

Let me introduce you to one of the best websites on Dividend Investing:

Simply Safe Dividends was created to change all investors’ insecurity by empowering everyday investors to take control of their financial futures. To help make that happen, Brian, one of the founders, leverages his analyst background, which includes spending over 10,000 hours researching, analyzing, and recommending stock ideas. From meeting with management teams to digging through annual reports, he has studied many types of industries, companies, and investment situations.

Simply Safe Dividends has a simple investment philosophy – own a diversified portfolio of quality businesses that can pay safe and growing dividends for years to come. Their approach can be described as ‘boring and conservative’. ‘We maintain realistic expectations (no yield chasing or crushing the market), encourage minimal trading activity, and strive to keep investors focused on what matters most in retirement – safe income generation and capital preservation’.

Their software and website allows you to:

• Track dozens of data points across your entire portfolio, all updated in real-time
• Avoid future dividend cuts
• Receive email notifications when a holding raises (or cuts) in its dividend
• View your investment accounts in a combined overview or separately
• Connect your brokerage accounts to auto-sync your holdings
• Import spreadsheets to quickly update or analyze a portfolio
• Export portfolios or watch lists to a spreadsheet for further analysis
• See when dividends are expected to hit your bank account
• Access research notes published throughout the year on major dividend stocks
• Gauge a company’s current valuation
• Research new opportunities with Idea lists and the Screener tool
• Monitor a watch list of stocks you’re interested in buying
• View recession performance for your portfolio and individual holdings
• Follow along model dividend portfolios in their monthly newsletter

Sounds over-whelming? It’s not, their website is easy to use and understand.

It’s $399 per year but well worth it. You can try their free 14 day trial and cancel if you don’t like it. (By the way, I do not receive any compensation by recommending them!)

Here’s how I use ‘Safe Dividends’:

1. I first use their ‘Screener’. Here I add the filters I want them to screen out certain companies, such as:

1. Over 10 years of dividend growth streak
2. ‘Safe’ dividend safety
3. Low payout ratio
4. Dividend yield 3-6%

This will provide you an instant list of companies that match your criteria.

• Then on top of the columns you can click and it will sort in order the best in each category. I will initially look at the highest dividend paid with the fastest dividend growth and safe.

• Then click on the name of the company and thoroughly read the financial analysis of your top picks. Look for ones with a good dividend, has nice dividend growth, low payout ratio, low debt ratios, low stock price, low beta, and a history of increasing their dividend. I also look for a company I recognize and won’t be hurt by Amazon.

• And that’s about it. Pretty sweet!

• Now go to ‘Portfolios’ and enter in your stock purchases. Their system will automatically show you how much dividend money you will get and the date of disbursement.

• Their system will send you monthly newsletters, the stocks they have reviewed, and send you an email if there is any dividend news about any of your stock. If you see that one of your companies is reducing their dividend, think about selling it.

• Now, if you want a real no-brainer; go to ‘Ideas’ and select the category that interests you, i.e. High Growth Stock and it will give you a list of stock to choose.

• Then, for a no-brainer-brainer go to ‘Our Portfolios’ and they will give you a suggested list of stock they recommend for ‘Conservative’, ‘Top 20 Stocks’ and ‘Long term Growth’. Pretty cool.

Well, there you go. A little pricey at $399 per year but well worth it! It does most of the research you need for analysis of dividend stock. You can be involved as much as you like, either for deep analysis or to let them give you stock suggestions. Also, what is also important, they track your stock for you. We all get very busy and it can be difficult to monitor your portfolio. If they see any news (good or bad) about your stock they let you know.