The Friday Five :: Dividends and Retirement

After traveling for the first half of this week, it has been a grind to catch up on everything and feel like I was back to being productive–but I’m sure it has nothing to do with the number of open tabs during the evening hours while traveling. 😉

As such, I thought today would be a good day to introduce a new feature here on the site called The Friday Five.

The Friday Five will be an opportunity to share a little love with the DGI and Personal Finance blogging community by highlighting a handful of posts that have recently caught my attention.

Dividend Portfolio Summer Recap

Eric Landis over at DGI for the DIY recently shared his summer dividend income report. Eric hasn’t been writing as often lately as family life has occupied his time, which is completely understandable given that his wife was recently deployed.

Check out his recap to see his YoY performance and dividends received, as well as the nice volume of dividend raises and a couple of transactions–one of which is aligned with one of my recent buys.

Eric, thank you to your wife for her service!

Performance Check

Maybe there is something about the end of summer that provides a nice opportunity to review our performance, including the need to evaluate our losing positions.

Paul from Engineering Dividends recently published his own performance check on Gilead Sciences.

I’ve learned a lot from Paul since joining the DGI community and he has had a very positive influence on the metrics that I track with my own portfolio. This post highlights another aspect that we should each be monitoring and that is the total annual rate of return for our holdings over an extended period of time.

Questioning the 4% Safe Withdrawal

For those that are in pursuit of FIRE (Financial Independence, Retire Early) there is no doubt that you have heard about the 4% Safe Withdrawal Rate, or SWR. It has become one of the standard rules of thumb for planning your exodus from the rat race.

With more and more people striving for very early retirements, FI with 2 Kids recently questioned if the 4% rule works for early retirement and shares some nice analysis on how they are approaching things.

Personally, I tend to be a bit more conservative as I think about when we will begin to draw on our savings and that is a big reason that I am aggressively building a dividend portfolio. The more we can earn in passive dividends, we can afford to be a bit more conservative on our withdrawal rate.

Dividend Scorecard

Mr. Tako from Mr. Tako Escapes recently shared a guest post at Tawcan about the problem with dividend investing and proposes a nice solution.

As dividend investors, it is easy to fall into the trap of buying solid companies and thinking that your work is done.

However, as noted earlier with the discussion on a performance check, it is important to continuously be evaluating your portfolio holdings and confirming that your investments still pass the smell test. The dividend scorecard shared by Mr. Tako highlights a great strategy for doing just that.

Power of the DGI Community

One of the most anticipated posts across the DGI community is the DGI monthly roundup that Lanny and Bert, the Dividend Diplomats, publish to highlight the success that the community as a whole is achieving.

It truly is amazing to see the results that everyone is achieving, and one of the things that I love the most is that whether someone has a huge dividend payout or a small trickle, everyone helps support and encourage one another.

This post takes a considerable amount of effort to pull together and recap the results of the community. When you stop by to check out the results, be sure to say thanks to Bert and Lanny for taking the time to produce this report every month.

Support the Community

Hopefully you enjoyed the inaugural Friday Five, and please take some time to stop by each of these sites and read these great posts–and drop them a comment as well if you enjoyed it as much as I have.

The blogging community, and in particular the dividend investing and personal finance niche, is filled with great people that produce a lot of valuable content. I really enjoy reading as much as I can and providing feedback to the bloggers via comments or tweets on their posts.

I will continue to share The Friday Five moving forward as an additional way to give back and support the blogging community.