Rising Dividend Primer

Dividends are being talked about more and more over the past few years as dividend-paying companies have out performed non-dividend payers, but the value of dividend investing is still staggering. A whole generation of people are retiring with most of their investment assets in 401ks and mutual funds. This is the first generation to have the responsibility of making a finite amount of assets last a lifetime. Before the advent of the self directed retirement plans, which came into vogue in the 1980s, most people who retired lived off of a stream of income provided by their employer. The stream of income was either fixed or growing, but in either case it was someone else's responsibilty to invest the assets that were to produce the income. That has changed.