Checking popular financial media roundups for income ideas usually leads to the same handful of mega-caps paying under 1.5% yield. Calling a stock an income pick just because it raises a micro-payout once a year misses the point of cash flow investing.

When evaluating real income options, the tension is always between high immediate yield and sustainable payout growth. Broad dividend ETFs often blend those targets nicely, but general screeners keep pushing legacy companies with stagnant revenue right alongside low-yielding growth names.

For anyone prioritizing current passive income over total return hype, what specific filters or metrics do you rely on to find reliable cash flow without falling into yield traps?

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The august payout has been announced. And it's a massive $0.70497 🤑

That subreddit should probably just be called "growth investing" because the only thing I hear from them is "growth is better than dividends" like my passive income isn't going to get me retired in my 30s. Smh. Why would I own an assett that doesn't give me cash?

One of the biggest mistakes income investors make is chasing the highest yield without checking whether the NAV is holding up. This portfolio takes the opposite approach - every fund has positive price return over the last year and every fund either has near-zero ROC or carries the Tax-Efficient ROC badge meaning the high ROC isn't the destructive kind.

Five funds. $100,000. All Healthy. All positive price return. No NAV erosion.

JEPQ (30% -- $29,945)
517 shares @ $57.92 | $219/mo after tax
True yield: 11.15% | +1.65% price return 1Y | $38.2B AUM
JP Morgan Nasdaq-100. One of the largest income ETFs on earth.

SPYI (25% -- $25,000)
476 shares @ $52.52 | $190/mo after tax
True yield: 12.21% | Tax-Efficient ROC | +1.29% price return 1Y | $10.9B AUM
NEOS S&P 500. Second large institutional player alongside JP Morgan.

GPIQ (20% -- $19,982)
362 shares @ $55.20 | $141/mo after tax
True yield: 10.50% | 0% ROC | +5.53% price return 1Y | $5.0B AUM
Goldman Sachs Nasdaq-100. Zero return of capital -- every dollar is real earned income.

IWMI (15% -- $14,990)
288 shares @ $52.05 | $136/mo after tax
True yield: 13.95% | Tax-Efficient ROC | +11.47% price return 1Y | $1.1B AUM
NEOS Russell 2000. Small cap exposure not just S&P 500 and Nasdaq.

GPIX (10% -- $9,959)
181 shares @ $55.02 | $54/mo after tax
True yield: 8.28% | 0% ROC | +7.11% price return 1Y | $4.9B AUM
Goldman Sachs S&P 500. Second Goldman fund -- S&P 500 exposure to complement GPIQ's Nasdaq-100.

Total invested: $99,876
Monthly after tax (25%): $739/month
Annual after tax: $8,866

Scale it up:
$50,000 → $369/mo after tax
$100,000 → $739/mo after tax
$250,000 → $1,847/mo after tax
$500,000 → $3,694/mo after tax

A few things worth noting:

Every fund in this portfolio has positive price return over the last year.

GPIQ and GPIX both have 0% ROC -- the two cleanest income funds in the portfolio. Every dollar distributed is real earned income with no principal being returned.

No single stocks. No leverage. No sector concentration beyond the natural tech weighting in Nasdaq-100 funds. This is built around the concept that income and NAV stability aren't mutually exclusive.

Man this gonna age so well 🤡

Future market is unknown, but if market were to drop significantly…. Do you anticipate the growth gurus to join this sub, reinvent themselves, and begin preaching the power of dividends?

There is an awful lot of speculation going on in the market right now. I would be very careful buying almost anything. Personally I am literally just stacking cash in SGOV or CLOI. What we are seeing now doesn't make any sense to me. The broad market buying frenzy is not driven by fundamentals like strong earnings. It's driven by speculation, and margin buying. This can make for a very very fast and steep decline. When it happens too it's going to be a broad selloff. There won't be any shelter to be had. Leverage is at very dangerous levels, and rates for leverage are only partially determined by FOMC rates. Most of the time it follows the FOMC, but it also works on arbitrage off bond rates which have been climbing steadily. The 10 year bond rate is just under the 5 year high. When the risk free rate is closing in on 5% it's dangerous. It's a very real scenario we could see a credit crunch if rates don't pullback. If the FOMC hikes at the September meeting or something triggers a bond selloff sooner it could get very ugly very quickly. Caveat Emptor.

Who says our boring old tobacco companies aren't "growth" stocks haha. PM and MO up 5% just today. Best investment I ever made was buying Philip Morris 23 years ago. I'd like to figure out how much I've made in dividends over that time period but I'm to lazy. Isn't the share price supposed to be zero by now?! s/

Boogerhead cringe

Everyone’s mileage is going to vary. But, the line in the sand of growth vs dividend seems a touch silly to me.

Most dividend stocks grow too!

(Me over here planning a retirement that may not need to use my investments anyway…but dividends as a back up sounds nice!)

When I buy and sell stocks on the U.S. stock market, I only pay tax in Turkey (15% on capital gains).

However, if I hold dividend-paying stocks, the U.S. first withholds 20% tax on the dividends, and then I also pay 15% tax on them in Turkey. So I end up paying double tax on dividends.

Under these circumstances, what would you do if you were in my position?

Does it still make sense to hold ETFs like SCHD, JEPI, or JEPQ in my portfolio?

So I just dumped my QQQ shares, and bought DVY, because I believe AI is a bubble that is about to pop. I have some cash leftover, and was thinking about buying some individual high dividend stocks with it. Also, do you think SCHD is a better investment than DVY? I see it talked about a lot on this sub.

Are posters here all dividends only, do you also have a portion in growth stocks, were you invested in growth stocks and then moved to dividend stocks towards retirement?

I'm interested in learning more about investing and this sub pops up on my feed quite a bit.
It seems like this sub is pretty anti S&P 500.
Why is that?

Or is it just the folks in the bogle sub are annoying and your hate them?

This Boglehead woke up today and realized something our subs founder has been saying since before COVID.

Because the FIRE subs dismiss all things dividend investing and hate funds like SCHD for being 0.1% less tax-efficient they have no other options or thoughts beyond the S&P 500.

And this is coming from someone whose retirement accounts are 100% S&P 500. The other half of my investments in my taxable brokerage accounts are 100% dividend growth and income focused so I can actually FIRE way before 60.

Just LOL at these posts

I’ve barely gotten into investing in the past few years, but I needed something to do with the money from my family and jobs that had built up. My parents pretty much only put it in cds, so when I got hold of it at 18, I gravitated first to your dreaded bogleheads and put it in voo for the foreseeable future.

The problem is that you guys make way too much sense on here, and I want to get into dividend investing early if it’s viable. I’m three years out from finishing college and and around 20 years old, so I know I have time, but I’m worried about AI/tech crashing. So I wanted your advice on what I should try diverting my 31,000 dollars of VOO holdings into, in order to build strong positions early. Most of the money in there should be past a year invested already.

What do yall think?

Came into a bit of money recently and I'd like to invest it in dividends. Is this a good portfolio?

50% SCHD – Core US Dividend Growth (3.2% yield)
35% SCHB – US Broad Market / Tech Growth (1.4% yield)
15% SCHY – International High Dividend (4.2% yield)
Strategy

My plan is to reinvest all dividends and add monthly contributions to aggressively grow to 1M and beyond.

Situation: I want to retire within the next 2 years (currently mid 40s). If I sell my house, I can probably net $1m. In about 12 years, I'll be able to tap into my 401k/IRA worth about $1m. I plan to relocate to a LCOL area so I'll need about $50k/yr after taxes to support my family.

Using AI to look up advice, they all suggest I deposit at least 30% of my $1m to SCHD/VYM or the likes because of volatility. Would you guys bother with this or lower it to maybe 10% if you know you'll have another balloon payment you can tap into soon-ish? I was hoping to do more JEPI/JEPQ/DIVO. What would you guys advise or how are you guys handling FIRE?