The goal of putting money to work for almost any investor is to eventually stop working. To achieve financial independence and be able to meet their living expenditures with investment income, with the possibility of retiring early.
To accomplish this, you must not only save a significant chunk of money, but also put your savings to the best possible use. An investor who effectively implements this method can eventually create enough passive income to pay their living expenditures from sources other than their labour.
I believe that focusing on stocks with the longest track records of increasing dividends is the greatest method to earn money for FIRE (financial independence, retire early) from the stock market. As a result, the Dividend Kings, a group of stocks commonly considered as the best of the best when it comes to dividends, are a terrific place to start for investors looking to retire early.
Dividend King stocks must have increased their dividends for at least 50 years to qualify. As a result, they’re great for earning increasing passive income in retirement.
What Role Does Dividend Income Play In The FIRE Concept?
The idea of FIRE is to make money while you sleep. That is, money that you don’t have to labour for.
There are a variety of strategies to do this, with dividend investing being one of the most popular. Dividend income can be used to supplement and diversify a passive income portfolio that includes other sources such as real estate ownership.
Buying an ownership interest in a property, such as a house or a commercial building, and then renting it out is the basic concept of real estate investing. This allows the investor to use their capital to earn consistent, passive income. You could also invest in real estate funds such as Streitwise and Fundrise.
The dividend investing achieves a similar result, though in a different manner. Dividend investing is purchasing a stock and receiving income from the company’s cash distributions to shareholders. Dividend investment fits in perfectly with the FIRE concept in this regard, because in both cases, the investor purchases an ownership interest in an asset and then earns income from it. And in both circumstances, the income is passive rather than earned via labour or the exchange of time for money.
Dividends Should Account for What Percentage of FIRE Income?
This is a crucial question to which various investors will almost definitely have different answers. When putting together the best dividend income mix as part of a wider passive income portfolio, there are numerous things to consider.
One thing to keep in mind is that equities have a high amount of liquidity, but real estate has a considerably lower degree of liquidity. Stocks can usually be bought or sold at a real-time, transparent market price five days a week. And, unless the investor is transferring millions of dollars at a time, he or she can very definitely enter and exit an entire position with a single button press. This can be beneficial if an investor needs to make a major purchase and needs to withdraw funds from their investing portfolio; with stocks, this is fairly simple.
Another factor to consider is taxes, as the legal form of real estate ownership has an impact on how income is taxed. Furthermore, if an investor owns dividend stocks for less than a year, they may be taxed at various rates, but dividends are generally taxed at lower rates than labour income. Another benefit of dividend stocks is that they are tax-free.
Given these considerations, there isn’t necessarily a perfect blend of dividend stocks and other passive investments for every investor; each investor must make their own decision based on their individual circumstances.
