Can you live off S&P 500 dividends?
Once you have $1 million in assets, you can look seriously at living entirely off the returns of a portfolio. After all, the S&P 500 alone averages 10% returns per year. Setting aside taxes and down-year investment portfolio management, a $1 million index fund could provide $100,000 annually.
And if you've got a large portfolio totaling more than $1.1 million, your dividend income could come in around $50,000 per year. By then, there could be other dividend-focused ETFs to choose from.
Stocks in the S&P 500 index currently yield about 1.5% on aggregate. That means, if you have $1 million invested in a mutual fund or exchange-traded fund that tracks the index, you could expect annual dividend income of about $15,000.
It is possible to achieve financial freedom by living off dividends forever. That isn't to say it's easy, but it's possible. Those starting from nothing admittedly have a hard road to retirement-enabling passive income.
The S&P 500 is an index, so it does not pay dividends; however, there are mutual funds and exchange-traded funds (ETFs) that track the index, which you can invest in. If the companies in these funds pay dividends, you'll receive yours based on how many shares of the funds you hold.
Too many people are paid a lot of money to tell investors that yields like that are impossible. But the truth is you can get a 9.5% yield today--and even more. But even at 9.5%, we're talking about a middle-class income of $4,000 per month on an investment of just a touch over $500K.
The truth is that most investors won't have the money to generate $1,000 per month in dividends; not at first, anyway. Even if you find a market-beating series of investments that average 3% annual yield, you would still need $400,000 in up-front capital to hit your targets.
Dividend stocks hold a universal appeal, capturing the interest of both everyday investors and billionaires. Take Warren Buffett, for example. He's a strong advocate for dividend stocks and consistently incorporates a wide range of these equities into his investment portfolio each quarter.
If you were to invest in a company offering a 4% annual dividend yield, you would need to invest about $900,000 to generate a monthly income of $3000. While this might seem like a hefty sum, remember that this investment isn't just generating income—it's also likely to appreciate over time.
Calculate the Investment Needed: To earn $1,000 per month, or $12,000 per year, at a 3% yield, you'd need to invest a total of about $400,000.
Is there a downside to dividend investing?
Despite their storied histories, they cut their dividends. 9 In other words, dividends are not guaranteed and are subject to macroeconomic and company-specific risks. Another downside to dividend-paying stocks is that companies that pay dividends are not usually high-growth leaders.
How Much Money You Need to Retire on Dividends. As a rough rule of thumb, you can multiply the annual dividend income you wish to generate by 22 and by 28 to establish a reasonable range for how much you need to invest to live off dividends.
For example, say I need to earn $50,000 a year to live comfortably and my average dividend yield is 5%. So, I would need to own $50,000 / 0.05 = $1 million worth of shares to meet my income needs.
Basic Info. S&P 500 Dividend Yield is at 1.35%, compared to 1.47% last month and 1.66% last year. This is lower than the long term average of 1.84%.
S&P 500 Monthly Return is at 3.10%, compared to 5.17% last month and 3.51% last year. This is higher than the long term average of 0.56%. The S&P 500 Monthly Return is the investment return received each month, excluding dividends, when holding the S&P 500 index.
Ever since the S&P 500 index was devised, it has built an impeccable track record of earning positive returns over time. In fact, research shows it's actually harder to lose money with the S&P 500 than it is to make money if you keep a long-term outlook.
To generate $5,000 per month in dividends, you would need a portfolio value of approximately $1 million invested in stocks with an average dividend yield of 5%. For example, Johnson & Johnson stock currently yields 2.7% annually. $1 million invested would generate about $27,000 per year or $2,250 per month.
Dividend Stock | Current Dividend Yield* | Analysts' Implied Upside* |
---|---|---|
Johnson & Johnson (JNJ) | 3.1% | 25.3% |
Merck & Co. Inc. (MRK) | 2.4% | 10.6% |
Chevron Corp. (CVX) | 4% | 30.8% |
Coca-Cola Co. (KO) | 3.3% | 18.1% |
Dividend-paying Stocks
Shares of public companies that split profits with shareholders by paying cash dividends yield between 2% and 6% a year. With that in mind, putting $250,000 into low-yielding dividend stocks or $83,333 into high-yielding shares will get your $500 a month.
The Top 10 list of companies that have paid monthly dividends in 2022 includes ARMOUR Residential REIT, Inc., Orchid Island Capital, Inc., AGNC Investment Corp., Oxford Square Capital Corp., Ellington Residential Mortgage REIT, SLR Investment Corp., PennantPark Floating Rate Capital Ltd., Main Street Capital ...
Which US stock gives highest dividend?
- T. AT&T. -2.32. -12.45%
- XRX. Xerox. 16.85. 3.07. 22.28%
- IBM. International Business Machines. 182.27. 60.04. 49.12%
- CVX. Chevron. 158.96. -6.28. -3.80%
- EOG. EOG Resources. 135.29. 18.00. 15.35%
- ET. Energy Transfer. 15.42. 3.81. 32.82%
- HESM. Hess Midstream Partners. 35.26. 8.22. 30.40%
- ARCC. Ares Capital. 20.28. 3.39. 20.07%
Dividends can be classified either as ordinary or qualified. Whereas ordinary dividends are taxable as ordinary income, qualified dividends that meet certain requirements are taxed at lower capital gain rates.
Why Doesn't Berkshire Hathaway Pay its Shareholders a Dividend? Company founder and CEO Warren Buffett believes profits can generate better shareholder value spent in other ways. He frequently shares these views during Berkshire's annual meetings.
Warren Buffett loves a good dividend growth stock. Such companies consistently grow their profits year after year and elect to return those higher profits to shareholders. A business that's able to do that likely has a lot of the characteristics Buffett looks for in a company.
This was more than double the annualized return for non-payers (3.95%) over the same timeline. In 2024, Buffett's company is set to collect around $6 billion in dividend income (including preferred dividends).
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