What Is a Dividend Aristocrat?
And why it matters to small investors
I only invest in stocks that pay dividends.
When a company pays a dividend it returns a share of its profits to shareholders via a dividend payment. Companies usually make this payment quarterly, however roughly 50 or so of the 3,000 pay monthly dividends. The amount of dividend income you receive depends on how many shares you own.
Let’s say a company pays an annual dividend of $1.00 per share. If you own 100 shares of the company’s stock, you’ll receive $100 in dividend income each year. Paid out quarterly, you get $25 every three months.
Just because a stock pays a dividend doesn’t mean you should invest in it. We’ll save this story for another day, but bad or unsustainable dividends exist. It can be tough to identify them, especially if you have limited experience dealing with dividend investing-related metrics.
However, there’s one way to increase your chances of picking solid dividend-paying stocks. This is to place focus — for at least part of your portfolio — on selecting dividend aristocrats.
A dividend aristocrat has increased its annual dividend, every year, for at least 25 consecutive years.
