So many people want to get rich quickly. They want the shortcut path to wealth, they want the magical lottery ticket to riches. Buying Y.O.L.O. Call Options on the “Next Big Thing”, playing around with penny stocks, buying unknown crypto coins expecting a 1000% return. This is not how true investing works. That is gambling. You might as well go to the casino and put it all on red. Pure speculation. There is a distinct difference between investing and speculation.
Investing is the practice of buying an asset at a reasonable price that you have a high level of certainty that you will not lose money and will most likely have a positive return outcome. Not overnight, but over time.
Dividend Growth Investing is a time-honored, tested, and proven path to wealth. It is not a quick process, you won’t be “rich” overnight, but with effort, discipline and patience, it can provide for stable, growing, abundant cash-flow and capital appreciation.
The dividend growth investing journey is a slog, I get it. Month after month, year after year, you have to keep going, push your way through, stay positive and motivated that the magic is happening. And it is truly magical!
Those $100 purchases, the dividend reinvestment, the dividend growth and compounding over the years will add up and before you know it you can pay your bills with your dividend income. Not tomorrow, not in a year, but a consistent plan, executed over many years, will set the snowball in motion that will be worth it later on. So Worth It.
Since this is a long term strategy, it is imperative to have patience. Patience is the hardest part about true investing.
You see others hit the newest IPO or invest in the hot thing and temporarily make a lot of money. They may flash their success on social media, but they may not be telling the whole story. They show the winners, but how about the ones that didn’t work out? Did they follow up on social media after a year, did they actually make any money? Did they show you the losers that went down 80%? Or the ones they sold at a loss?
This type of speculation does not exhibit the patience that is needed to make consistent progress over many years and decades. They are always chasing the next hot thing.
Dividend growth investing is about consistent investing over time in top quality companies that share their earnings with you, the shareholder. You own part of that business, you succeed when the company succeeds. You will potentially own these businesses for your lifetime, make sure you are investing in stable, quality companies that can afford to pay you for the rest of your life.
Dividend growth investing is a slog, it will get boring, it will seem like it is taking too long, but stick with it. Your friends might laugh, say you invest like their grandparent, that you are wasting your time. There is a reason your grandparents invest this way. It works! There is a reason why generations of investors are paying their bills with dividends. It works! There is a reason why the vast majority of the return of the market is from dividends. It works! There is a reason why dividend investing has beaten non-dividend investing over long time periods. It works! As time passes, the benefits of dividend investing multiplies as the compounding really starts taking hold.
You have to stick with it though, don’t give up or give in. It is so worth it!