Ah, I remember receiving my first dividend – it was a mix of euphoria and orgasmic even.
This is the closest thing to a true passive-passive income. Dividend stocks are public listed companies that focuses on paying out a big percentage of their profits to shareholders for tax benefits. There are market fluctuations where the price of the dividend stock can go up or go down (or both), and they will pay out their dividends every 3, 6 or 12 months (so that means 1X, 2X or 4X per year).
There’s 2 ways to this:
Dividend stocks per se
These are the stuff I’m typically referring to in this article, and they typically will pay out the dividends automatically into your bank account when it’s dividend paying time. There’s so many to choose from, be it
by country (every country has their own, and many)
by sector (hospitality, REITs, trusts, telco etc)
by payment frequency
by stability of dividends
Growth stocks
Some had emailed me to tell me that dividend stocks and growth stocks are similar, in the sense if you choose growth stocks that historically have been growing 5-10% per year, you can actually “trim” the 4%+ as dividends per year, and voila! Dividend stocks similar.
For me, it’s a yes and no.
I’m a bit lazier, so I like it when it’s done for me, the dividends are sent to me automatically (it’s a nice feel too).
Dividends give me options to take the dividends to reinvest into other assets (just more options cos it’s cash)
I dont trigger fees when dividends are sent to me, but if you trim/sell a portion, you will have to pay fees
Growth stock on the other hand, it can keep compounding and growing on itself, so that’d depend on your preference.
Some considerations
You need to choose dividend (or growth) stocks that are steady, in the sense their P&L have been steady
The dividend rate must be stable and not inconsistent: need to be same or higher every year
The dividend amount must NEVER be more than net profit
I’m the founder and writer here at NigelChua.com; as well as serial entrepreneur, therapy business entrepreneur, digital entrepreneur, investor and also happy husband, father and Christian.
Started and sold off a business for 7-figures; built another 7-figure one and growing it further, plus building/investing into other businesses and investments as well as advisory works.
Nowadays I share and teach entrepreneurship, financial independence, retiring early as well as building and living a life you love.
Thank you so much for your time and I hope it’s helpful for you.
I learnt the concept of cashflow from Robert Kiyosaki’s rich dad poor dad, and since 2003, I’d learnt again and again how important cashflow truly is. I try as best as possible to create streams and streams of positive cash flow into my bank accounts.
Like the example I gave earlier, on smart money tactics, I immediately split money into different baskets with specific functions. An example if my income is $5000/month, I will take out 20%, which is $1000/month to be put into assets that will pay me regularly be it
dividend stocks
rental properties
REITs
etc
This will be an every-month-process, and I’ll do this month-in-month out. Let me extrapolate on the example above.
Year 01: Every month $1000 x 12 months = $12K. At 5% ROI, my dividend would be $600
Year 02: Every month $1000 x 12 months = $12K + $12K. At 5% ROI, my dividend would be $1200
Year 03: Every month $1000 x 12 months = $12K + $24K. At 5% ROI, my dividend would be $1800
Year 04: Every month $1000 x 12 months = $12K + $36K. At 5% ROI, my dividend would be $2400
Year 05: Every month $1000 x 12 months = $12K + $48K. At 5% ROI, my dividend would be $3000
Year 10: Every month $1000 x 12 months = $12K + $108K. At 5% ROI, my dividend would be $6000
Year 20: Every month $1000 x 12 months = $12K + $228K. At 5% ROI, my dividend would be $12000
Year 30: Every month $1000 x 12 months = $12K + $348K. At 5% ROI, my dividend would be $18000
etc
And I hadnt even calculated if I
increased the amount I put in every month as my pay goes up / business grows
invested bonuses
reinvest the dividends
The name of the game is to keep investing into cashflowing assets again and again.
I’m the founder and writer here at NigelChua.com; as well as serial entrepreneur, therapy business entrepreneur, digital entrepreneur, investor and also happy husband, father and Christian.
Started and sold off a business for 7-figures; built another 7-figure one and growing it further, plus building/investing into other businesses and investments as well as advisory works.
Nowadays I share and teach entrepreneurship, financial independence, retiring early as well as building and living a life you love.
Thank you so much for your time and I hope it’s helpful for you.
You’d have a regular income be it from employment and/or entrepreneurship. It’s an ongoing thing, which you can split into
spending (essentials and luxuries)
investing
You’d be looking to keep increasing your monthly take home and bonuses by increasing your skills, experience and responsibilities over a period of time.
Always trying to increase the amounts saved and for investing every month.
You’d try to squeeze out as much into savings and investments which you can then use for mid and long term investing
Prioritize safe investing approach
80%+ into conservative and “safe-ish” investments such as
broad based index funds
rental properties
public listed dividend stocks
Conservative and safer investments usually brings about conservative and safe-ish returns, between 5-10%. Which is pretty decent, and I gear it this way because the bulk of my hard earned money shouldnt be gambled – it’s meant to work like a machine, day-in-day-out to increase its returns and value to me.
20% into higher risk, higher return
growth / tech stocks such as Apple, Google, Alibaba, Netflix, Facebook (Meta), SEA etc
cryptocurrency such as Bitcoin, Ethereum, Cronos, and so many other blockchain projects
some % into low caps
Growth / tech stocks and cryptocurrency / blockchain projects are pretty similar: they do very well in bull markets with lots of money, but conversely, they can get punished and pummelled badly in bear and down markets. Same goes for low cap which is the highest risk of them all, but with the highest potential returns too.
The goal is a balance trinity flowchart of getting richer by
constant earning more
constant saving more
constantly investing and reinvesting more into conservative and higher return investments
Rinse and repeat until you reach your desired amounts, and even then, dont stop – keep going.
I’m the founder and writer here at NigelChua.com; as well as serial entrepreneur, therapy business entrepreneur, digital entrepreneur, investor and also happy husband, father and Christian.
Started and sold off a business for 7-figures; built another 7-figure one and growing it further, plus building/investing into other businesses and investments as well as advisory works.
Nowadays I share and teach entrepreneurship, financial independence, retiring early as well as building and living a life you love.
Thank you so much for your time and I hope it’s helpful for you.
Someone asked me, how to invest safely into the stock market?
I find that easiest (and probably the safest) way of investing into stock market is by keeping it really simple, so:
broad-based index funds
dollar-cost-average over time
time in the market
Broad-based index funds
These type of index funds are good because they tend to have very little asset management fees (1); and over time, market grows as a whole (2). So by investing into the entire market keeps you well diversified and little management fees doesnt erode the returns you get.
One thing you’d see in most AUM (assets under management) investment companies are that they take / skim off 1-2%+ of all returns, be it good or bad market. So in a good market, if you get an 8% return, they’re taking up to 25% on your returns. In a bad market, if you already lose 13%, they’re gonna take an additional 2% from your portfolio.
Broad-based index funds takes away these expenses and keep you invested into the market as a whole.
Dollar-cost-average over time
Also known as “DCA”, this is one of the best ways to invest:
carve a % budget of your income that goes directly into investment(s) of your choice on a monthly basis
Doesn’t matter if it’s higher price or lower price, by doing this over a period of time, you’d get an average aggregate price which will likely be much better than trying to get a lump sum and entering the market.
Time in the market
This is a continuation of dollar-cost-averaging, and time in the market (invested) is always more powerful than trying to time the market (be it investing or cashing out), because it removes the overthinking and other investor psychology that can mess around with your investing approach.
I’m the founder and writer here at NigelChua.com; as well as serial entrepreneur, therapy business entrepreneur, digital entrepreneur, investor and also happy husband, father and Christian.
Started and sold off a business for 7-figures; built another 7-figure one and growing it further, plus building/investing into other businesses and investments as well as advisory works.
Nowadays I share and teach entrepreneurship, financial independence, retiring early as well as building and living a life you love.
Thank you so much for your time and I hope it’s helpful for you.
Have I told you that one of my greatest and favorite stuff in the world is receiving passive income?
dividends from businesses I own
dividends from dividend stocks such as REITs
dividends from crypto investments / staking
rental income
Wherever it comes from, it’s STILL DELICIOUS lol.
Anyhoo, there are 2 general ways to create this form of passive income.
One, is the way I mentioned above: buy or build specific assets that pays me like clockwork OR
Buy stocks that appreciate in value and then sell % of the appreciation at specific intervals
I like #1 better, simply because it’s more passive (yes, I like it convenient and easy that way) — the dividends go straight into my bank account. No need to open my brokerage account, select specific stocks and amount to sell.
In this article, I’m looking specificly at dividend stock investing. Dividend stocks are public listed companies that prioritize paying out a portion of their profits every single year
Go back to fundamentals
I’ll repeat this concept again and again and again: fundamentals are foundational stuff. Questions to go through when you go through selection of dividend stocks are:
Is the business profitable?
Do you expect they will be around in 10 years?
Does this new sale price reflect a more accurate value of the stock?
Are their dividends sustainable?
Is the business profitable?
Go to the company’s profit and loss statements where you can see clearly if they’re making profits or not. Because these company stocks are public listed, all the information is available for free.
They need to be
profitable
sustained profitable amount year on year for last 5 years at least
Do you expect they will be around in 10 years?
These is more of a general sense and decision making. Ask yourself if you think they’d be around in 10 years time or if they’d go obsolete? Companies that cannot grow or pivot such as Nokia, Kodak, Blockbuster. They didn’t adapt or change, so they were phased out.
Is the company you’re gonna invest for dividends in, gonna be around for 10 years or more?
Think about their business model, such as
Consumerism: Coca cola / Pepsi
Real estate investment trusts / real estate
etc
If yes, then you can consider
Does this new sale price reflect a more accurate value of the stock?
The market, or we can name him “Mr Market”, can be moody, with lots of mood swings. And sometimes it doesnt make sense, we’d think bad news, price of shares goes down, but sometimes it goes up. Sometimes with good news, price goes down. Who know how to anticipate that?
However, after looking at their past profitability level and if they may last more than 10 years, another way to go is to dive into their books and look for this thing called NAV and PTB, which means Net Asset Value and Price to Book. Simply means, other than the company generating revenue through it’s operations and business, we go with “just” their asset.
Say a company has $10M in assets, and the price to book should reflect at least their asset value. This hadnt factored in their revenue and profit generation activities…and sometimes (pay attention to this), the market moves so weird that
The price of a share is LESS than their net asset value and profit.
Here is what I call discounted or sales on share prices, especially when the company is a well known, good or have been performing for the last 5+ years. Hey, I did say sometimes the market does what the market does, even when the company didnt do anything different or bad or even good.
Invest regularly (dont time the market)
I’m dumb, so I try my best to NOT time the market.
I just go through the selection like I wrote about above, and every month, I have X amount of dollars to invest (usually 20% of all income goes into investment), and this X dollars is split equally into all my dividend stocks.
That’s it folks, nothing sexy to see, just invest and work/live/play on.
Until I hit my dividend goal, then I keep going. In fact, I’d also reinvest 20% of my dividends too (gotta keep it consistent).
I’m the founder and writer here at NigelChua.com; as well as serial entrepreneur, therapy business entrepreneur, digital entrepreneur, investor and also happy husband, father and Christian.
Started and sold off a business for 7-figures; built another 7-figure one and growing it further, plus building/investing into other businesses and investments as well as advisory works.
Nowadays I share and teach entrepreneurship, financial independence, retiring early as well as building and living a life you love.
Thank you so much for your time and I hope it’s helpful for you.
Recognize market crashes as one thing: awesome sales season
I’ve always wondered how interesting it was, that when share prices drop, “investors panic”…
Funnily, I think if my favorite phone maker’s phone prices drop, I would scoop up a new one and enjoy it at a discount, rather than sell my existing phone at a loss…correct?
I think investors who panic and quickly sell, aren’t really investors. They probably are either
speculators + day traders who “always want quick profits”
inexperienced investors who dont have an investing strategy and philosophy
Go back to fundamentals as an investor
Keep saving up extra money every month from your career, business or investments
Keep a close eye on a bunch of company shares whose business will likely be around for a long time and is profitable
Ask yourself is the newly discounted price accurate or not? If it’s a good price and good company, then wont it be a buy decision?
I’m the founder and writer here at NigelChua.com; as well as serial entrepreneur, therapy business entrepreneur, digital entrepreneur, investor and also happy husband, father and Christian.
Started and sold off a business for 7-figures; built another 7-figure one and growing it further, plus building/investing into other businesses and investments as well as advisory works.
Nowadays I share and teach entrepreneurship, financial independence, retiring early as well as building and living a life you love.
Thank you so much for your time and I hope it’s helpful for you.
There are two very very polarizing camps when it comes to this question of property-versus-stocks, and I’ve seen it personally.
Property people swear by real estate only and dislike the market fluctuations of stocks
Stocks people love stocks (think of people like Warren Buffett or Bogle)
So, which is better?
Lets talk about pros and cons
Property
Pros
physical: easy to understand and rent out
leverage: banks are willing to loan you to finance real estate (based on your income) up to 80%
tends to appreciate in time (especially good locations)
tends to be good store of value (especially in good locations and countries/cities)
Cons
high start up costs: 20% of a $1M property is $200K…and if banks not willing to loan, are you gonna pay in cash?
local (versus buying a REIT that has buildings across multiple countries)
illiquid: you cant decide to sell your property today and have that money in your bank account – it may take weeks or months (as well as fees from broker, lawyer, etc)
risk of defaulting or nasty tenants trashing the place or not paying rent
Stocks
Pros
easy to enter: you can start buying in fractions (even as low as $100)
more “passive” – no managing tenants, fixing leaks etc
regulated, so tends to be fairly stable
you can leverage this too (but i dont recommend, scary stuff)
more opportunities, such as options, trading, stop loss functions etc
Cons
market fluctuations can cause price to swing up and down
Cryptocurrency and blockchain is a type of growth/tech stocks, so there’s lots of risk and volatility but potential at the same time.
The third kind: hybrid
You dont have to pick EITHER real estate or stocks – you can do both. It really depends on your preference. I understand both’s pros and cons and I currently am more into cryptocurrency for quick capital appreciations as well as dividend stocks for cashflow. That’s me, at 40 years of age today.
I will consider porting to a more long term and low fees approach of
pure index (passive)
index + bonds (passive)
index + dividend stocks (passive with a little work for dividend stocks)
index + dividend stocks + bonds (passive with a little work for dividend stocks)
The only thing about property management is that it tends to link with more work and expenses such as
property manager if I want it to be more passive
property agents / brokers
bank interest fees and mortgage loans
If I want to go “off-grid”, a pure stock approach would be easier for me. But if want to play with leverage and grow net wealth actively, then real estate will be the way. Who knows, I may do both.
Dont let this topic of property-versus-stocks stop you from taking action. The real answer and issue is taking consistent action on it. Choose something that works for you, and go for it.
I’m the founder and writer here at NigelChua.com; as well as serial entrepreneur, therapy business entrepreneur, digital entrepreneur, investor and also happy husband, father and Christian.
Started and sold off a business for 7-figures; built another 7-figure one and growing it further, plus building/investing into other businesses and investments as well as advisory works.
Nowadays I share and teach entrepreneurship, financial independence, retiring early as well as building and living a life you love.
Thank you so much for your time and I hope it’s helpful for you.
The “easiest” way to explain passive income is to compare it to what it’s not, in this case, the opposite of passive income is typically getting paid dollars for your efforts and hours. Most employees are paid active incomes, and if they ever get laid off or too sick to work, this type of active income stops. ie active income is paid or payable only when you turn up and work.
Passive income is income that is paid to you regardless of
you turning up to work
you putting in more or less work (in some cases, some passive income can increase with more works and efforts, I’ll cover this in a bit)
And this is the main reason why I like passive income and most of what I do is geared towards
increasing the amount of passive income streams
increasing the amount of passive income paid
decrease the amount of recurring expenses whenever possible
How does passive income work?
Generally passive income is made by building or acquiring assets or businesses that provides value even if you’re not there. Examples are:
rental homes where tenants can use and live even if you’re not there
businesses with employees that can serve customers even when you’re not there
online businesses that uses technology to provide value eg information
etc
How to generate passive income
There are 2 very broad ways of generating passive income: build or buy assets that generate you passive income and they are:
Buying assets that can generate you passive income.
Assets are anything that can and does make you money without you working it.
One of the simplest examples are buying dividend stocks, such as REITs, ETFs or business trusts, and in turn, they will pay you a percent of their profits every 3, 6 or 12 months. These dividends can vary from 1% per year to high levels of 8-10%.
Dont just choose high-paying dividend stocks only, because dividend payouts need to make sense and be sustainable.
Other assets you can buy to generate you passive income:
intellectual properties such as rights of songs, books / ebooks
etc
The easiest is generally dividend stocks because it’s the least amount of direct work (most passive, in that sense).
The 3 problems with buying assets for passive income
you need a lot of it to generate a meaningful amount to sustain yourself (moreso if you have dependents)
that’d mean more money and/or more time to accumulate
rental properties can be illiquid (hard or slow to sell); stock prices can fluctuate
even that being said, I am still happy with my dividend stocks. In Singapore, dividends are non-taxable so it’s really delicious when it gets banked directly into my personal bank account. If prices drop, I just buy more =)
Building assets is the key to wealth and passive income
The fastest way to wealth and more passive income is learning how to build assets, for 2 reasons:
#1 Direct
If you can build assets that put more and more passive income in your bank account, that’d directly and immediately add to your passive income bottomline, and this is very valuable, leading to
#2 Buyers who will pay premium for your assets
Say you build a business (online or offline) that can pay your $1000/month – do you know that there will be buyers that will pay a good 40-50x of that monthly net profit?
So
a business that makes net $1000/month you may be able to sell for $40,000
a business that makes net $5000/month you may be able to sell for $200,000
etc
Which you can then take the sales proceeds to buy more passive income stuff instead AND then build more passive income assets.
I’m the founder and writer here at NigelChua.com; as well as serial entrepreneur, therapy business entrepreneur, digital entrepreneur, investor and also happy husband, father and Christian.
Started and sold off a business for 7-figures; built another 7-figure one and growing it further, plus building/investing into other businesses and investments as well as advisory works.
Nowadays I share and teach entrepreneurship, financial independence, retiring early as well as building and living a life you love.
Thank you so much for your time and I hope it’s helpful for you.
How to build your passive income lifestyle, beginning today
The passive income lifestyle is a lifestyle where your passive income, be it passive rental income, passive dividend income, passive business income; is more than your living expenses.
It is a very, very nice place to be in, and not only does every passive income feels so nice, it also works to lifts up so much of my pressure. Frankly, there are a lot of ways that can lead you to the passive income lifestyle (so many investment vehicles, types, opportunities), but I dont want to create more work or complexities for myself.
To me, it has to be “true” passive and simple to maintain, so I simplified the basic passive income lifestyle concept to be boring but systematic:
have a steady day job
save as much as possible
invest aggressively into dividend stocks that pay you at least 7.5% per year (ideally 10% and above) consistently
reinvest majority of dividends
until your portfolio’s yearly dividend passive income is same or more than your yearly living expenses.
That’s it.
The 3 biggest factors that will impact your passive income portfolio
They are:
how much you can invest regularly (this depends on how much you earn and spend)
how much is the rate of return of your passive income (ideally 10% per year but 7.5% is decent)
lastly, time
Time plays the most powerful compounding effect. Albert Einstein quipped, saying that compound interest is the 8th wonder of the world, and I agree.
Compound interest, simplified
Compound interest is basically how your money grow with interest return + time.
Let me show you a basic example: say you can invest $10,000 a year ($833.33 a month) into a dividend stock that returns you 10% per annum; and you reinvest every dividend return.
Year 1: Invest $10,000 + 10% = $11,000 end of year
Year 2: Invest $10,000 + $11,000 from previous year + 10% = $23,100
Year 3: Invest $10,000 + $23,100 from previous year + 10% = $36,410
Year 4: Invest $10,000 + $36,410 from previous year + 10% = $51,051
Year 10: $159,310.50
Year 15: $317,597.73
Year 25: $983,077.21
Year 50: $11,634,429.65
Instead of plain saving $10,000 x 50 years = $500,000; you can get a much bigger amount with compounding interest.
Start your basic passive income lifestyle today
Save as much as you can
Start investing into dividend stocks that gives at least 7.5% per year
Continue investing and reinvesting the dividends
It takes time for compounding effect to work its magic, and the more time you have, the more it’d work wondrously in your favor…but conversely, the less time you have, the more obvious the shortfall. Eg a person who has 40 years to invest has a lot more time-based benefits compared to someone who only has 10, and that’s why because I dont have high earning capacity as high income professions such as doctors, I knew I needed to start a business to level up.
If you want to level up to earn more, retire faster
Then you gotta earn more.
For most people who have time on their side and have a good chunk to invest monthly, they can take their time to invest regularly, ie dollar-cost-average (DCA) into stable dividend stocks. It is a good way. I take this approach one level up with my businesses which serves to help me accelerate my earning rate (it’s fun and complex too ehehe)
Quick money side hustles
These include the low-hanging fruits of app-based works such as
driving for Uber, Lyft, Grab
sending items with DoorDash or similar
pet walking / baby sitting
etc
These are the kind of work that can help you earn an extra $50-100+ a day on your schedule, as part of your routine.
Learn high income skills
High income skills are skills and work that are higher value, such as
property agents / realtors
insurance agents
copywriters / direct sales
trade skills such as plumbing, electrical
and can typically earn you $100k/year.
Scale up businesses
Scaling up a business means to grow, hire and delegate, but before we go there, let me first say that it’s not always a necessity. It’s wayyyy more complex and difficult, but of course, has the most potential. Not everyone is keen or hungry to scale up businesses, and that is fine.
An example of scaling up a physical business is if you’re a realtor, you can consider recruiting a team of 5-10+ sales agents under your belt, where you then train them and lead them to grow their own businesses under your business. The upside is that you can multiply your income exponentially…when done right.
When done wrong, it can mean you working 24/7, tired and burnt out. Or lose money.
Normally, I recommend people to either do something low-hanging such as the quick small wins type or building a $100k+ per year freelancing business, because it’s less complex. If you want to do something that can scale, you can consider starting a blogging business where it can cost a few hundred bucks a year on the side.
Blogging is a publishing business where it can become a powerful passive income business with scale, but it does take a lot of time (at least a minimum of 2 years+) for it to take traction, build followers etc. The goal is to build a good enough following who likes what you write and do, and then monetize by display ads and creating products that help your followers.
I use this platform to learn how to build my profitable blogging business.
Invest the profits from businesses and side gigs into dividend stocks
The profits I use to invest into dividend stocks (mainly as core) as well as some into high-risk-high-growth investments such as crypto. Profits from high-risk-high-growth investments are taken out to decrease risk and invest into more dividend stocks and pay for primary home.
I’m the founder and writer here at NigelChua.com; as well as serial entrepreneur, therapy business entrepreneur, digital entrepreneur, investor and also happy husband, father and Christian.
Started and sold off a business for 7-figures; built another 7-figure one and growing it further, plus building/investing into other businesses and investments as well as advisory works.
Nowadays I share and teach entrepreneurship, financial independence, retiring early as well as building and living a life you love.
Thank you so much for your time and I hope it’s helpful for you.
Every stable dividend-paying stock = fruit-bearing tree
I see every dividend stock I buy and own as a fruit tree, and every fruit tree will produce a dividend fruit for me; and my overall goal is to have a big enough orchard of dividend-paying dividend stocks to live off the dividends on.
If you’re like me, there are 3 key items to consider to know how much you need to live on your dividends and retire early or do something you like, be it paying off debts of your family, retiring your wonderful wife, or marry and even having more kids.
3 important factors that affect how much you need invested to retire on dividend stocks
how much do you need a month to spend on
how much you can invest a month
how much returns on investment you can get from your dividend stocks
They all affect each other, so it’s best to see them as a combined trinity.
Example if you spend a lot, you need to invest more every month, for a long time with high returns. Conversely, if you spend less, you can retire much faster, take less risk too.
An example, say you spend $3K a month, and take home $4.5K a month. That’d mean that
Your yearly expenses = $3K x 12 months = $36K/year
You can invest $1.5K/month
How much do you need to retire?
Using the same example of monthly spend of $3K/month, that’d mean you need $36K/year.
This means is that your investments eventually need to at least pay you $36K/year.
Unfortunately, because every dividend-paying stock is different, it makes things a bit more complex AND make you second guess yourself waaaaaaaay more than you should (this is the dilemma of only 1 option versus choosing from 1000+ options). The more you have to choose from, the harder it is.
Low yearly dividends = need more capital
For now, let’s assume you find a dividend stock that pays 3% per year, you’d need $36K/3% = $1.2M, which is A LOT. No one has a spare $1.2M lying around to invest.
Even if you invest $1.5K/month every month, and reinvest every single 3% dividend, it’d still take you 36.5 years to reach $1.2M!
This is very painful…so how? Does that mean we give up on our desire to retire on dividend passive income from dividend stocks? Of course not!
Higher dividend yields = less capital needed
The next and better step would be to find better, higher dividend paying stocks.
Let’s again, use back the same example of needing $36K/year to retire. If you find a dividend stock that pays 10% per year, that’d mean you “just” need $36K per year / 10% = $360K.
$360K is 30% of $1.2M.
That’s muuuuuuuuuuch easier to achieve. If you invest $1.5K/month PLUS reinvest the dividends it’d take you about 11 years to achieve your goals of amassing $360K.
For a 30 year old dude, that’s like retiring at 66.5 years old versus retiring at 41.
I will definitely choose to retire at 41 compared to retiring at 66 eh.
Is it so easy to retire on dividends? What are some problems that I may face?
Technically, yes. It is mainly a numbers game, so it’s doable.
And I’m not the only one sharing about this. Google ‘financial independence retire early’ (FIRE) and you’d see that there are tens of thousands of people like me, who dont want to be stuck in a job and retire at 70.
That doesn’t mean it’s easy and linear. Of course, there are variables that can happen. Kinda like preparing for doomsday, likewise, I believe in being prepared.
Some variables and the ways I can anticipate and overcome them are:
What if the stock fail?
This is a real risk, so the issue is to either (1) not go all into just one dividend stock, which isn’t smart at all. I would have at least 15+ dividend stock and rebalance yearly to weed out poor performing ones; AND/OR (2) go into Vanguard stocks, which have historically been giving a return of 10% per year.
There are literally hundreds of other instruments out there other than dividend stocks, so find what you’re comfortable with.
What if I dont have enough?
Ah, this is an eternal dilemma, so back to maths of current expenses AND project to include inflation and increased spending PLUS keep costs low. So if I can keep my lifestyle yearly expenses to $3K/month, I will over-buffer a 30-50% at least into investment, so my investments need to payout at least $4K/month. I will reinvest the $1K/month. Depending on how safe is your number, you should buff it at least 50%. I personally will over-buff by at least 100% and diversify into different asset classes eg dividend stock, rental properties, crypto, insurance etc.
What if I die earlier than achieving this? Wont my effort be in vain?
From a practical standpoint, if you die earlier, then you dont have a problem anymore with regards to money. However, that’s if you’re single and have no one or no causes you care for. If you’re like me, having a plan, will leave a legacy (cash and more) to them, rather than leave them a pile of bills to clear. The real question is if you live and spend wantonly…but find yourself outliving your money, that would be a nasty place to be. Lastly, this is why I always recommend to “eat” and enjoy a portion of your dividends and passive income, because we need to live too to make it sustainable.
What if I lose my job / source of income midway?
Okay, that’d suck, but it wont suck as bad as losing your main source of income and have zero passive dividend income. If say your goal was to amass $360K on 10% return, midway means that you’d amassed $180K and at 10% return per year, you’d have $18K/year or $1.5K/month dividend to tide you over. Not bad, and it’d allow you some breathing space as you source for your next job. You may be able to retire in a cheaper country with $1.5K/month too.
A more important question: WHY
It’s one thing to talk about the numbers and the how, which is easy to talk about and can be easy or moderately hard to do over a period of time. A bigger and more important thing to consider is why.
What would retiring at 45 years old mean to you? It can mean different things to different people, such as
spending time pursuing people and projects you care about. Finally, you can pickup something you put down decades ago. Could be photography. Could be drawing.
travel
taking care of loved ones who may be sick and need you
retire your wife and spend more time with her just being with the woman you fell in love with all those years ago
take your kids to school and back, and being a dad who is present. Like really, really present.
I’m the founder and writer here at NigelChua.com; as well as serial entrepreneur, therapy business entrepreneur, digital entrepreneur, investor and also happy husband, father and Christian.
Started and sold off a business for 7-figures; built another 7-figure one and growing it further, plus building/investing into other businesses and investments as well as advisory works.
Nowadays I share and teach entrepreneurship, financial independence, retiring early as well as building and living a life you love.
Thank you so much for your time and I hope it’s helpful for you.
