Homemade Dividends

  

Categories: Stocks

Your washing machine breaks down. You can fix it by ordering a replacement part from the manufacturer. Or you can jerry-rig something using paper clips, duct tape, and chewed up gum. Traditional vs. homemade.

A traditional dividend comes from a company. It represents a cash payment made for every share an investor holds. You have 1,000 shares in a firm. They declare a dividend of $0.25 a share. You get a check from the company of $250.

A homemade dividend is the duct tape version. Instead of getting a payment from a company, the investor sells a portion of their portfolio for cash. The two strategies don’t have a lot in common, really, except for generating cash.

Keep doing the homemade dividend thing and eventually you'll run out of assets. In the same way that, if you duct tape your washing machine enough, eventually you're going to end up flooding the kitchen.

With a traditional dividend, when you get that $250 check, you still have the 1,000 shares. The collection can go on pretty much indefinitely, as long as the company pays out dividends.

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Finance: What are dividends, and how do ...3 Views

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Finance Allah shmoop what our dividends and how do they

00:05

affect stock prices Well guess what People they help That's

00:12

how they affect stock prices Well what are they What

00:15

are dividends Well they're usually paid in cash to shareholders

00:19

of record I legally if you own the stock than

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you're entitled to the dividend that is if you were

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In fact according to the brokerage where you held these

00:28

shares the owner of record as of say June fifteenth

00:32

then you too will receive a dividend of twelve cents

00:35

for each share you own payable on July twenty eighth

00:39

or something like that So dividends are declared at will

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by the board of the company and are usually the

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domain of well heeled already established large companies with so

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much excess cash profits that the more or less don't

00:52

know what else to do with it A T and

00:54

T Coke Disney Apple They all pay huge dollar amounts

00:58

in aggregate total dividends Some have done so for a

01:01

hundred years or more like a T Others like Apple

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just started Apple had just passed one hundred billion dollars

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in cash on their balance sheet when finally shareholders said

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Hey what about some of that cash for me So

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they're at least two logical ways to think about dividends

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offense and defense from an offensive perspective And you know

01:22

we love being offensive here It shmoop central dividends Add

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to the compound ing of stock returns like Tongue Guards

01:29

Inc has grown in share price six percent a year

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kind of meth performance flood It has had a three

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percent dividend and it keeps raising that dividend each year

01:38

So combined that stock is delivering total return of nine

01:43

percent better than in ten years The six percent compound

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ER would grow to one point Owe six to the

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tenth power or about one point eight acts Not quite

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double But if it compounded at one point o nine

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to the tenth power well it is grown to two

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point four acts like before two and a half times

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as much money as you started with a decade earlier

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right or in an initial thousand dollar investment What you'd

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have twenty four hundred dollars minus the eighteen hundred dollars

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or six hundred dollars Mohr with dividends in there and

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gas were rounding dramatically and the dividends get raised each

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year Bottom line Just dividends are good they add to

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your total return We're ignoring taxes also here and we're

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ignoring the possibility that you could directly reinvest those dividends

02:25

Taub I'm or shares of that stock which would then

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have even Mohr Power incom pounding All right But that's

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offense What about defense Like your young you want to

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own stocks for thirty years but you're afraid of the

02:37

downside The dark side the century stocks right That's one

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of stock goes down one hundred percent Yeah well stocks

02:43

that pay a dividend rarely if ever go fully bust

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for them to have gotten to that happy place where

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they pay a divvy They're probably a pretty well established

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domain owner or at least one point had enough excess

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cash to distribute back to its owners in the form

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of a dividend But there's another even better defensive thing

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that dividend paying stocks offer That is they are cushions

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in a bad market And the number of feathers in

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that cushion is metered or measured by what's called the

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payout ratio which is the percentage of earnings that a

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company is paying out in dividends That is if the

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company is earning a dollar a share in his paying

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out thirty cents a share in DV dollars while their

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payout ratio is only thirty percent So their earnings could

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drop a lot and they'd still easily be ableto pay

03:27

their thirty cent dividend But if they're ratio was more

03:30

like eighty percent like they earned a dollar and they're

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paying eighty cents in dividend dough than Ooh that's tight

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If earnings dropped well even a quarter the company would

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be paying out Maurin dividend payments than they have earnings

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And this has happened in spades with modern day oil

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industry who had to borrow money to be able to

03:49

continue to pay its dividend and not cut it Why

03:51

such a stretch and all the effort to not cut

03:54

the divvy Well because Wall Street views a dividend is

03:57

a kind of commitment like a promise ring It means

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you are fully off tinder and match and J date

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So if you ever cut or do away with your

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divvy the management is usually all fired with their careers

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pretty much oriented toward the uber you know driving them

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not running a company like Doria Well look at what

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happened to G E in the modern era when they

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cut their dividend Yeah Ouch But let's say the whole

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market craps out you know bad economic cycle or whatever

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and our company goes from earning a dollars shared only

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seventy cents and the stock goes from twenty bucks a

04:28

share to ten Well then it's payout ratio in that

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thirty cent dividend world is now thirty over seventy or

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forty three percent payout ratio It's higher payout ratio than

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it wass but still presumably really safe to continue going

04:42

Maybe they won't raise it again this year but it's

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not going away And on twenty bucks a share A

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thirty cents of Devi well then was only yielding one

04:49

point five percent Pretty small Davey But now at ten

04:52

bucks a share and thirty of Debbie Well it's yielding

04:55

thirty cents over ten dollars or three percent Well with

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Treasury Bills yielding about the same amount they quote on

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ly unquote bet you have to make and buying that

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stock is if it won't cut The dividend comes up

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You get more money and dividends that air pretty safe

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Well you feel pretty good about buying stock if you're

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gonna hold it along And if they don't cut the

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Davy well you not only get a low price to

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earnings multiple stock likely with a lot of price appreciation

05:19

in the future but you get a more tax efficient

05:21

cash piece coming back to you How our dividends Mohr

05:24

tax efficient Well bonds or tax as ordinary income think

05:29

forty or fifty percent for hire Taxpayers in blue states

05:32

while qualified equity dividends are tax that much lower rates

05:37

like half that rate in twenty twenty five percent Something

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like that So three percent on bonds nets the big

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taxpayers one point five percent and three percent on Davies

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And that's more like two and a quarter percent something

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like that Seventy five more basis points toe like you

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know buy a lot with anyway Dividends They're good They

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cushion stocks in the bad times and they add your

05:56

compound returns and you want to come pound at a

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really high rate Kind of like you're compounding your lock 00:06:03.527 --> [endTime] Yeah Yeah

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