Doing some end of the year planning. I can either pay down a chunk of the mortgage on my primary or invest it in something safe and dividend paying (not Bitcoin, Dodgecoin, Litecoin, Ethereum, …) and try to arbitrage the return vs paying down of mortgage.
Any recommendations on relatively stable stocks that pay decent dividend and are liquid? obviously i am willing to take a little risk over paying down of debt, but not too much as this would be my mortgage paydown money.
Have about 20 stocks of almost equal weightage in the dividend stock portfolio. The goal is to achieve a passive income equals to the annual expenses (excluding income tax). The criteria is safety rather than appreciation of the stock price & stability of dividends. The idea was conceived before Apple starts distributing dividends. Now that Apple distributes dividends, its purpose is redundant but didn’t bother to dismantle it, just don’t add. Mostly defensive stocks in the portfolio such as RSG, WM, VZ, PG, JNJ, PCG, AEP, and AWK.
Also, the good thing about this is that the margin interest can offset the dividend income come tax time so essentially you are paying no tax on the dividends.
@BA_lurker mentioned stable and liquid so that was why I threw oil out there. Didn’t know about the non-qualified dividend treatment so that’s good to know! I bought oil stocks in my Roth IRA account a while back so really have no clue on the exception on their tax treatment
Long term, oil is not good. Alternative energy would continue to improve in efficiency, better technology such as LED use less energy and people are learning to use less energy.
Have changed all the light bulbs to LED
Exterior Christmas lightings run on solar