For those of us near or in retirement consistent, reliable cash flow is one of the very important components of our overall financial plan.

Our overall financial plan consists of 3 categories:

• Emergency cash reserve (2 year)
• Consistent and reliable income to “fill the gap”, the gap between our expenses and Social Security/Pensions – Your Cash Machine
• Wealth building for future generations & charitable contributions

I am just delighted to see that some of my stocks are consistent payers and INCREASER’S of their dividends. Here are just 2 examples.

Realty Income Corporation (ticker symbol O)
I have held this REIT for many years. It pays a monthly dividend and the dividend increase announced this month is the 99th increase since the company went public 1994. Talking about consistency and reliability, they have made 582 consecutive monthly dividend payments, never missed a payment in over 48 years!

Dominion Energy (ticker symbol D)
This is a major public utility that is also active in renewable energy and LNG exporting. They just raised their dividend by 10%, this was already a 4% dividend before the increase. The “talking heads” say that utilities would get crushed by all of the “high interest rates”, but we know that as a long term income investor our utility picks will continue to pay us a healthy dividend.  So, how do we know this, well Dominion has increased it’s annual dividend for 16 consecutive years. Yes, that was even during the 2007-2009 financial crisis. 

When we follow our financial plan we just don’t need to worry about the short-term ups and downs in the stock market …. we are sleeping pretty well at night!