[quote=Coronita]For me, I’m not fully disengaging from the markets. I’m just moving money around to buy hard assets because I like things that are tangible. I like property. I don’t really get stocks,bonds, indexes, and certainly can’t live in them. Also, I don’t care as much as if the value of the hard assets move up or down. What I care about is can each year, these assets generate a consistent return so that if I decide to quit my job or get fired or both, I continue to still have a steady stream.
Once I have a steady stream of income the replaces my engineering “salary”, I don’t care whether those assets go up and down as long as my annual income is roughly the same. I’m done at that point. Getting close. The thing I’m not convinced about high quality stocks that pay a dividend. is they are high quality…until they aren’t….Those banking on dividends from ATT were recently given a dose of reality ala dividend cut. so not exactly predictable.[/quote]
I’ve spent the last 2 decades working to do the same albeit more towards dividend stocks. I think the key with those is a variety and looking for reasonable dividend rates. I hold some ATT but more of others which pay far less. In a conversation with a friend a few weeks who was high on ATT, I explained that 7% divended rates are not normal and usually a sign the dividend is at risk, the stock price is at risk or both. While cutting it in half would not make someone who bought it for a 7% return happy, cut it in half and it is then in the range of reasonable. Hopefully that would be used to pay down some of the debt burden that has held the stock price back. I invest for total return and from that view would be fine seeing it cut in half and growth restored.
