Never Retire - Using Dividend Investments To Fund A Never Retire Strategy

Part one of a comprehensive guide to investing for 'passive' income

In an April 2021 Medium article I detail why I no longer invest in the stock market.

This sentence sums up the reason—

Selling stock to raise cash was little more than an emotional response.

Like me, you might not be cut out for stock market investing.

I sleep better at night—and maintain more consistent personal financial strategies—with my money in cash. Since that article, these cash strategies have evolved, in part because I removed the distraction of the stock market.

With that said, I still write extensively about investing, particularly dividend growth and ETF investing. In fact, throughout much of my freelance writing career (since 2008-ish), I have written about investing. And I was an active stock market participant—both long-term and as a day trader—for a solid 25-30 years of my life. For the record, I turned 47 a couple weeks ago.

Therefore, it doesn’t make sense to ignore investing as part of a Never Retire strategy.

As fate would have it, a reader responded to the most recent installment of the newsletter with this email:

In today’s installment, we address Lawrence’s thoughts and answer his question, looking at the potential up and downsides to his strategy.

While it’s a perfectly viable way to fund any type of retirement, it doesn’t come without risk.

We’ll start with the basics of dividend growth investing, then detail the pros followed by an illustration of the cons.

This installment serves as the first in a series that focuses on everything you need to know about dividend growth investing, specifically as it pertains to retirement. Dividend growth investing absolutely can work as a Never Retire strategy, however it’s certainly not a set it and forget it, passive income protocol.

We’ll cover the ins and outs, pros and cons, potential risks and rewards today and as we move forward.

We’ll get somewhat deep in the dense weeds on this stuff so I’ll try to close each installment with a nice picture of street life or food or something from Italy!

I’ll intersperse this information with the evolution of the topics we regularly cover in the newsletter.