XYLD - My 9% Income Portfolio-In Search For Happiness

2024-02-09 09:13:02 ET

Summary

• For those who invest for dividends, the goal is to look for securities that can guarantee sustainable dividends and distributions over time.
• Choices about how to deploy the income generated by those instruments are personal and depend on each investor’s needs, financial means, and age.
• Living off dividends and distributions means managing one’s capital wisely, also aiming for its growth.
• For this reason, I believe that paying attention to the positive evolution over time of the securities I am interested in can help me safeguard my portfolio.
• In this article, I try to clarify some aspects regarding the philosophy behind a long-term dividend strategy.

“A Thousand Liras a Month”

“If I could only have a thousand liras a month, without exaggeration, I would be sure to find all happiness.” Launched in 1939, the hugely popular song “Mille Lire al Mese” (A Thousand Liras a Month) is a foxtrot tune with a touch of swing and a simple refrain in which the author states that he is unpretentious and can be content, symbolically summarizing the Italian petit-bourgeois philosophy of the years leading up to the outbreak of World War II.

Not that a thousand liras a month at the time represented wealth, but in that climate of economic and political crisis that would shortly lead to a tragic world war, dreaming of having modest employment, a small house in the suburbs, and a simple, pretty wife represented almost a mirage for the average Italian. This simple nursery rhyme put that mirage in black and white, quickly becoming something of an ante-litteram catchphrase....

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