Safe Dividend Investing
In 2000, I lost $300,000 in mutual funds that an investment advisor had put my lifesavings into.... I lost it because I had entrusted it to an industry that does not educate investors nor encourage them to look closely at what that industry is doing with their money..... I set out to find a better, safer way to invest..... My podcasts relate to what I learned in creating a generous, reliable income and in growing my wealth.... A few of the more important lessons I learned and explore are:.... (1) It is critical that you become a self-directed investor.....(2) If you can not easily measure the risk and potential in an investment, then do not invest in it. This excludes from your portfolio bundled investment devices, like mutual funds, ETFs and Index funds,..... (3) Financially strong companies who have paid “good dividends” for decades will continue to stay strong and continue to pay good dividends because it is both part of their "character" and in their executives selfish interest.....(4) Diversification is critical. Investing equally in the best 20 strong dividend stocks is the ideal.....A portfolio of 20 limits your risk in any one stock to 5% of your wealth..... No matter how strong you think a stock is, do not fall in love with it..... I have lived very well off my steady dividend income for 18 years, through two market crashes and one pandemic. I have watched my portfolio’s capital more than triple from where I started, despite taking out a generous dividend income every year to live on... In charts, for my second investment book,(Safer Better Dividend Investing), I spent months scoring all 628 dividend stocks paying dividends of 6% or greater traded on the TSX, NYSE and the NASDAQ. I discovered dozens of stocks that can provide not only a generous dividend income but outstanding capital growth.....Financial independence is realizable for careful, patient, dividend investors.
Safe Dividend Investing
Podcast 281 - CASH RESERVES PREPARING FOR UNEXPECTED HIGH EXPENSES
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Welcome to Safe Dividend Investing’s Podcast # 281 on June 27th of 2026.
This week's podcast is about safe investing. It recommends that you build a reserve fund of cash, or near cash, to be drawn upon in emergencies. Whether you like it or not you are going to be surprised by unexpected large expenses critical to your health and well being.
If you do not have enough cash to cover such unfortunate surprises then you are going to have to quickly borrow money, usually through a credit card. Credit card interest charges very high interest rates if you are unable to pay off your balance each month. With a little bit of planning you can save yourself thousands of dollars in interest charges by creating a reserve fund,
Growing a portfolio that provides you with independence requires not only requires carefully selecting financially strong stocks paying generous reliable dividends but also carefully managing your expenditures.
Your path in life is not predestined. You control your investment decisions.
Ian Duncan MacDonald
Author and Commercial Risk Consultant,
President of Informus Inc
2 Vista Humber Drive
Toronto, Ontario
Canada, M9P 3R7
Toronto Telephone - 416-245-4994
imacd@informus.ca
Podcast 281
Safe Dividend Investing
27 June 2026
Greetings to investors all around the world. Welcome to Safe Dividend Investing’s Podcast #281, recorded on June 27 of 2026. My name is Ian Duncan MacDonald. I am the author of seven investment books.
To learn more about my investment books, visit www.amazon.com and do a search for "Ian Duncan MacDonald books”. At Amazon you can find sample chapters and reviews by investors who have benefited from the seven books.
We are halfway through the year. You, like me, have paid your 2025 income tax and have spare cash left over to invest wisely in more shares of the stocks you already own or to find financially stronger stocks paying better safer dividends than the few weak ones that you may have in your portfolio. The other objective is to continue to grow your emergency reserve.
Everyone should have an emergency reserve of easily accessible cash to pay for the unexpected. For example, I anticipate that I will have to replace my central air conditioning unit. Perhaps it will be this year. It is now 48 years old. It works fine and I get it serviced every year, but you do not have to be a genius to anticipate that one of these days it is going to stop working. I am told that you are lucky to get 10 years of service out of new air conditioners.
I had a similar situation with my wife’s car. It was 23 years old. The air conditioning was not working, and other parts were wearing out. While it only had 66,000 miles on it, the repairs would have cost more than what I could sell the car for. She had got her money’s worth out of it.
Since I maintain an emergency fund, I was able to dip into it to pay for a 2021 low mileage used car in excellent condition for $13,500. Without an emergency fund I would have had to finance it.
If I had had to finance this purchase at 6% interest (or more) over several years it would have incurred a few thousand more dollars in unnecessary interest expense.
Emergency funds are also used for anticipated vacations, gifts, house taxes, health aids and all those other expenses that are beyond the normal monthly living expenses like food, electricity, heating and such. Over several decades an emergency fund will save you thousands of dollars that you can then add to your investment portfolio to maintain your financial independence.
This assumes that your investment objective is to achieve financial independence. The reality in acquiring wealth is that you must take your expenditures just as seriously as you do the capital gain and investment income generated by the investments in your portfolio.
It makes little sense to generate a 10% gain in your investment portfolio while paying 22% interest on your credit card debt. A credit card should be a purchasing convenience to be paid off in full before the due date every month so high interest charges will not be incurred. Carefully chosen credit cards even refund some of the purchase amount back to you as a competitive incentive.
It saddens me when a doctor, a specialist, making many hundred thousand dollars a year, tells me he has maxed out his credit cards and is paying the minimum on the cards every month. It is also sad to realize about 50% of all credit card holders are unable to pay off their credit card debt each month.
The banks love the high earners who blissfully ignore the high interest they are paying. These low-risk customers are a steady source of reliable income for the banks. With millions of such card holders the banks and credit card companies achieve reliable, predictive, ever-rising profits from their credit card operations. It has become a strategic game where the bank is constantly pushing the customer to accept an even higher credit card limit, not for the customer’s benefit, but to increase the bank’s profits. Think about this the next time you add more debt to a growing credit card balance.
On the positive side, the share prices of many banks and their ever-rising dividend payouts have enriched the portfolios of many investors who buy stocks in banks and credit card companies. I always recommend for safe diversity that you invest equally in a portfolio containing 20 stocks. If 4 of those 20 stocks were long established banks who have shown ever rising share prices and dividend payouts for twenty or more years, your portfolio will have a strong foundation for maintaining your financial independence for the rest of your life.
Yes, there are exciting stocks who, unlike banks have share prices growing at a rapid pace and other stocks whose dividend yield percents are 50% greater than those of banks. Unfortunately, high flying stocks often flame out and tumble, while the stocks of major banks keep chugging along quietly growing year after year, decade after decade.
What other stocks should you have in your portfolio of 20 stocks? The obvious answer is those that are the financially strongest who have shown they have a habit of sharing their high profits through generous growing dividends. How do you find such strong stocks?
I would suggest that you look at the reference pages in my last two investment guides “Canadian High Dividend Investing – 215 Scored Stocks” and “Achieving Financial Independence Safely – 200 NYSE Stocks Analyzed and Scored”. You will find in the Canadian book 12 companies traded on the Toronto Stock Exchange with IDM scores over 60 paying steady dividend yields over 6%. In the New York Stock Exchange book, you will find 23 companies with IDM scores over 60 paying dividend yields over 6%. The higher number that are available is understandable since the New York Stock exchange is the largest stock exchange in the world.
Why are high scores and high dividend yields important? Many years ago, I did a test where I created a test portfolio of the 20 highest scoring stocks paying the highest dividend yields. I have now followed that portfolio for years without making changes to it. That portfolio has greatly outperformed the stock market averages and even prestigious portfolios like Fortune 500. The stocks in this study are managed by experienced executives who recognize that their shareholders are important and entitled to share generously in the company’s profits.
Interestingly, out of about 14,500 stocks traded in North America there were only 2 six percent dividend paying stocks on the Toronto Exchange who had scores exceeding 70 or more and on the New York Exchange, there were only 5. Obviously very few scoring over 70 are also paying a dividend yield over 6%.
If you are unfamiliar with the IDM stock scoring software, it is described in detail in my investment books and summarized in my website www.informus.ca. It weighs nine simple facts that are common to all stocks: (1) the current share price (2) the share price four years ago (3) the stock’s book value (4) the number of analysts rating the stock a “buy” (5) the number of analysts rating the stock as “strong buy” (6) the dividend yield percent of the stock (7) the stock’s operating margin (8) the volume of shares traded that day (9) the stock’s price-to-earnings ratios.
The IDM scores are calculated out of a possible 100. I personally avoid stocks scoring under 50 and most stocks do score under 50. The lowest score I have ever calculated was a 3, and the highest was 85.
Since time has passed since these scores were calculated in the two books, for safety’s sake, it would be important to re-score the stocks and confirm that they are still high scoring, high dividend payers. Also, checking the share price and dividend payouts going back 30 years would confirm that these stocks have continued with their habit of paying ever increasing dividend payouts and that investors are still paying ever increasing amounts for their shares.
If you want to achieve financial independence from your stock portfolio, you must accept that you are completely in control of your own future. That future is not predestined. You control your choices. There are no magic successful investment pills.
Over time, your knowledge, skills and strategies compound bit by bit. You quickly learn that the only thing the latest stock hype for making quick money guarantees is an empty wallet.
You cannot blame anyone else for your investment choices. Only you are responsible for your investment portfolio, not the economy, not an investment advisor nor the managers of mutual funds or exchange traded funds.
To make brave, wise investment decisions you must spend some time understanding what stocks you are adding to your portfolio and why you made that decision. No one is going to be there to save you from an unresearched decision.
You will find that your financial success is not so much about how large your portfolio becomes, it is more about how much of the wealth you accumulate you can manage to keep. Every dollar you waste speculating on weak stocks or paying for bad investment advice is a dollar stolen from your future.
You need to pick your own path as a self-directed investor to achieve financial independence. If you prefer a steady paycheck versus the uncertainty of aiming for financial independence, then the status quo is also your choice to live well. You own your choices in life.
That’s all for this week, Folks.