Is a dividend investing strategy right for you?

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A slice of earnings paid to shareholders.

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Dividend stocks—shares of companies that prioritize those periodic payments to shareholders—are a way to attract investors and “reward” them for their investments. It sounds like dividend investors get easy money, right? Why not put your whole portfolio in dividend stocks?

The idea of sitting back and watching those dividend payments hit your investment account can sound enticing, until you realize that too much emphasis on a dividend investing strategy might hinder your investment growth and compromise your financial goals.

Many retirees focus on dividends as a way to fund their retirement needs. Other investors choose to reinvest those dividend checks to boost their portfolio value. But dividends are paid out of company profits, which leaves fewer earnings dollars that can be plowed into funding future growth.

A dividend strategy also tends to concentrate your portfolio in certain sectors, which might mean slower gains at times when you want to enjoy nice returns.

Dividend stocks reside in nearly every sector of the market, but dividend yields tend to be higher in certain sectors, such as consumer staples (which includes areas like food processing), the former telecom sector (now mostly folded into communication services), utilities, health care, and other so-called “defensive” parts of the market. Dividends are typically lower in biotech, software, emerging technologies, and other faster-growing sectors.

Although there’s nothing wrong with using part of your portfolio to play defense, especially during tough economic times, defensive sectors aren’t always the best places to be when the economy is humming along. Someone who focused heavily on dividend stocks in the late 1990s or late 2010s, for instance, would have missed incredible growth in the technology sector.

No. Although many companies tout their regular dividends and how long they’ve paid them, dividends are often the first thing a firm cuts when it hits a rough patch. This happens all the time, even at established companies. Chopping dividends can alienate shareholders. But companies are more likely to slice the investor payout than, for instance, miss a debt payment, which could truly hurt them.

Not necessarily. A company might raise dividends because it has no better place to spend the money. But one of the best ways a company can grow its stock price is to grow its earnings. To improve earnings, a company usually needs future growth potential.

A company without huge growth prospects sometimes raises dividends to keep investors from fleeing, but that’s not a long-term solution to underlying issues. Some long-term dividend-paying companies have suddenly stopped sending checks when they hit hard times. For example, in 2018, after more than 100 years of solid dividend payment, troubled times forced General Electric (GE) to slash its dividend to a penny.

Beware of high dividends offered by some companies who might try to lure investor cash to fund risky ventures in volatile parts of the economy, such as drilling for oil. The high dividend might not last if the company hits sand instead of “black gold,” and the stock could be the next thing to plunge. A lofty dividend requires more research on a stock, not less.

In a recession, companies can struggle to grow earnings, and dividend-paying stocks can look more attractive. Few dividend companies likely had high growth estimates in the first place, and dividends can be a source of cash in hard times. Also, such companies often make stuff everyone needs, like toothpaste, where demand doesn’t typically decline. Of course, a dividend company can get hurt by a recession and cut its dividend, but some companies have long histories of paying investors through multiple recessions.

That said, many dividend-paying companies suspended their dividends during the 2008 and 2020 recessions, and others cut their dividends.

Anyone considering dividend stocks should first examine their own investing goals. If you can accept slower stock growth in return for steady cash and perhaps smaller losses in tough times, you may want to consider sprinkling some dividend payers in.

This often makes sense for older investors approaching retirement who can’t afford to have a market crunch take a big bite out of their portfolios right when they start needing cash for life expenses.

Younger investors trying to grow their portfolios might also want dividend payers. Stocks like Apple (AAPL) and Microsoft (MSFT)—well known for their massive growth—now pay dividends, although many high-flying tech stocks choose to hang onto their earnings rather than pay them in dividends.

Deciding on a dividend investment strategy depends on your life goals. If you’re a younger investor who’s several decades from retirement, you might want to have a lower percentage of your portfolio allocated to dividend stocks, simply because the prices of these stocks don’t tend to grow as quickly. As you near retirement, however, you might decide to shift to a few dividend payers in hopes of getting some steady income.