As we close out 2024, and gear up for what's sure to be another interesting ride in 2025, I wanted to spill the beans on my dividend investing goals for the upcoming year.

In the world of dividend investing, no other ETF is quite as widely worshipped as ​SCHD​, which recently announced its latest annual dividend increase—coming in at a whopping 12% year-over-year!

Wouldn’t it be awesome if there were a single, overarching metric that could serve as a litmus test for great businesses—one that captures a company’s most important qualities? Well, there is!

Investing is complicated. There’s so much grey area and so much conflicting advice. As a result, we often try to simplify investing into neatly defined categories, and boil things down into either/or scenarios.

The other day, I stumbled upon a real gem going through Warren Buffett’s 1991 letter to Berkshire Hathaway shareholders. In it, Warren makes an important distinction between two types of businesses: the first, which he calls an “economic franchise,” and the second, which is just a regular business.

The other day, my friend Jakob reached out to me with a great question, asking how I was able to choose the slow, steady process of dividend investing instead of a more exciting approach like day trading, options, or something more along those lines. And I think this gets to the heart of one of the hardest parts of investing: being patient.

When you buy a new stock, the best-case scenario is never having to sell it, allowing you to sit back and rake in that dividend income for as long as you live. Now, while the idea of holding a stock forever is fun to think about, reality usually has other plans for your portfolio.

When it comes to the stock market, small events can cause massive changes over time.

I'm usually an open book when it comes to my dividend portfolio—or at least I try to be. But I have to admit, I’ve been keeping a little secret from you over the past few weeks: I added a new dividend stock to my portfolio!