Welcome to the Harvesting Dividends Blog!  This website is dedicated to following those elite companies that have a proven record of increasing their dividend payouts over a long period of time – the longer the better – and seeks to become the “go-to” site for information about these companies.  I hope you enjoy reading the information here, and feel free to leave a comment or contact me if you have a question.

Thanks for stopping by!

Jason

About Me

My name is Jason Shimshi, I’m married with three kids and am a full-time engineer. My dad taught and got me interested in investing in the stock market when I was in my teens. I’ve been investing in stocks for over 20 years. After investing in mutual funds and “boring” large, well-established companies, I went looking for bigger and faster returns by trying my hand at swing trading and timing the market. I even tried options trading, and ended up taking on way more risk than I should have. The only thing that I was able to do “bigger and faster” was lose money.

After messing around with this for too long, I figured it was time to take a step back. The things that I was trying were not getting me to my goal: building wealth to support my family and lay the groundwork for a comfortable retirement with dignity. I began to look at the people around me, specifically my dad and father-in-law. Both were living a very comfortable retirement and both were doing it on dividend stocks. My dad had invested in a bunch of different companies slowly and over time, most of which paid dividends and, as such, had a decent stream of income each month. My father-in-law had put some money aside in dividend reinvestment plans (DRIPs) for my wife when she was in her teens. By the time we got married and had kids, the money in the DRIPs had become a nice nest egg. Because of this, I decided to turn my attention to stocks that regularly increase their dividend payouts, specifically Dividend Growth Stocks. I started with a special group of stocks called the “Dividend Aristocrats”. These are stocks that have increased dividends for at least 25 years and are members of the S&P 500 index. They’re some of the largest companies in the world and they make a specific effort to pay out their earnings to investors in the form of dividends. Since I’ve completed my summaries of the Dividend Aristocrats, I am now looking at other dividend growth stocks. One of the benefits of looking at smaller dividend growth stocks is that while these companies – like the Aristocrats – make a specific effort to pay profits out in the form of dividends, they tend to have less attention from investors and may be better values.

As an engineer, I tend to focus on numbers and I like spreadsheets. (OK, I love spreadsheets.) And since I was looking for stocks that paid and grew their dividends, I went looking for the dividend payout histories of these companies. What I found wasn’t encouraging. While some companies provided their complete dividend history online, not all of them did, which made it hard to compare them. And when I went looking at some of the investment sites, what I found were writers that wanted to tell me what to buy, rather than giving me the information to make my own decision. As I do my own research and gather information on dividend growth companies, I’ll share it here with you.

One of the things that I’ve learned from my “stock trading days” is to not make predictions about whether a stock is going to go up. So you won’t find me telling you that “stock X is ready to go up 40% over the next 6 months.” What you will find here is information about a company’s history of increasing dividends. You may find me pointing out dividend growth companies that are a good value at their current price, which may mean that it would be a good time to buy them. And you’ll also find information about investing in dividend growth companies through their direct purchase and dividend reinvestment plans – where you buy stock directly from the company and have the dividends automatically reinvested. You won’t get rich quick, but it’s an easy and (fairly) painless way to grow your wealth over time.

Thanks for stopping by and visiting the site. I hope you find the information here useful. If you ever have any questions, feel free to contact me.

A Quick Note…

As I mentioned above, I’m a full-time engineer, not an investment advisor. I make every effort to make sure the information I put up here is accurate and complete, but I can’t guarantee this. You should always do your due diligence and research. You worked hard for your money and you should make sure that you’re investing it in ways that you understand. (Always feel free to contact me if you have any questions and I’ll do my best to help.) By using the information on this site, you agree not to hold me responsible for any mistakes or errors.

I’m also actively investing my money in these dividend growth companies, so I may buy or sell these stocks at any time.