How you could have already landed an additional 14% pay raise in 2018
Bottom Line: There's a lot of good news when it comes making more money these days. The average person is making about 3% more than a year ago along with the pace of raises for 2018 indicates a 3.6% pay raise for folks this year for next. Inclusive of the benefit of tax cuts the average person has more than 5% in their paycheck to show for their work compared to this time a year ago (the best year over year increase in 32 years). That's all good but it doesn't have to end there...
I'm an unapologetic evangelist for the greatest wealth creation machine in the history of the world, the US stock market. More specifically though I prefer to invest in companies that pay a dividend that rises overtime. The reason's pretty simple. Companies that pay dividends historically perform better than those that don't and companies that pay rising dividends overtime have performed the best. Better still, you don't have to sell your investment to benefit from the appreciation. With that in mind here's how you could've added a (near) 14% pay raise above and beyond your work already in 2018... Investing in dividend paying stocks.
415 companies in the S&P 500 pay a dividend. Through the first quarter the average increase in dividend payouts was 13.9% shattering all previous records for dividend payouts. That's a 13.9% increase in ROI without any consideration for capital appreciation. What's more is that we're far from done. It's likely that every successive quarter this year will result in record payouts. Apple, the largest dividend payer in the world, for example just raised their dividend by 16%. If you were looking for another way to juice your income and your net worth, well here you go...