Your Ever Growing Income – Review and Giveaway

Your Ever Growing Income – Review and Giveaway

“Do you want to find a simpler method of investing, one that makes sense and will help you earn a growing income during your retirement?” – Henry Mah, CMA, author of Your Ever Growing Income.

I do Henry and I’m trying to show folks just that on my site…I just posted my March 2019 dividend income update here!

But you’ve nicely packaged that information in a new book:  Your Ever Growing Income: The Rising Yield on Investments – a new book about dividend growth investing.

For new readers to my site, you should know Henry has been on the site before. 

In Your Ever Growing Income, you’ll read about his ongoing praise of the disciplined, dividend-oriented path he learned from Tom Connolly, a retired teacher in the Kingston-area, who describes his own wealth-creation journey in The Connolly Report (a long running publication about dividend growth investing since the early 1980s).  To quote many-a-Connolly Report, the investing path is all about the following:

“If a company does not pay a dividend, don’t buy it.  If it doesn’t grow the dividend don’t buy it either.”

I follow this investing approach myself (I’ve done so for about a decade now) so I thought I would highlight what you’ll read about in Your Ever Growing Income and give you a chance to WIN a copy of this book on my site.  In the book you’ll find:

• Chapter 1 – why to break away from the norm; consider dividend income as the path to follow.

Henry explains the power of dividend growth; how growing income can occur over time with stock price increases; why this approach can help you ignore market fluctuations.

• Chapter 2 – discussions about inflation as a portfolio killer; why dividend income can help.
• Chapter 3 – highlights the differences between any dividend-payers and dividend growth payers – shares his four guiding rules for selecting any dividend growth stock; where to find the stocks, and how to evaluate them, finally, why not just buy an ETF. Henry suggests to focus on dividend growth stocks!
• Chapter 4 – where to invest your money; how many stocks to hold; when to sell; recording your investments and something he calls Forget the basic rules of investing.

In this chapter, Henry also shares his own Excel tools and reports that he uses for tracking dividend growth stocks, the income paid; how to keep track of dividend reinvestment plans and more.

• Chapter 5 – makes the case for change; why now?!
• Chapter 6 – shares his own income data; evidence the path he chose is meeting his income needs (and more) – including a reference to this site in the book and my goals.

I got a chance to chat with Henry recently to ask him about Your Ever Growing Income and some other subjects.  Here is what we chatted about.

Henry, congrats on the book.  I know you’re very passionate about dividend growth investing and it shows in the book.  Can you provide a quick bio for my readers – what was your career and how you came to write this book?

For sure Mark and thanks for time to highlight my book on your site and our Q&A together.

Well, after leaving the Royal Canadian Air Force (in 1965), I worked in the restaurant business for about 10 years, and later started a small cultured marble business.  Then I proceeded to go to night school to get my accounting degree.  I ended up working as a computer/accounting consultant my final years.  Now age 77, I’m retired, living off our ever growing dividends and spend time bugging you on your blog! We live in Edmonton and spend our winters in Arizona.

Passionate and respectful readers never bug me Henry.  I shared the link above about your thoughts on an “average” wealth creation plan anyone can follow.  You are obviously very passionate about investing and dividend investing in general – so why is this book, your book, different than others?

That’s a very fair question.  There are hundreds if not more books about dividend growth/income investing.

Yet, over the past few years, in reading some of these books, while I found most understood and explained the dividend growth (DG) benefits they don’t really seem to fully endorse the dividend growth strategy and explain it so people can follow it easily.  Most books (or blogs) compare their DG results or performance to the market, many recommend ETFs and even fixed assets as part of an overall portfolio.

My book is different – I try to avoid stock recommendations and sample portfolios for people to copy and instead I provide a simple screening/evaluation process, so the reader can evaluate and select their own stocks.  I think that’s far better – it’s learning.

I’m all for learning and continuous improvement.  I do this in my day-job and I try to apply the same principles with my investing.  So, how are you investing Henry?  What stocks or funds do you own and why?  I would hope you eat your own cooking?

I do Mark!

Like most we jumped into investing years ago not knowing what we were doing and certainly did not have a plan or an end objective. It took many years before we discovered The Connolly Report and we changed our approach to dividend growth investing.

Since then (well over 12 years ago now), we concentrated on dividend growth stocks, though we did chase yield a few times to our later regret.  Lesson learned!

Now, maybe this will catch many readers by surprise, we only own 12 dividend growth stocks (banks, utility, communication and pipeline stocks) across all our accounts.  There are no funds, no ETFs, no REITs, no US stocks or any fixed income products.  We do maintain a healthy cash account for personal and emergency needs.

Just 12 stocks?  That definitely brings me to this question:  what are your thoughts on stock concentration vs. stock diversification?  Why do you feel that way? 

I think you’ve stated on your site “personal finance is personal” many times Mark.  So, from that perspective, I think everyone must decide what they feel is best for them.

Now, having said that, I think “diversification” might be most successful propaganda scheme ever presented by the financial industry.  I say that because (even the die-hard dividend growth investors) seem to be convinced that diversification will provide long-term growth; reduce lots of investing risk, and one of the best ways to achieve it is with low-cost ETFs.

I see low fees as a dripping faucet, not noticed in the short-term but will cost one a lot in the future.  Diversification, for an income investor, will cost a lot more because ETF diversification only provides average yield and average growth (examples are provided in my book).  I would argue one does not have to ignore diversification, but achieve diversification through some great, established companies in various sectors and markets.

You’ve been a great and loyal follower on my site for many years now.  (Thanks for that.)  What obstacles (or opportunities to improve) do you see in my investing approach in order for me to reach my goals?

Remember you asked!

To quote you:  “We use low-cost ETFs inside our Registered Retirement Savings Plans (RRSPs) for U.S. and international equity exposure.”

I’ll say the U.S. stocks have definitely out preformed the Canadian dividend growth stocks.  But like I mentioned above, indexed ETFs only provide average returns.  Why not take the time to identify higher quality U.S. stocks that have provided (and should provide) higher income and returns as you have with your Canadian holdings?  It’s not that difficult that one needs to look to ETFs, and in the U.S. edition of my book to identify the dividend stocks to own.  You can screen out the duds with my simple 3-step process and then select from the remainder, the best of the group.

I know you have grandkids now Henry.  Congratulations.  Are you teaching them (or their parents) about investing? 

My wife started to DRIP a bank stock for each of the grandkids in 2007 and though they did not know what it was or how it worked, they did recognize that their quarterly income grew; and kept growing even though she stopped adding money.  Our granddaughter took over her DRIP at age 18 and began adding $100 per month. She still doesn’t monitor the account, but she knows her income is growing and she plans to keep adding funds to the DRIP (till there’s a tax advantage to move to a TFSA). My daughter helped to edit my book actually, and they invest using the same strategy outlined in the book, for a growing income.

Cool stuff, passing it down Henry.  So finally, any final words of wisdom to share?

Well, I hope people like my book and take time to give it a read and make up their own decisions about investing.  It is my hope my book offers a perspective and approach worth consideration.

A final word of wisdom would be like the investing approach I share in the book, the best and simplest advice I can suggest is to always take quality over quantity.  That means when it comes to my own dividend growth investing approach, a few great stocks are far better than a number of lousy ones.

Summary

Even though Henry and I don’t invest the same way (i.e., I own Canadian and U.S. dividend stocks, and I also own a couple of low-cost U.S. ETFs for growth), I can appreciate why he invests the way he does.  He has certainly done well for himself to “live off dividends” (earning more dividend income now in his 70s than he can spend) and he’s passionate about sharing his knowledge – including passing down his wisdom to his family.

I have no doubt Henry’s book can help some investors, even if folks choose to follow another investing approach or a more diversified path.

Thanks to Henry’s contributions once again to my site and this book.

Enter to win a copy of his book below!

Related Reading:

Check out Your TFSA Compounder – Work Your TFSA Harder to Retire Sooner!

How to earn a Salary for Life.

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Any comments for Henry? 

What do you make of his investing choices or approach?