Dividend Dispatch — Header
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| Dividend Dispatch |
| Income is everywhere. I find it. |
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| Wednesday, April 29, 2026·6 min read |
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Dividend Dispatch — Today's Theme
| Today's Theme |
| One company has paid dividends since James Madison was president. |
| Wednesdays are my favorite day to write this thing. Today I get to show you two of the strangest dividend stories in America — a company older than the Civil War, and a billboard operator that owns small-town America. Then I'm pivoting to two high-yield names paying me 9% and 13% right now. Big yields, real risks, and I want to walk you through both. The mix today is intentional — because the safest dividend in America and the juiciest one belong in the same conversation. |
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What Happens To Your Retirement If The Dollar Drops Another 25%? |
Your retirement account still shows $500,000. |
But that $500,000 buys what $375,000 bought in 2020. |
Nobody warned you. Nobody asked your permission. The government printed trillions, ran up $39 trillion in debt, and your dollars quietly lost a quarter of their value. |
Now the conditions for another 25% drop are worse. |
A new Fed Chair taking over May 15th who wants to cut rates below inflation. That's not an accident. It's a strategy called financial repression. It makes the government's debt cheaper by making your savings worth less. |
40 countries are abandoning the dollar. Central banks are dumping Treasuries and buying gold at the fastest pace in 60 years. The petrodollar system that held everything together for 50 years is cracking. |
If the dollar drops another 25%, your $500,000 buys what $280,000 used to. |
How long can you retire on that? |
Same house. Same groceries. Same prescriptions. Same life. But every single month it costs more and your money covers less. |
There's a reason central banks aren't holding dollars anymore. There's a reason there's legislation in Congress to revalue gold. There's a reason the Treasury Secretary is talking about "monetizing the assets." |
They see the next 25% coming. The question is whether you do too. |
A free report called "The Great Gold Reset" explains what's driving the dollar down, why the next drop could be faster than the last one, and how to protect your purchasing power in 15 minutes. No taxes. No penalties. |
Download Your Free Report Here |
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Dividend Dispatch — Main Post
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The Weird Yield
Income from places you'd never expect
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| YORWA water utility that has paid a dividend every year since 1816. |
York Water sells water to roughly 200,000 people in southern Pennsylvania. That's it. They pull water out of the ground, treat it, pipe it into kitchens. Boring as a beige wall.
And here's the thing. York Water has paid a cash dividend every single year since 1816. That's 210 years. James Madison was president. The Civil War, two World Wars, the Great Depression, the 1970s inflation, 2008, COVID — the check kept going out. It's the longest unbroken dividend record on any U.S. exchange. Nobody is in second place close.
The yield is small — under 3%. So your $10K isn't going to throw off life-changing income. But that's not why you'd own this. You'd own it because you have a piece of capital you want to be there in 30 years, paying you, no matter what happens. The risk: regulated utilities are slow growers, and a rough rate case with the PA Public Utility Commission can squeeze earnings for a year or two. You're trading yield for durability. I make that trade with a slice of my portfolio every time. |
| Yield: ~2.6% |
$10K invested = $260/yr |
Paid: Quarterly |
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| LAMRA billboard company that pays you a real-estate-sized dividend. |
Lamar Advertising owns roughly 350,000 billboards across North America. The big ones along the interstate. The little vinyl ones outside Cracker Barrels. The digital screens at every other exit ramp.
Here's why I love it. Lamar is structured as a REIT — that's a real estate investment trust, a tax structure that requires the company to pay out at least 90% of its taxable income to shareholders. That's why the yield is fat. But the real magic is where Lamar operates. They're dominant in small and mid-sized markets where they hold an enormous share of the local billboard inventory. If a regional bank in Tuscaloosa wants outdoor advertising, Lamar is basically the only phone number to call. That's pricing power most companies dream about.
The risk: billboards are an advertising business, and ad budgets are the first thing companies cut in a recession. The 2020 COVID shutdown forced Lamar to slash the dividend temporarily. They restored and grew it after, but if you're allergic to dividend cuts, know that this one has cut once in living memory. I still own it. The moat is too good. |
| Yield: ~5.0% |
$10K invested = $500/yr |
Paid: Quarterly |
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The High Yield
Today's best dividend income ideas — 8%+ yields only
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| ARCCThe biggest BDC in America, paying me almost 9% to lend to private companies. |
OK so let me explain what a BDC is, because the name is awful and I want you to actually own this category. BDC stands for "business development company." It's a tax structure Congress created in 1980 to push capital toward small and mid-sized U.S. businesses. The deal: the BDC has to distribute at least 90% of its taxable income to shareholders. In exchange, it pays no corporate tax. That's why the yields are huge — the dividend isn't a bonus, it's the entire point of the structure.
Ares Capital is the biggest one. They have about $25 billion of loans out to roughly 550 private American companies — mid-sized businesses you've never heard of, mostly senior-secured floating-rate debt. The base quarterly dividend has been steady, and ARCC has not cut its dividend through any of the cycles since the Great Financial Crisis.
The risk is real. BDCs are essentially credit funds that use borrowed money on top of their loan book to juice returns. If we hit a recession and a wave of those 550 companies default, the dividend gets squeezed. Floating-rate also cuts both ways — if rates fall hard, ARCC's interest income falls with them. I own this. I size it like the credit fund it is, not like a blue chip. |
| Yield: ~8.9% |
$10K invested = $890/yr |
Paid: Quarterly |
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| PDIA PIMCO fund paying me a 13% yield on the first of every month. |
PIMCO Dynamic Income Fund is a closed-end fund. Quick translation: a closed-end fund, or CEF, is like a mutual fund that trades like a stock. PIMCO collected money from investors years ago, used it to buy a giant pile of bonds and mortgage-backed securities, and now the fund itself trades on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker PDI. The fund collects interest from those bonds, takes its fee, and ships the rest to me on the first of every month.
Two things make the yield this big. First, borrowed money — PIMCO uses debt on top of the bonds they own to amplify the income (and the risk). Second, the fund often pays out more than just net interest, sometimes returning a piece of capital to keep the monthly distribution steady.
Now I have to be straight with you. PDI frequently trades at a premium to its net asset value — meaning you sometimes pay $1.10 for $1.00 of bonds. That premium can collapse fast if PIMCO ever cuts the distribution. PDI did cut once, in 2023. Since then it's been steady, but it's not bulletproof. I own a piece. I do not own a giant piece. |
| Yield: ~13.2% |
$10K invested = $1,320/yr |
Paid: Monthly |
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The Extra Yield
This week's calendars, screens & answers
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| Don't miss these ex-dates: A quick word on what an ex-dividend date is — it's the cutoff. If you own the shares the day BEFORE the ex-date, you get the dividend. If you buy on or after, you don't. The seller takes it. ARCC, PDI, and most quarterly payers all run on this same rule, so check the date before you click buy. |
| I ran a screen this morning: U.S.-listed names with 25+ years of consecutive dividend increases AND a payout ratio under 60%. The list keeps coming back to the same dozen Aristocrats — names like Lowe's, Sherwin-Williams, S&P Global. I'll write up two of them tomorrow. |
| Someone asked me: "Charlie, why do you own both a 2.6% yielder and a 13% yielder?" Different jobs. York Water is the part of the portfolio I want my grandkids to inherit. PDI is the part that pays me on the first of every month. They're not competing — they're working two different shifts. |
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| The Dispatch |
Today: York Water (YORW) for the dividend that has paid every year since 1816. Lamar Advertising (LAMR) for billboards and small-town pricing power. Ares Capital (ARCC) at almost 9% for lending to the American middle market. PIMCO Dynamic Income (PDI) at 13% on the first of every month. Four very different jobs in one portfolio.
Tomorrow I'm back with two Dividend Growth Stars and the Safety & Watchlist. See you then. |
| — Charlie |
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Dividend Dispatch — Footer
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| Dividend Dispatch |
| The High Yield · Aristocrats · Growth Stars · The Weird Yield · Safety |
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