My 5 & 6-year olds split a pint of chocolate ice cream.
My 10-year old watched sports on a television.
My 13-year old swiped an LCD screen.
My wife opened a box from a delivery truck.
My silver lab chewed through a Star Wars toy.
And, I put peanut butter on a bagel before I tallied the numbers below.
Nothing impressive or even interesting on this list. Beautifully boring is how I would describe some of the longest lasting companies, by design. Sure, some things change. I also have a 15-year old who needed me to fill up my car with gasoline on the bagel run, to practice for her upcoming driving test. Gulp. So, yea I know all about volatility. We can add this cyclical company and terrifying experience as well, to this list which I otherwise confined myself to one room at one time for one family.
The seven companies I noticed in less than one hour on a Sunday afternoon being devoured by my seven family members, each paid a dividend to their shareholders last week again, uninterrupted. The average pay raise was an 8% dividend increase. These dividends have been paid and raised consistently, throughout good and bad market cycles. The average age of the companies is 126-years old, each. I used the back of an envelope and pencil to do this math, no prospectus or power-point needed. My experience is that the more profitable and un-crowded riddle to solve any time you hear about game-changing volatility will be what does not change.
Here is what the simple math would be for any group of companies like this, starting with an average dividend yield of 3.1% and increasing that annually at an average of 8%. This mailbox money is strictly what you would be walking to your mailbox to receive in the form of a dividend payments, counting on ZERO stock price appreciation, if you start collecting them at the end of any period.