Reddit reviews The Ultimate Dividend Playbook: Income, Insight and Independence for Today's Investor

A high p/e doesn't always mean a bad pick. And we discussed earlier in the topic how this would be a good pick, "If you aren't looking to "beat the market" or make quick returns"

Ultimately it depends on the individual investor as to why they buy the stocks they buy. I personally am not looking for insane growth, but a solid long term dividend paying stock with the potential for solid growth.

For anyone looking for more info on dividends, The Ultimate Dividend Playbook is a decent resource, I would recommend seeing if you're local library has a copy or if you can buy a cheap one used. I only say that because ultimately it has some good information but a lot of repeat info.

I hoped to outperform the S&P over the long term, but that isn't necessarily the goal. The goal is to pick stocks that I think will get me a real return of 6.5% over the next 30 years.

I have some general rules, things like:

• dividend growth every year for the past 10+ years
  
• payout ratio between 30% and 85%
  
• dividend yield at least 2% (prefer 3%+)
  
• yield + expected growth > 10% (so if yield was 4%, I'd want expected growth of 6%)
  
  If the stock is seen as undervalued, that is a bonus, but I bought Coke and McDonalds at fair prices.
  
  Regarding the financial stocks, I didn't see any loss of commitment to dividends. They have already begun making massive increases. So I don't really expect that sort of thing to happen again any time soon. In fact, it's the feds keeping them from raising dividends more than they have.
  
  Regarding ETFs, there are actually some good ETFs and mutual funds that follow dividend growth strategies, and I think the fees are reasonable. This one for example. Something like this will tend to lag during booms, but will outperform during busts.
  
  The Ultimate Dividend Playbook is a great book on the subject.