u/BuilderReviews

Sup Gang,

Came across this sub recently and it seems to solidify the fact dividend investing is the way to go. Thought I would share a little story and first hand experience of withdrawing at the wrong time.

I have a bit of a hybrid approach. Dividend income to pay my bills and save some on the side and that I don’t have to withdraw from my growth fund, and some real estate for cash flow over time.

Anyhow, in March of this year I had a unexpected $130k bill come in and well I needed to pay it, Funny thing is I had about $20k in my account from dividends sitting ready to deploy so I had $110k left to cover. I did have enough cash on hand to cover the bill but I wanted to deploy that into more cash flow realestate and thats not really the point of this story anyways. So March comes along market has been flat since October 2025 and was declining in March 2026 so figure meh I’ll withdraw some, over all my growth portfolio was up anyways so why not? Well, that was a big mistake as the rebound made history.

Moral of my story. Dividends pay my bills, I could never imagine have 100% in some VT BND or whatever and having the stress of relying on taking capital off the table when I need it. Causing my self sequence of return risk once, I’ll never make that mistake again.