Podcast 261 - IS THE 4% STOCK PORTFOLIO LIQUIDATION RULE NONSENSE?

Send us Fan MailWelcome to Safe Dividend Investing’s Podcast # 261 on February 7th of 2026. My name is Ian Duncan MacDonald, and I am an author of 7 investment books. My seventh investment book, Achieving Financial Independence Safely - 200 NYSE Stocks Analyzed and Scored" became available January 3rd on Amazon. You can easily find it by searching in Amazon or Google for "Ian Duncan MacDonald books". I will maintain the introductory price for this new book until I have finished contacting all the previous buyers of my books have been contacted and given a chance to purchase it at its introductory price.In this podcast I discuss the 4% rule. It advises that once you retire you should only sell off 4% of your portfolio each year if you want that portfolio to provide you with a steady income until you are ninety.  However, I have found over the last 20 years that if you carefully invest equally in 20 financially strong companies that have  long histories of paying high dividends you will find that your dividend income and the value of your portfolio will almost automatically keep increasing. There is no reason your portfolio and your dividend income can not keep growing until the day die. Years will go by, where by living within your dividend income you will have no need to sell stocks to live well. Your income will rise ahead of inflation and if you live to 110 your portfolio will still be growing.I wonder if promoting the 4% liquidation rule was a strategy spread by investment advisors to assure them of a reliable income from your portfolio for the next 30 years? If your dividend income is going to roll in automatically from your carefully chosen dividend stocks, what are you paying an advisor tens of thousands of dollars for every year? It has been my experience that few investment advisors know much about dividend investing other than it is a threat to their income. My books are not get-rich-quick books. They are about showing people just like you how to  select, from the thousands of stocks available, those few that are financially strong with long histories of paying ever rising high dividends with ever increasing share  prices.  My objective is to give  investors the confidence  to consider building safe stock portfolios as self-directed investors. Once your  financial independence is realized, you will, like me, enjoy a generous, reliable, income for the rest of your life. Please, visit my website www.informus.ca if you wish to learn more about me and my writing.Ian Duncan MacDonald Author and Commercial Risk Consultant,President of  Informus Inc                              2 Vista Humber Drive                               Toronto, Ontario                                Canada, M9P 3R7                                 Toronto Telephone - 416-245-4994                                   [email protected]