10 Years of Dividend ETF Investing - The 12 Lessons That Cost Me the Most Money

Dividend ETF investing mistakes, priced in real dollars. I took a modelled $100,000, started it in January 2016, and ran it through ten years of published prices and payouts for SCHD, VOO, VIG, DGRO, SPYD, HDV, JEPI and SGOV. Then I ran it twelve more times, each time with one very normal decision, and put a dollar price tag on every one. The result is the Expensive Ladder: twelve lessons, ranked from the cheapest (about $170) to the most expensive (about $136,000). None of these is a real account. Every figure is a back test on published history, so you can line the mistakes up side by side and see which ones actually cost a dividend investor the most over the last decade. Some of the answers surprised me. The best known "mistake" of the decade turned out to make money. A high-yield fund paid more income for most of the ten years and still finished far behind. And the most expensive lesson is not a fund at all. In this video, you'll learn: • Why buying before the ex-dividend date is the cheapest mistake, and the habit it builds • How putting JEPI and SCHD in the wrong accounts can cost thousands in tax • What switching to last year's winning dividend ETF really did, and the one switch that paid off • Why reinvesting dividends, not taking cash, was worth about $40,000 on the same fund • What moving to T-bills and SGOV at 5% cost a long-term SCHD holder • How the highest yield on the screen (SPYD) and a bigger first check (HDV vs DGRO) compared with dividend growth over ten years Which rung of the ladder have you stood on, and roughly what do you think it cost you? Tell me in the comments. If you want more dividend ETF back tests built on real numbers, subscribe. Reminder: I'm not a financial advisor and this isn't financial advice. Always do your own research. Past performance does not guarantee future results. #DividendInvesting #DividendETF #SCHD #PassiveIncome #InvestingMistakes