Have you ever looked at your past raises from work and figured what they may be in the future.  In other words, how big your paycheck might be five years from now.

Or looked at a social security statement that estimates the amount your retirement check will be at some future date.

I think many people do this at some point in time.

Wouldn’t it be nice if you could do that with your stock investment account?  That is to say, sit down and figure how much your stocks will pay you every month when you retire.

Well, you can do this when you invest in good dividend paying stocks.  And you can also estimate how much of a dividend pay increase you will get from them year by year.

Because good dividend paying stocks are usually from solid businesses that grow every year, and make more money every year, and pay greater dividends every year.

And that “pay greater dividends every year” thing is how you can predict your future dividend checks you’ll receive for your retirement.

The way to do this is really quite easy.  You see, there are public records of dividends and increases for all the public companies out there.

So you can look at what their dividends were ten years ago, and what they are today, and bingo, there’s your annual raise you could get, year by year in the future.

Then it’s just a simple matter of projecting that out.

Just like you do when you sit down and calculate that you are going to get a raise of 3% at work, and so that means you will get a check 3% greater next year, and 3% greater the next year, etc.

Now come on, ‘fess up, I know you’ve done this.

And it makes sense.

So why not start doing this by buying dividend paying stocks and projecting the dividends they will pay you in the future.

You do it with your paycheck.

And dividends will be your paycheck in the future.

So why not treat them the same.

I promise you, when you start looking at stocks and their future dividend checks, as paychecks you will be living off of, it’s going to change the way you invest in them.

And which stocks you invest in.

We’ll explore more of this in future post – so stay tuned.  This is about YOUR future.

To your wealth and prosperity – John