12 Dividend Aristocrat Stocks to Earn Income All Year Long

Stocks with long track records of annual dividend increases offer investors a sense of comfort.

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Stocks with long track records of annual dividend increases offer investors a sense of comfort. Shareholders can all but count on their income going on – and going up – year after year. With a little creativity, income investors can extend this sense of security to a month-by-month basis, as well.

Many dividend-paying stocks disburse their payments every three months. But if all your dividend stocks pay on the same schedule, say in March, June, September and December, then your income stream would dry up during the months in between. That’s tough, in particular, for retirees who might rely on a steady flow of cash to meet monthly expenses. Fortunately, pay dates for some of the most dependable dividend stocks on the market are scattered all over the calendar.

After researching the payment schedules of the Dividend Aristocrats, 50 companies in Standard & Poor's 500-stock index that have hiked their dividends annually for at least 25 consecutive years, we put together a portfolio of 12 reliable dividend stocks that ensures investors will receive dividend checks every month of the year.

Data is as of Sept. 13, 2017, unless otherwise indicated. Click on symbol links in each slide for current share prices and more.

Disclaimer

(Due to variations in some company payment schedules, this portfolio offers four quarterly dividend payments during 10 months of the year, three payments in March and five in April. The list of 50 Dividend Aristocrats is maintained by S&P Dow Jones Indices.)

Dan Burrows
Senior Investing Writer, Kiplinger.com

Dan Burrows is Kiplinger's senior investing writer, having joined the august publication full time in 2016.

A long-time financial journalist, Dan is a veteran of SmartMoney, MarketWatch, CBS MoneyWatch, InvestorPlace and DailyFinance. He has written for The Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, Consumer Reports, Senior Executive and Boston magazine, and his stories have appeared in the New York Daily News, the San Jose Mercury News and Investor's Business Daily, among other publications. As a senior writer at AOL's DailyFinance, Dan reported market news from the floor of the New York Stock Exchange and hosted a weekly video segment on equities.

Once upon a time – before his days as a financial reporter and assistant financial editor at legendary fashion trade paper Women's Wear Daily – Dan worked for Spy magazine, scribbled away at Time Inc. and contributed to Maxim magazine back when lad mags were a thing. He's also written for Esquire magazine's Dubious Achievements Awards.

In his current role at Kiplinger, Dan writes about equities, fixed income, currencies, commodities, funds, macroeconomics, demographics, real estate, cost of living indexes and more.

Dan holds a bachelor's degree from Oberlin College and a master's degree from Columbia University.

Disclosure: Dan does not trade stocks or other securities. Rather, he dollar-cost averages into cheap funds and index funds and holds them forever in tax-advantaged accounts.