[toy71camaro]

Great re-affirming Posts Greg. Hope you had a lovely Christmas with the Fam and the kids were able to come home and enjoy it with you too.

Looking back over the last 2 years since I've started my "dividend" (or, as i like to call it, Investment 102 strategy, heh) I can see how well its taken hold and grown in my accounts. Granted, the past two years have been great in the market, but it just proves to me that its the right thing.

When i look at my 401k, which i've had for a little over 10 years and i see these numbers, I'm happy (note, i completely re-structed/allocated my 401k in Feb of 2013):

2003: 32% Rate of return (note, this is when i opened my account at this employer and rolled in my previous 401k. so not sure how accurate that really is) Dow had a 25.32% return. S&P had a 26.38 return
2004: Me: 12.95%. Dow: 3.15. S&P: 8.99
2005: Me: 4.72. Dow: -.61. S&P: 3.00
2006: Me: 17.53. Dow: 16.29. S&P: 13.62
2007: Me: 5.71. Dow: 6.43. S&P: 3.53
2008: Me: -36.31. Dow: -33.84. S&P: -38.49
2009: Me: 28.42. Dow: 18.82. S&P: 23.45
2010: Me: 12.41. Dow: 11.02. S&P: 12.78
2011: Me: -8.09. Dow: 5.53. S&P: 0.00 (I stopped contributing in this year, due to various reasons. (no employer match, started my ROTH instead)
2012: Me: 12.37. Dow: 7.26. S&P: 13.41
2013: 25.08. Dow: 25.32. S&P: 28.93

Which puts me at a 6.59% rate of return total since i opened the account in 2003 and contributed (with company match) up until sometime in 2011 (i think company match stopped in 2010 tho).

Those arent great numbers (well, a couple of them were much higher than i ever thought before i just looked those up). But, I'm much happier with the 2013 than the rest, as at that point i KNOW what i'm looking at, i'm getting a Dividend on most the funds i've invested in as well. and I've seen my overall balance grow much more than what i could have put into it.