Timeline

Chapter 01 · The CPA years

Decades inside spreadsheets.

I was a CPA for most of my career. Decades inside spreadsheets: balance sheets, cash flow statements, payout ratios. The kind of work most people would call dry. I called it the day job.

Somewhere in my late twenties I noticed something that changed my life: a small dividend that grows every year will make you wealthier than a big salary that doesn't. I started buying. I never stopped.

"A small dividend that grows every year will make you wealthier than a big salary that doesn't."

The sentence that did it

Chapter 02 · Building the income

Reinvest every dollar until the income replaces the salary.

I retired in my fifties on the income. Not on a tech fortune. Not crypto. Not a lucky bet. I did it by finding companies that pay you for owning them, and reinvesting every dollar until the income replaced my salary.

It wasn't glamorous. There was no "10X" trade. There were a lot of mornings reading filings instead of watching the news, and a lot of weekends running screens that nobody asked me to run.

"I retired in my fifties on the income. Not on a tech fortune. Not crypto. Not a lucky bet."

How it actually happened

Chapter 03 · The Dispatch

The research kept happening. So I figured I'd write it down.

Now I spend my mornings doing what I'd be doing anyway: going through ex-dividend calendars, running screens, reading filings, and finding income in places most people would never think to look. Farmland REITs. Oil tankers. Covered call ETFs. Companies that have raised their dividends for 50 years straight.

I get excited about payout ratios. I know that's a little unusual. Every weekday morning I send you what I found: specific stocks, real yields, and the exact dollar amount a $10,000 position would pay you per year. I own many of the things I write about. That's Dividend Dispatch.

Welcome, I’m Charlie Brooks.

I retired in my fifties on the income.

Charlie Brooks

Three chapters,one obsession with payout ratios.

Three chapters,
one obsession with payout ratios.