Buy These 5 ETFs To Replace Your Paycheck

Added: 2026-05-15

[00:00:00]In this video, I'm going to show you how you can replace your jobs income that you have to go to work to earn with dividend income passively from the stock market by going over five different ETFs that you can consider investing in. No, it's not a get-richquick scheme. And no, it's not easy, but it 100% is possible if you're willing to put in the sacrifice. Take a look. When most people think about investing their money, they think, I want to go out and buy the stock for, let's call it $100, and now I'm going to hope that it's going to go up to $200. That way, I can make a lot of money. But there's three problems with this. Problem number one is there's a chance that the stock is not going to go up in value. Problem number two is if the stock does go up to $200, well, you don't actually make any money until you sell. And once you sell it, you no longer own this investment. And problem number three is you don't know how long it's going to be until you actually make any money because it could take a day, a year, or a decade for the stock to go up in price. And this is where dividends come into play because some companies in the stock market have huge profits. And at the end of the year, they can do three things with these profits. They can save that money for an emergency.

[00:01:08]They can take that money and reinvest it back into the company, open more stores, hire more employees, invest in more research and development, or they can just give that money away to their shareholders, people like me and you, who own a piece of that stock. And one way they can just give it away is through a cash payment called a dividend. This money is literally deposited into your brokerage account generally every 3 months, and you have to do nothing except owning the stock.

[00:01:35]Now, the nice thing about this dividend is it doesn't matter if the stock is going up or down. You still get paid your dividend. And you don't have to sell your stock to get the dividend. You get paid just for owning it. And you don't have to wait. You get your dividend payment every quarter, meaning every 3 months like clockwork. This money gets deposited into your account.

[00:01:53]And this is where people get really excited. And now you go on to Google or CatchPT. And you search the highest dividend paying stocks out there. And now you find some amazing stocks paying out these huge dividends. and you think you're going to get rich really fast, but that's when you start to run into some problems. See, the mistake that a lot of people make is they think that they're investing for these dividends for income. But that's a big lie. If you really want to have income, you should not be investing for income. You should be investing into a strong company that's paying out in income. Because when you start to invest in companies that are paying up big dividends, what ends up happening is you have no idea what company it is that you're investing in. So you buy this stock, you buy this fund because it has a huge dividend. And then what often happens is some months go by and now the dividend starts to fall. Why? Because the company itself wasn't very good. And at the same time, the stock starts to go down. And so now, not only did you lose the income that you thought you were investing in, but you also lost the value of your investment because now your company went bankrupt. So it's a lose-lose. And that's why if you're going to be investing into dividends, you have to know how do you find good dividend stocks or dividend funds to invest in.

[00:03:03]Now, for the purposes of this video, I'm going to be focusing in on ETFs rather than individual stocks because ETFs tend to have less risk. The difference between an individual stock like say McDonald's versus an ETF is when you invest in a company like McDonald's, I'm investing in one company. Now, yes, McDonald's does pay a dividend and I can invest my money into McDonald's, but I'm taking on all the risk because if McDonald's does really good, and they open up stores at every single street corner around the world, well, their stock is going to go up, their dividends are going to go up and I am going to get rich. But if McDonald's doesn't do so good, maybe they start producing some bad hamburgers, they start to get sued, well, now they could start to face some more struggles. Now, maybe their stock price goes down, maybe the dividend goes down, but I'm taking on all the risk when I invest my money into McDonald's, which is not a bad thing, but that's going to require me to do more research on the company, to keep up with the company, to study the financials in the company versus the alternative, is to invest in a fund. And there are many funds out there that specialize in this type of dividend group where now McDonald's might be one of the stocks in this group. Maybe Verizon is another stock in this group. Maybe Apple is another stock in this group along with dozens of other companies. That way now if McDonald's starts to do bad, this fund will kick McDonald's out and replace it with another dividend paying company. That way now this fund is paying me dividends as opposed to me just relying on one stock. That's the advantage of using an ETF as opposed to an individual stock. But it also has its own risks as well because now if I'm using an ETF and McDonald's takes over the world, well, it's going to be balanced out by some of the other losers in the fund. So ETFs give you less risk, less upside, but if your goal is steady cash flow, where you don't have to worry as much about the volatility, it doesn't mean that there's not going to be volatility, but less volatility than investing in an individual company, ETFs can help you do that. And what I want to focus on today is ETFs that have shown strong growth of dividends over the last number of years because ultimately what you want to do is invest in funds that are going to be paying you more money year after year after year. Can I guarantee that? No, absolutely not.

[00:05:22]Because investing has risks. You are never guaranteed to make money when you invest. In fact, you will lose money at some point. So, make sure you always do your own due diligence and never blindly trust a random guy on YouTube. But let me go over some numbers and then I'm going to go over specific ETF examples.

[00:05:37]That way you can potentially find a fund or an investment that can help you get to your income goals. Let's assume that your goal is to retire in 30 years and to have at least as much passive income from dividends in the stock market to replace your job income or maybe even more. Well, let's go through a few options. If you invest $1,000 a month for the next 30 years and you just put it into a savings account, and just for the purposes of this example, I'm going to assume it's growing by 0% a year, you going to retire with $360,000 and you are going to have 0 of passive income. But now, let's say you become a little bit more financially educated and you decide to invest your money, but you invest your money like everybody else. You invest your money for growth, not dividends, not income.

[00:06:20]and you get the average 401k return, just about 8% a year. Well, now you invest the same thousand dollar a month for the next 30 years. You grow your money by 8% and you are going to retire with about $1.5 million. Not bad. But remember, you have no income, which means in order for you to actually have money to spend, you have to start selling your investments. But now, this is where things start to get really interesting. Let's assume now that you're investing the same $1,000 a month. You do this for the next 30 years and you get the same 8% average growth of the stock. So, we're not talking anything crazy, but the stock is also paying out a 4% dividend. Again, nothing crazy. Well, now what's going to happen is you're going to have the same $1.5 million as the value of your stock, but now you're also going to be making some cash flow because you have a $1.5 million stock portfolio value that's paying a 4% dividend. Well, now that means you're making $5,000 a month passively just from dividends from this dividend portfolio that you built. Now, you might say, "Well, Jasper, that's not bad, but that's not enough money for me to be able to retire." Well, remember, you've also made about $450,000 in dividends over the last 30 years. I'm not counting that here. But there's one more example I want to show you. You were investing the same $1,000 a month for the same 30 years. Your stock value is going to grow by the same 8% a year.

[00:07:42]So, nothing crazy. and it's paying the same 4% annual dividend. Nothing crazy.

[00:07:47]But the difference here is DRI P. You are going to follow a dividend reinvestment plan, which means now every time you get a dividend, instead of taking that money and going out and buying a car, you're going to take that money and reinvest it back into this fund. That way, when you make money, you're going to buy more shares of this dividend fund, which means it's going to be buying you more cash flow every time you get paid. And if you follow this dividend reinvestment for the next 30 years, meaning every time you get that cash flow, you just dump it back in to buy more stock. Well, now things start to look a little bit different. Now your investment portfolio is not going to be worth $1.5 million. It's going to be worth a little bit over $3.1 million.

[00:08:27]And now you're not going to be making $5,000 a month passively from dividends.

[00:08:31]You're going to be making about $11,700 a month passively from dividends. All because now you stayed consistent with your dividend strategy. You invested in a strong company that was growing not at crazy rates but consistently. And then the key is you reinvested your income for the next 30 years. That way now you could have a solid stream of income. And now that you understand the math, let me go over some specific examples to help you achieve these results or maybe even potentially better. Again, I cannot guarantee your returns and past returns do not guarantee future returns. But let's go over some specific examples. By the way, if you want to improve your knowledge as an investor, I have put together a free and brand new investing master class where I walk you through how to get started as an investor and find better investment opportunities. I lay out the exact framework that my firm and I use to research investment opportunities before they hit the headlines. It's a completely free master class. So, if you want to get that master class, all you have to do is sign up. And as an added bonus, when you sign up for the master class, you're also going to be added to my market briefs newsletter. Market Briefs is my free newsletter for investors. It's read by hundreds of thousands of investors every single morning, which breaks down what's happening in the economy, housing, stocks, crypto, and global markets. So, if you want to get the investing masterass and market briefs, all for free. Again, all you have to do is sign up, and I have the link for you down in the description below. So ETF category number one, more on the safer side, is just to invest into the core foundational companies in the United States economy that are paying out strong dividends, and I've been working to grow those dividends. Let me go over a few examples. Example number one is SCHD. As a disclosure, I'm personally invested in SCHD. This is an ETF created by Schwab. You can buy it on pretty much any stock brokerage account. And this focused in on investing in high dividend paying companies in the United States, but also companies that are working to grow their company, their profits, and their dividends year after year after year. So, it's focused more in on those stable and growing companies. At the time of recording this video, SCHD is paying out a dividend of around 3.4% a year. And over the last 10 years, they've grown their dividends by approximately 10.6% a year. This is their dividend growth rate on average over the last 10 years. Example number two is an ETF called DGRRO. This is an ETF created by Eyesshares. This is focused in on again dividend growing companies. But the difference between SCHD is you only have to have grown your dividend for the last 5 years as opposed to the last 10 years like SCHD. So it's a little bit more broad than SCHD. DJRO is paying out a dividend at about 2.4% at the time of recording this video. And over the last 10 years, they've grown their dividend by an average of 8.6% a year over the last 10 years. Example number three is VIG. This is the Vanguard Dividend Appreciation ETF. This is a fund that's investing in companies that have paid out and increased their dividend every year for at least the last 10 years. So again, this one's focusing on a little bit more stability.

[00:11:31]It has a lower yield of about 1.5% dividend a year, but they've grown their dividend by an average of 7.7% a year for the last 10 years. The idea here is you're getting less risk and higher quality. Then example number four is we have VM. This is another fund created by Vanguard. This is focused in on the higher dividend yielding companies in the United States. This has a higher yield than VIG, which is focusing on appreciation, but the appreciation growth every year is a little bit slower. So you're getting about 2.3% dividends a year and the dividends are growing by around 6 and a.5% a year. So now you could put these number into a calculator to see if you're investing your money consistently for the next 10, 20, 30, 40 years and your dividends are growing at rates like this, what does that mean for your income in the future.

[00:12:15]Category number two is almost the opposite of number one. Instead of focusing in on the core United States stocks, now we're going to go internationally. Now, the nice thing about international companies and countries is there's more risk for more potential return. And some of these countries have companies that are producing strong cash flows, so they're paying out higher dividends. So, let's go over some international funds and what their dividend yields could look like. Example number one is VMI. As a disclosure, I'm personally invested in VMI. This is an ETF created by Vanguard that's focused in on high dividend paying companies internationally outside of the United States. again comes with some more risk from a potential return, but also some more diversification in your dividends. This is currently paying out around a 3 and a.5% dividend a year.

[00:13:01]And for the last eight or so years, because it hasn't really fully hit that 10-year mark of data, it has grown their dividends by around 8% a year on average. Example number two is SCHY.

[00:13:12]This is a fund created by Schwab. This is another international ETF that's focusing on high dividend paying companies that's working to grow their dividends. Now, the thing about this ETF is it only started a few years ago, so there's not a lot of data to back it just yet. But right now, at the time of recording this video, is paying out around 2.3% a year and has grown its dividend by around 8.28% a year on average. Now, let's get just slightly more aggressive on companies here in the United States focused in on the midcap growers. Midcap companies are those that are $2 billion in value up to around $10 billion in value. So, they're pretty big. They're pretty established, but they're not the Apples or the Nvidas or the Teslas of the world. Now, the nice thing about these midcap companies is they're not the most risky companies out there, but they're also at a stage where they can still grow. So, you can see even faster dividend growth with these companies. For number three, we're going to come back to the United States and remove some more risk. This is going to be some of the more safer options, focusing in on dividend aristocrats only. A dividend aristocrat is a company that's worth to pay out and increase their dividend every year for the last 25 years. The idea being if a company has done this for the last two and a half decades, there's a good probability they'll do it again this year and next year. Is it guaranteed? No, absolutely not. But the idea here is it has a strong track record. Example number one is N OBL Noble. This is an ETF that focuses in on S&P 500 companies, meaning they're part of the 500 largest companies in the stock market, but they're also dividend aristocrats. So, companies that are part of the S&P 500 that have also paid out and increase their dividend every year for at least the last 25 years. At the time I'm recording this video is paying out a dividend of around 2.3% a year. And over the last 10 years, they've worked to pay out and increase their dividends by an average of 8.5% a year. An alternative here is DGRW.

[00:15:04]This is an ETF created by Wisdom Tree.

[00:15:06]This is focused in and again United States quality dividend growth companies, companies that have been working to pay out an increase in dividends year after year. At the time of recording this video, it's paying out a relatively low dividend of about 1.3% a year, but their dividends have been growing relatively quickly. Over the last 10 or so years, it's increased a dividend by about 13% a year on average.

[00:15:30]Now for category four, we're going to talk about midcap companies. These are interesting because these are not your apples and Teslas of the world. These are your companies that are valued somewhere between $2 billion and $10 billion. So they're also not your startups. They're in a pretty decent size, but they also have room to grow.

[00:15:46]So there's more upside potential with their dividends. Example number one is Regl. This is an ETF that's focused in on dividend aristocrats that are part of the midcap stock range. So, these are companies that have been working to pay out and increase their dividends year after year after year. In this case, for over 15 years. At the time of recording this video, Regl is paying out around 2.4% a year in dividends, but has been working to increase their dividends by approximately 11.6% a year over the last 10 years on average. Then we have PEY.

[00:16:18]This is an ETF created by Invesco that's focused in on not just companies that have paid out and increase their dividends every year, but also companies that have been working to increase their stock price at the time of recording this video is paying out a dividend of around 4% a year with about a 8.1% dividend growth rate on average for the last 10 years. And then if you just want a little bit more broader exposure to these midcap companies, maybe less of the companies that have paid out an increase in dividend every year, less of those dividend aristocrats, you can take a look at something like Dawn D. This is an ETF that's created by Wisdom Tree.

[00:16:51]This is again giving you more broad exposure to midcap companies. At the time of recording this video, it's paying out around 3% a year in dividends and their average annual dividend growth rate for the last decade is about 5.9%.

[00:17:03]And this brings me to category number five, the highest risk category, the one that I'm not the biggest fan of, but people have been seeing some success with it and it's been a growing trend, so I want to talk about it. This is focused in on covered call ETFs. This is more on the trading side of things. The idea is it's going to focus in on certain trades where you don't have to worry about the trade, but you're investing in an ETF that's focusing on finding trading opportunities that is going to pay you income through these dividends. Again, more risk, more volatility, but more potential if that's something that you're interested in.

[00:17:39]Now, without getting into all the technicals of how covered call ETFs work, the idea is you're essentially buying a fund that's renting out stocks to people that are trading these options and in exchange, you're getting this fee, this premium, and that's what your dividend is. So, it gives you more income today, but you don't really see that compounding or growth of the income. And then when you're in a bull market where markets are booming, there's also a cap on how much money you're making because then the options traders are also now exercising their options. So you generally just try to see more income today as opposed to more growth in income in the future. Example number one is JPI. This is a fund created by JP Morgan Chase Bank. This is again focused in on these types of premium income stocks where it's holding S&P 500 companies and generating income by renting these out to options traders.

[00:18:30]Over the last 12 months has generated about 8.2% in income. Alternative number two is JPQ. This is again created by JP Morgan Chase Bank. Focus in on the exact same thing that I just talked about, but these are more focused in on NASDAQ stocks as opposed to S&P 500 stocks. at the time of recording this video over the last 12 months has paid out around 10 and a half% in income. Now, the key for any of this to work is to number one, keep investing in your education.

[00:18:55]Again, I have a free investing master class for you down in the description, but also number two to keep consistently investing your money. When it comes to things like dividends, you don't just invest your money one time and then expect to be a millionaire by Christmas.

[00:19:07]The way it works, you keep investing your money every month, month after month, year after year, decade after decade to continually produce that income and then reinvest those profits.

[00:19:16]It's a strategy I call ABB. Always be buying. Buy when markets are up, buy when markets are down. Buy when they're sideways and you keep buying consistently. And the only time you change your strategy is when markets go down. Use it as an opportunity to buy even more aggressively. Because the mistake that a lot of people make is they say, "I'm going to be a long-term investor. I want to invest for cash flow. I want to replace my my paycheck with dividends. And then the next market crash happens and now you sell out and now you lose all of your income and you sell it for a loss when that should be the time you're buying even more because that allows you to buy more of these dividend paying funds at a cheaper price, which allows you to increase your dividend income even faster. If you're an RAIA or financial adviser managing real money and you'd like my firm to help you with your research to identify better investment opportunities to increase your assets under management to keep your clients or get more clients, I invite you to apply for Briefs Advisor Pro. This is our enterprise level research for financial professionals.

[00:20:17]So, if you're an RA or financial adviser, you're managing real money and you want to see how our firm can help you achieve better results. I invite you to learn more and apply for Briefs Advisor Pro. If you're interested, I have a link for you down in the description with a short video that will explain more about what Bree Advisor Pro is. So, what we talked about today is that if your goal is to replace your job income with dividend income, the way you do that is by consistently investing your money. Because if you just put your money into a savings account, your money is not going to grow. The average person is just trying to grow the value of their investments. But the problem with that is number one, there's a chance investments don't go up in value. You have to sell your investment in order to get paid. and you don't know how long it's going to take. You might end up waiting years or decades to see the returns that you want. That's where dividend investing can come into play.

[00:21:04]Dividend investing is you're going to invest into a company or a fund that's going to pay you cash flow. Generally, it's going to pay money every 3 months into your account and you don't have to sell your investments and you get paid while you wait. Now, the nice thing about this type of dividend investing is you can invest in individual companies or you can invest in funds. When you invest in a fund like an ETF, you have less risk because you don't have to worry about managing your investment and making sure that the company invested in is still doing good. You just want to invest in a strong fund. That way you can keep continually investing in that fund. And the thing that you want to pay attention to is not just how much income you're getting, but how much income are you going to get. That's why you want to pay attention to the strength of the fund itself, the strength of the companies inside. And one way that you can measure that is by taking a look at how much those dividends have grown over the past because you want to see growth in the dividends because that shows you that the profits are growing which means not only are you going to make more income in the future but the value of investments are going to go up as well.

[00:22:04]So we went through some numbers based off of an 8% growth rate of the fund and how that can result in more income for you assuming that you're reinvesting your dividends. And then we talked about how you can actually put it into action by talking about different categories of dividends. Category number one was we focused in on core United States companies and we talked about different types of funds that give you exposure to core companies here in the United States. Then for category number two, we went on the opposite side by focusing in on international companies. This is more risk but more potential upside as well because some of these countries are growing while the companies are also growing. So we talked about international funds that you could consider investing in. Then we went into back in the United States, but more focusing on the aristocrat type of companies, companies that have been working to pay out and increase their dividends year after year after year.

[00:22:56]The idea being that if a company has proven its track record for more than a decade, there's a higher probability they will continue to increase their dividends in the future. So, we gave some examples over there. Then, we started talking about midcap companies, the companies that are not the biggest ones in the world, but they're already established. So they have the ability to potentially grow bigger in the future and pay up bigger dividends. So we talked about some of those funds you can consider. Then we talked about the highest risk which is the covered call ETFs. This has been a growing popularity which is why I wanted to talk about it.

[00:23:28]Again the most risk but you also don't see that compounding growth in the value of dividends. It's more of a short-term income play. Again if you got value out of this video the best thank you was a referral. So, if you could please share this video with a friend, family member, colleague, or fellow investor. That way, we can continue to spread this type of financial education. Thank you.

[00:23:47]President Trump just signed an executive order creating a new way for Americans to retire in the United States. It's not going to be with a 401k. It's going to be with a Trump IRA. Take a listen. with every American. You know, most high-income people have an employer that gives them a 401k with a match, but low-income people or Uber drivers or something, they don't have access to