4 Best Monthly Dividend Payers for Stable and Lazy Income

Added: 2026-05-10

[00:00:00]There are many monthly paying dividend ETFs and stocks out there. In this video, we're going to be going over four of them for your portfolio for good long-term investments. The first one is going to be Realty Income Corporation.

[00:00:15]Now, if you do want to get into real estate, but you don't want to buy physical properties, what better way to get real estate exposure than through the stock market? So, if you can see, this has a total return share price appreciation of 672% all the way since 1994.

[00:00:35]But, this is a monthly dividend paying stock and it pays around 5 to 6% and this is known as the monthly dividend company. It owns a huge portfolio of commercial properties leased to tenants under long-term net lease agreements.

[00:00:54]And as the first quarter of 2026, it has owned or held interest in over 15,000 properties leased to 1,700 clients across 92 different industries. So, a lot of people find this company very attractive because it's going to be predictable monthly income. If we take a look at the dividend history, we can see it's paying very, very consistently cents per share. It's pretty much not getting cut. It's increasing over time, which is very attractive for a lot of people who want something that's going to be predictable. A lot of these other monthly paying ETFs don't have that predictability just like this one does.

[00:01:39]So, you know exactly what kind of check you're getting every single month. We can see the dividend history over the past 5 years, very, very stable and it's increasing over time, which makes it a very solid pick for income focused investors, mainly using this to retire off of or just using it to supplement our current income in this high cost of living environment because a lot of people just can't survive with one job anymore and they're turning towards dividend investments as a secondary source. So this really is a way to turn commercial real estate rent checks into monthly stock dividends. But of course, this is a REIT or a real estate investment trust. So higher interest rates can hurt the value and growth can slow if borrowing costs stay high. But this is a dividend aristocrat style income name with over 31 years of dividend increases, which is very predictable, very stable, and it makes it a great choice for anyone's portfolio as a small portion of their portfolio.

[00:02:44]Now next on our list, we have Main Street Capital. This is similar in the real estate sector, but it's going to be a BDC. So it's a little bit different.

[00:02:55]It's going to have a share price appreciation of 277%.

[00:03:00]So this is going to be a little bit more in terms of share price appreciation because this has only been out since 2007, but it is going to also have a little more volatility, a little more unpredictability, but a higher dividend yield. And we can see it actually pays very consistently actually with special dividends paid out throughout the year. If we take a look at the dividend history, we can see it has been growing and we can see that these little spikes here are actually these special dividends that it pays out every now and then, which is very nice for people to get an extra bonus. And as we mentioned earlier, this is a BDC or a business development company.

[00:03:39]So it's going to provide a debt and equity capital to smaller private companies and it's going to target companies with 10 million to 150 million dollars in annual revenue, while its private loan strategy targets companies with $25 million to $500 million in annual revenue. And why people find this stock so attractive is because it's going to be paying out monthly as well as a supplemental dividends as we mentioned earlier. And a lot of people have been comparing Main Street Capital to O or Realty Income. And why not buy both? You These are both different types of companies that have different strategies. So, they also would complement each other very well in an income-focused portfolio. But, we do have to talk about the few risks associated with BDCs. The income can be sensitive to credit risk, and if the economy weakens, smaller private companies may struggle and defaults can rise, which in turn is going to decrease the share price of this this stock. But, it is down 6% year-to-date, so it is on a good dip buying opportunity in my opinion. Now, our third ETF on this list for monthly dividend payments is going to be, of course, SPYI. We can't leave out the Neos ETFs. This one has been out since August of 2022, and it has a share [clears throat] price appreciation of 8%. But, that's not why you're buying this ETF. You want something that recovers from the dips, and we can see clearly it has recovered from the dips.

[00:05:11]But, the main attraction is going to be this dividend yield, which is going to be around 11% to 12% paid out every single month. And unlike the other two stocks we looked at earlier, the cash amounts for the dividends every single month is going to vary, but it's been pretty consistent around 50 cents per share, which is very nice to see. And it is going to increase or decrease depending on the share price it has. And something we do want to mention is it does have a management fee or expense ratio of 0.68% distribution rate, of course, 12% very very solid. And it is going to be very tax efficient, unlike the other two stocks we looked at earlier. This is going to be 10 more tax efficient, especially powerful for people holding it in a taxable brokerage and using this as supplemental income to live off of cuz it's going to have 10 uh 1256 contracts, which basically means you're going to be getting lower 60/40 tax rates. So, the dividends that you're receiving is going to be subject to 60% long-term capital gains rate and 40% only on the short-term capital gains.

[00:06:19]So, it is going to be a bit more tax efficient, which is very attractive and a lot of people love the Neos funds for this reason. Tax efficiency, good have stability, and pretty high monthly income from its distributions. And so, we saw the price of SPYI only up about percent all-time, which seems lackluster, but you're not forgetting the dividends. If we're factoring in all of the distributions and we're reinvesting it, you're actually going to have a total return closer to 66%.

[00:06:53]So, you can't go off of the share price alone because we have a fairly high dividend yield. And once you're factoring in all that in, it's going to be a much bigger picture than we see.

[00:07:04]But of course, this is a covered call style ETF and it can underperform the underlying, which is of course going to be the S&P 500, but there's two different goals. If you're going to target growth, you would want to invest in the S&P 500 or SPY directly. You don't want to buy an income-focused ETF because it is going to cap your upside potential, but the benefits of a covered call style ETF is it's going to always pay you dividends every single month.

[00:07:35]And it is going to cushion you a little bit during downturns because of those covered calls that this ETF is selling.

[00:07:42]Now, our last ETF on our list is going to be, of course, QQQI, which is, of course, their famous NASDAQ 100 high income ETF. And this is going to be the same strategy as SPYI, but it's going to be on a more volatile index or a more popular one, NASDAQ 100.

[00:08:01]So, it's going to be pretty much a little bit more volatile, a little bit more higher yield, but little more risk as well during market downturns because it's only going to be having about half of its holdings is in technology. So, it's going to be very volatile, very tech focused, but it is going to be a good performer, in my opinion, long-term. It is one of the ETFs that has won the best new active ETF award for 2025 from ETF.com. As we can see, that is their award right here. And for good reason. It has a same management fee, 0.68%. It is actively managed because we have fund managers selling these covered calls for us, so we don't have to lift a finger, but it's going to have a distribution rate of 14%, which is 2% more than SPYI, and a lot of people favor that over SPYI for that reason. But, of course, we're getting the same beneficial tax rates, 60% long-term capital gains, 40% short-term capital gains.

[00:09:02]And you're getting exposure to the NASDAQ 100, and it doesn't have any NAV {quote} {unquote} NAV erosion. We can just see it does drop with the market, of course, with any ETF it's going to drop with the underlying's drop as well, but it does have that recovery potential we're seeing, which is very nice, and it does restore a lot of faith in a lot of people for holding it long-term. And we do want to note that it is up almost 12%, but this ETF is out 2 years later than than SPYI. So, we do want to note that it only has about 2 year 2 and 1/2 years of trading years. And if we were to compare it to Spy I, we can see it has a higher total return mainly because the market and especially the tech sector has been booming, but we can see the total returns during this time period of 2024 all the way to 2026 of May 1st, 50% almost 51% total return with the distributions reinvested compared to Spy I. But, of course, if we take a look at the chart, Spy I is going to be a little bit better if there is a market downturn because it's a lot lot less volatile and has more holdings, 500 top US companies. And there you have it, the four monthly paying ETFs or in stocks that I'm a huge fan of. And if we take a look at my portfolio, we can actually see I have quite a bit of holdings in here. This is an income-focused portfolio only. We do have a Roth IRA as well with Robinhood, but we are going to see that um we have 400 shares of Spy I, 350 shares of QQQI. We also have some other ETFs.

[00:10:50]CHIP I has made an insane total return so far, but that's mainly because of the artificial intelligence boom right now.

[00:10:58]So, I can't really recommend that long-term, of course. But, we also have two other new ETFs. These are EDGX and EDGQ, which are going to be Global X ETFs. And it's going to be pretty much the same strategy as Spy I and QQQI, but it is aiming to pay out weekly with a little bit lower yield. And I can't really recommend these either because there's just not enough trading volume. You're going to be seeing a huge bid-ask spread. So, I would probably stick to Spy I QQ QI for now. And of course, we have a lot of cash secured puts selling options because Robinhood has a three Well, right now I have a 3.75% interest rate.

[00:11:44]And we've made so far $2,600 in lifetime interest because they had a new update recently where you can sell options and those collateral that you're putting down for these options is going to be earning interest. So, all of the cash I've put down for these cash secured puts are earning interest as we can see.

[00:12:02]Cash earning interest $30,000 which includes $22,000 of options collateral, which is very nice to see.

[00:12:10]And this is my income focused portfolio.

[00:12:12]We do have our retirement accounts where we have growth-oriented stocks and ETFs. Let me know in the comments below if you'd like to see that. And thanks for watching.