Blog
Writing on dividend income, payout timing, and what actually changes when a company revises a dividend.
When the ASX's ten biggest companies pay, and the five months none of them do
The ten largest companies in the ASX 200 pay their dividends in seven months of the year, four of them within seven days in September. Every payment date from their latest results, why they cluster, and the five months that get nothing.
Read itThree of the big four banks pay less than in 2007, once you count inflation
Prices have risen 68% since 2007. Commonwealth Bank's dividend has beaten that. Westpac's, ANZ's and NAB's haven't, and NAB pays less than it did even in plain dollars. Each bank's own payment record, set against the RBA's inflation figures.
Read itTerm deposits pay 5% again. The catch is in the word again.
The RBA raised rates three times this year and a one-year term deposit now pays more than the ASX 200 yields, even counting franking. What that comparison leaves out: the rollover, inflation, and who sets each rate.
Read itAn SMSF pension has a deadline. Your dividends don't.
An SMSF pension has to pay a minimum every year, set on the 1 July balance and due in money by 30 June. Dividends pay when they like. Where the two drift apart, month by month and age by age, and what to check before June.
Read itWhere Australia's high yields come from, and who pays for them
The ASX's high yields mostly come from a handful of structures, each built to pass nearly everything out, which leaves them borrowing or raising to grow. What each one leans on, the trust that couldn't refinance in 2007, and the income product the regulator is retiring.
Read itFive questions a dividend portfolio should answer, and the score we won't give you
What a portfolio should tell you: what it pays and in which months, who did the growing, what your income leans on, and what changed. And why a safety score isn't on the list, even though most tools lead with one.
Read itFive reasons to be a dividend growth investor, and the one thing it can't promise
Four fifths of what A$10,000 in Australian shares grew into from 1979 depended on the dividends. Companies that cut theirs lost money for fifty years. A dividend that never grows quietly stops paying your bills. Five reasons, with the numbers drawn, and the one thing growth can't promise.
Read itWhen to sell a dividend stock, and why the price is a bad adviser
The price moves for plenty of reasons that aren't yours. The four reasons to sell that actually are, why in Australia the timing can matter as much as the decision, and a two sentence habit that stops you rewriting why you bought.
Read itA dividend is your own money coming back, and that is not the end of the argument
The theory that dividend policy is irrelevant has never been beaten on its own terms. It also rests on assumptions, and three of them fail: one because Australia legislated against it on purpose.
Read itWhat is actually in a dividend announcement, field by field
Amount per security, the franked proportion, three dates, the reinvestment election deadline, and the one word that tells you whether this payment is coming back next year. Two pages, free, and almost nobody opens it.
Read itA cut takes more off the price than it takes out of your income
A 5% payer cutting 30% costs you 1.5% of the price in income a year. The price can fall twelve times that in a morning. What is actually being repriced, who is still selling a week later, and the discipline that stops working on exactly this day.
Read itA company can run out of franking credits
Franking is not a characteristic of a company, it is an account with a balance, fed only by Australian tax actually paid. When it thins the dividend can stay identical and be worth about 15% less, and no screener will show it.
Read itSeven reasons your dividend was smaller than the number you calculated
You owned it on the wrong day, held fewer shares then than now, compared an interim with a final, or multiplied by a yield with a one-off inside it. Seven ordinary explanations before the one where it was actually cut.
Read itThe grower wins in year thirteen and is still behind on cash in year nineteen
$10,000 at 7% growing 2%, against $10,000 at 3% growing 10%. The annual payment crosses in year thirteen. Total cash received does not cross until year twenty. Which side is right depends on a date, not a philosophy.
Read itBuying just before the ex-dividend date does not get you a free dividend
The price opens lower by roughly the dividend, because the buyer no longer gets it. You have not been paid, you have been given change. And the rule that removes the one thing which could have saved the idea was written by people who had already thought of it.
Read itWhy two websites quote two different yields for the same company
A special dividend sits in a trailing yield for a year and then falls out, looking like a cut. A capital return is not income at all. A buyback returns cash and never appears. Three reasons the same company shows three numbers.
Read itA 4% US yield and a 4% franked yield are not the same money
Foreign dividends carry no franking, lose 15% to US withholding if you lodged the right form and 30% if you did not, and arrive in a currency that moves further in a year than most dividends do.
Read itASX Limited earned more, paid less, and said so months in advance
Record revenue, profit up 5.2%, dividend down 7.5%. The number that did it was the payout ratio, going from 85% to 75%, and the warning was eleven words long with nothing in it to sort by.
Read itA distribution is not a dividend, and last year's does not tell you next year's
An ETF distribution can grow because the fund sold something, a LIC can hold its dividend steady while the earnings behind it move, and neither behaves like a company dividend. What that changes about planning income from funds.
Read itNothing looks like it happened when a DRP pays, and three things did
A dividend reinvestment plan is the only payment you can receive without noticing. Your share count, your tax position and your cost base records all moved on the same day, and none of it was announced to you.
Read itEvery 4% to 10% list is really three different promises
The high yield range holds three structurally different payments: a decision a board defends, a pass-through of contracted money, and your share of one good year. Which one you own decides whether you can plan around it.
Read itThe ex-dividend date is not the day you get paid
Four dates hang off every dividend and only one of them is payday. Why the gap runs six weeks on the ASX, and why every calendar publishes the wrong one.
Read itA 60 year dividend streak is a record, not a promise
Why Dividend Aristocrat and Dividend King lists get read as safety ratings, what happened to three of them in 2024, and the structural reason long streaks break abruptly.
Read itWhat a 9% dividend yield is actually telling you
The arithmetic behind a rising yield, why a yield screen sorts the most damaged businesses to the top, and why 5% means something different on the ASX than it does in New York.
Read itYou do not need monthly dividend stocks to get paid monthly
What filtering for monthly payers quietly does to your portfolio, why the ASX pays twice a year, and how to fix the quiet months instead of rebuilding around a payment schedule.
Read itDividends and bonds are not competing, they promise different things
One payment is contractual and one is a decision made about you every period. The Australian franking asymmetry that breaks the US version of this comparison.
Read itBuy and hold is not the same as buy and ignore
Why tuning out the daily price is good advice, and why tuning out the filings behind it is a completely different decision.
Read itHow many dividend stocks is too many to actually watch
The right range for a dividend portfolio, why the ASX makes diversifying harder than it looks, and what a bigger portfolio really costs you: attention.
Read itThe dividend cut was on page 88, and the yield never warned you
Why a REIT's yield is the least reliable signal of a coming cut, and where the real warning actually gets filed.
Read itHow to live off dividends, and what it actually costs to get there
What a dividend portfolio actually needs to be worth, the Australian franking wrinkle most guides skip, and why the number quietly changes after you have built it.
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