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Safe Dividend Investing

Safe Dividend Investing

By: Ian Duncan MacDonald
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In 2000, I lost $300,000 in mutual funds that an investment advisor had put my lifesavings into.... I lost it because I had entrusted it to an industry that does not educate investors nor encourage them to look closely at what that industry is doing with their money..... I set out to find a better, safer way to invest..... My podcasts relate to what I learned in creating a generous, reliable income and in growing my wealth.... A few of the more important lessons I learned and explore are:.... (1) It is critical that you become a self-directed investor.....(2) If you can not easily measure the risk and potential in an investment, then do not invest in it. This excludes from your portfolio bundled investment devices, like mutual funds, ETFs and Index funds,..... (3) Financially strong companies who have paid “good dividends” for decades will continue to stay strong and continue to pay good dividends because it is both part of their "character" and in their executives selfish interest.....(4) Diversification is critical. Investing equally in the best 20 strong dividend stocks is the ideal.....A portfolio of 20 limits your risk in any one stock to 5% of your wealth..... No matter how strong you think a stock is, do not fall in love with it..... I have lived very well off my steady dividend income for 18 years, through two market crashes and one pandemic. I have watched my portfolio’s capital more than triple from where I started, despite taking out a generous dividend income every year to live on... In charts, for my second investment book,(Safer Better Dividend Investing), I spent months scoring all 628 dividend stocks paying dividends of 6% or greater traded on the TSX, NYSE and the NASDAQ. I discovered dozens of stocks that can provide not only a generous dividend income but outstanding capital growth.....Financial independence is realizable for careful, patient, dividend investors.

© 2026 Safe Dividend Investing
Economics Personal Finance
Episodes
  • Podcast 262 - HOW TO GET SCAMMERS TO GIVE YOU BACK YOUR MONEY
    Feb 14 2026

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    Welcome to Safe Dividend Investing’s Podcast # 262 on February 14th of 2026.

    My name is Ian Duncan MacDonald, and I am an author of 7 investment books. My seventh investment book, Achieving Financial Independence Safely - 200 NYSE Stocks Analyzed and Scored" became available January 3rd on Amazon. You can easily find it by searching in Amazon or Google for "Ian Duncan MacDonald books".

    Realizing a good dividend income from a financially strong portfolio does not mean you can ignore unnecessary drains on your income. For example, have you been scammed, conned, cheated, robbed, or otherwise relieved of money today, yesterday, last week or last month by businesses you thought you could trust? Hopefully the loss was only a few hundred dollars.

    Scammers know that people tend to be more cautious with larger sums. They deliberately keep their scams under a few hundred dollars to remove your incentive to fight to recover what you have lost. The scammers that you will usually encounter aim for high volumes of small, scams rather than a single big one. They count on you treating your loss as a lesson learned and walking away. This allows the scammers to continue scamming others.

    In today's podcast I will explain how you can recover your money from scammers.

    Ian Duncan MacDonald
    Author and Commercial Risk Consultant,
    President of Informus Inc
    2 Vista Humber Drive
    Toronto, Ontario
    Canada, M9P 3R7
    Toronto Telephone - 416-245-4994
    New York Telephone - 929-800-2397
    imacd@informus.ca

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    22 mins
  • Podcast 261 - IS THE 4% STOCK PORTFOLIO LIQUIDATION RULE NONSENSE?
    Feb 7 2026

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    Welcome to Safe Dividend Investing’s Podcast # 261 on February 7th of 2026.

    My name is Ian Duncan MacDonald, and I am an author of 7 investment books. My seventh investment book, Achieving Financial Independence Safely - 200 NYSE Stocks Analyzed and Scored" became available January 3rd on Amazon. You can easily find it by searching in Amazon or Google for "Ian Duncan MacDonald books". I will maintain the introductory price for this new book until I have finished contacting all the previous buyers of my books have been contacted and given a chance to purchase it at its introductory price.

    In this podcast I discuss the 4% rule. It advises that once you retire you should only sell off 4% of your portfolio each year if you want that portfolio to provide you with a steady income until you are ninety. However, I have found over the last 20 years that if you carefully invest equally in 20 financially strong companies that have long histories of paying high dividends you will find that your dividend income and the value of your portfolio will almost automatically keep increasing.

    There is no reason your portfolio and your dividend income can not keep growing until the day die. Years will go by, where by living within your dividend income you will have no need to sell stocks to live well. Your income will rise ahead of inflation and if you live to 110 your portfolio will still be growing.

    I wonder if promoting the 4% liquidation rule was a strategy spread by investment advisors to assure them of a reliable income from your portfolio for the next 30 years? If your dividend income is going to roll in automatically from your carefully chosen dividend stocks, what are you paying an advisor tens of thousands of dollars for every year? It has been my experience that few investment advisors know much about dividend investing other than it is a threat to their income.

    My books are not get-rich-quick books. They are about showing people just like you how to select, from the thousands of stocks available, those few that are financially strong with long histories of paying ever rising high dividends with ever increasing share prices. My objective is to give investors the confidence to consider building safe stock portfolios as self-directed investors. Once your financial independence is realized, you will, like me, enjoy a generous, reliable, income for the rest of your life.

    Please, visit my website www.informus.ca if you wish to learn more about me and my writing.

    Ian Duncan MacDonald
    Author and Commercial Risk Consultant,
    President of Informus Inc
    2 Vista Humber Drive
    Toronto, Ontario
    Canada, M9P 3R7
    Toronto Telephone - 416-245-4994
    New York Telephone - 929-800-2397
    imacd@informus.ca

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    20 mins
  • Podcast 260 - ANALYSIS OF A PUMP AND DUMP INVESTMENT SCHEME
    Jan 31 2026

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    Welcome to Safe Dividend Investing’s Podcast # 259 on January 24th of 2026.

    My name is Ian Duncan MacDonald, and I am an author of 7 investment books. My seventh investment book, Achieving Financial Independence Safely - 200 NYSE Stocks Analyzed and Scored" became available January 3rd on Amazon. You can easily find it by searching in Amazon or Google for "Ian Duncan MacDonald books". I will maintain the introductory price for this new book until all the previous buyers of my book have been informed of its release.

    The latest hyper promotion of Artificial Intelligence penny stocks as the next Microsoft or Nvidia reminds me of the pump and dump strategy of stock promoters pushing gold stocks that I encountered decades ago, early in my career. Today, almost the same language is being used however they are now aided by the internet and other computerized aids.

    In this podcast I analyze an actual penny stock and explain what to look for to avoid getting caught up in a pump and dump scheme in which you could lose all your money. It is astounding how much these investment schemes can make for the stock promoters at the expense of investors. No one puts a gun to the head of those purchasing these stocks. They are blinded by what they think is a "sure thing", despite the fact that they have done not even the basic research on the stock.

    My books are not get-rich-quick books. They are about showing people just like you how to select, from the thousands of stocks available, those that are financially strong with long histories of paying ever rising high dividends with ever increasing share prices. My objective is to give investors the confidence to consider building safe stock portfolios as self-directed investors. Once your financial independence is realized, you will, like me, enjoy a generous, reliable, income for the rest of your lives.

    Please, visit my website www.informus.ca if you wish to learn more about me and my writing.

    Ian Duncan MacDonald
    Author and Commercial Risk Consultant,
    President of Informus Inc
    2 Vista Humber Drive
    Toronto, Ontario
    Canada, M9P 3R7
    Toronto Telephone - 416-245-4994
    New York Telephone - 929-800-2397
    imacd@informus.ca

    Show More Show Less
    24 mins
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