I read a story years ago published by a now-defunct (due to retirement) blogger called Brave New Life. He wrote the post in December 2012, hilariously (to me) only one week before the end of the world was inevitably to occur. December 21, 2012 was supposed to be an apocalyptic event because the Mayan calendar was mischaracterized to “end” on or around that date. It was a whole thing. They even made a (pretty bad) movie:
The reason I found it funny is that the post was about earning money via dividends paid to him as a stock owner. Dividends, as many know, are portions of profits paid out on a regular or semi-regular basis to shareholders of companies as a way to share the wealth created by the business. Dividends typically signal a reliable, dependable business. Reputable companies are reliant upon the world not ending, especially if they want to pay a dividend consistently. Making a bold pronouncement about the dividends you earn while you sleep a mere week before the apocalypse is quite funny to me.
Anyways, as I’ve eluded to, the blog post was titled “I Have The World’s Best Job,” and detailed the average hourly rate the author earned from his dividend income.* From his post:
“My job never ends. Literally.
I’m only making $3.92/hour, less than minimum wage. There are no perks, no benefits, no pension. I work 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. I get no holidays or vacations off. I’m literally doing my job in my sleep.
Hi, my name is BNL, and I’m an investor.”**
Now, BNL’s investments were optimized for cash flow. Some of them were rental properties, some were peer-to-peer lending, and others were regular-old stock investments that pay dividends. Mine? They’re all stock investments that may happen to pay dividends.
So How Do I Measure Up in 2021?
I thought it would be an interesting experiment to replicate his thoughts on a “dividend hourly rate” just for my own education (and now I’ll share with you fine folks!). I was disappointed in my hourly rate compared to BNL (Keeping up with the Joneses, much!?) until I realized a few things:
- As I stated before, his investments were optimized in large part for high cash flow.
- A giant chunk of my invested assets don’t yield any dividend whatsoever because of the investment vehicle I have them parked in or the stocks in which I’m invested.
So what did I come up with? My average hourly rate earned strictly from dividends paid on invested assets comes out to: $1.04 per hour. Earned 24 hours per day, 7 days per week for 52 weeks, this amounts to just over $9,000 per year of passive dividend income.
As my grandmother used to say: that’s certainly better than a poke in the eye. Pretty neat perspective that my partner and I earn a little more than a buck per hour for sleeping at night. 🙂
This extra $9,000 per year just for living certainly helps contribute to our current status of enjoying financial tailwinds.
*If you want to read the original post, you can check out an archived page of the site here: https://web.archive.org/web/20201112014528/http://www.bravenewlife.com/12/i-have-the-worlds-toughest-job/. Side note of my side note, https://web.archive.org is a great tool for accessing old sites if you’re ever in need. You can use the link I provided to read all of the posts on Brave New Life’s blog—I always found his posts to be unique and insightful.
**I shudder to think how this verbiage would play out in this day and age, only 9 years later. Undoubtedly some long comment on the page containing the word “privilege” with a whole lot of hostility would be thrown at BNL. It’s a good thing that (a) no one reads this blog, and (b) I control what comments end up getting posted even if they did!
Grandmother quote busted. “That’s better than a poke in the eye…”