Dividend investing is simple. A company pays you cash for owning its shares. But as Marc Lichtenfeld explains, the real magic happens when those dividends grow, compound, and build wealth quietly in the background.
The Oxford Club and the bestselling author of Get Rich with Dividends. His path into finance wasn’t traditional. He began as a struggling actor who needed to make ends meet, teaching himself about markets in libraries and eventually moving onto a trading desk and then into research. That early experience shaped his long‑term, disciplined approach to investing.
A key theme in our conversation was dividend growth. Marc argues that rising dividends are one of the strongest indicators of a company’s financial health. A business can only raise its payout consistently if its cash flow is growing . It’s also a powerful signal of management confidence.
Marc’s 10‑11‑12 System combines starting yield and dividend growth to aim for double‑digit long‑term returns. He emphasises that you don’t need to find the next tech superstar. A solid company with a 3–4% yield and steady dividend increases can outperform most investments over time.
We also discussed dividend traps, the risks of chasing high yields, the role of payout ratios, and why reinvesting dividends accelerates compounding. Marc’s message is simple: start early, focus on quality, and let time do the heavy lifting.
For beginners, dividend investing isn’t about excitement — it’s about building wealth patiently, one payment at a time.
TRANSCRIPT FOLLOWS AFTER THIS BRIEF MESSAGE
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EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
G' day and welcome back to Shares for Beginners. I'm Phil Muscatello. Today we're stepping into the ring to talk about dividends, how they work, why they matter, and how everyday investors can use them to build long term wealth. My guest today is Mark Lichtenfeld, chief income strategist at the Oxford Club and senior editor of the Oxford Income Letter. Mark began his career on the trading desk at Carlin equities, later becoming a senior analyst at Avalon Research Group. His commentary has appeared in most of the major financial media outlets that you may be familiar with. He's also the best selling author of Get Rich with Dividends, a ah, proven System for Earning Double Digit Returns, now in its third edition. And if that's not enough, uh, Mark is also a professional boxing ring announcer. He floats like a butterfly, stings like a bee when he's dealing with the punches thrown by markets. Hi Mark.
Hey, how are you? Phil, Great to see you.
Great uh, to meet you as well. And apologies for the tortured boxing analogies in the introduction there, but we always like a tortured analogy on this podcast. What can boxing teach us about investing?
You know, I think it's to, to be prepared. I've been to a lot of fights and you know, worked a lot of fights where the uh, guy didn't bother training too hard and very often cost them. And so I think with investing, you know, you don't necessarily have to put in as much work as let's say a boxer preparing for a fight. I think, you know, you certainly can, can invest in index funds and be fairly passive if you want to, but if you are going to invest you should know what you're doing to some degree and especially if you're, if you're investing in an individual stock, you get a tip from your, your brother in law or what have you then then you do do your homework and understand why you're investing, what your time horizon is, what the risks are. All those things are very important and
absorbing the punches that get thrown at you by the market as well.
You have to know what your tolerance is for taking those. If you have no tolerance for any kind of pain, then investing in stocks might not be the uh, right place for you. Maybe you should be in bonds or in something much more conservative. But yeah, understanding how much pain you can take is really Important to help you sleep at night, to make sure your position sized appropriately to have stops in place if you need to. So yeah, that's all very, very important.
So tell us about your career in finance and how that's led you to where you are now.
Sure. So I had, uh, I guess a pretty non traditional beginning to it in that I wanted nothing to do with the stock market when I was in school. And I probably could have gotten a job very, very easily because my grandfather had had a seat on the New York Stock Exchange when I was little. And by the time I graduated he was no longer in the business. He was retired. But he certainly could have made some phone calls had that been the path I had chosen. But I wanted to be an actor. So I was kind of knocking around for a number of years trying to make it in New York and California. But what happened was I was, you know, I was a starving actor and I did not like starving and being broke. So I started investing for myself. I started teaching myself everything I could because I needed, I needed money. So that's kind of where it all started and where the passion came from. And then after a number of years, you know, I decided to make my hobby my career and my career my hobby because I really was spending all of my free time studying the markets, going to libraries, if anybody remembers what those are, and really spending, you know, hours a day teaching myself about the markets and trying to get a better understanding of it. So my first job was, as you mentioned, uh, on a trading desk as an assistant. And from there I was promoted to a trader and then became an analyst on the sell side for Avalon Research Group. And now I've been with the Oxford Club for 19 years and publishing the Oxford Income Letter for 13 years.
Tell us about the Oxford Club. Where did that idea come from and what's its role in the investing community?
Sure. So the Oxford Club's been around for, I should probably know this somewhere around 30 years. It started in the 1990s. I joined in 2007. And we are, I believe, one of the oldest independent financial publishers of research, uh, meaning that we're not tied to Wall Street. You know, we don't have, we don't do any banking. We don't, we don't manage anybody's money. It's pure research. So the only way we make money is from subscription. So if people are happy with our recommendations, then
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they hopefully continue to subscribe. And that's, you know, the business model. So my main product is called the Oxford Income Letter, where We focus on dividend growth and, and some other income ideas as well, but dividend growth really is the focus. And then I also have some other more aggressive trading products for people who are m, a little more short term oriented. But the dividend growth is really kind of the, like I said, the bread and butter of it all.
What led you to focus so heavily on dividend investing?
So it started when I, before I got into the business, like I said, when I was broke and trying to make some money. And back then in the United States, the maximum contribution to a, uh, retirement account was $2,000. And I'd read a statistic that said if you invested $2,000 a year in this retirement account starting at age 21 up until 31, so for 10 years you would make and then stopped. You would have more money at age 65 than if you started at 31 and invested all the way up to 65. So, you know, a total of $20,000 over 10 years, ending at age 31 made more money than investing, you know, $68,000 over 34 years, but starting at 31. So that really drove home the idea of compounding. To me. I certainly, I knew the concept of compounding, but that illustration, really, it was like, you know, the light bulb went off. And so I immediately, even though I was broke and making no money, I immediately started investing $2,000 a year into my retirement account. From there, as I was teaching myself about investing, really the way that I figured that I could compound the fastest was with dividend growth stocks, because you're getting paid by the stocks that you own and those payments are going up every single year. So it's really like stepping on the gas pedal for your compounding machine. So that's where it came from. So it kind of came in two separate steps. First, kind of the basic idea of compounding and then looking for a way to accelerate the compounding.
About a year ago, I had another guest on the podcast, and he runs a fund here in Australia that focuses on dividend investing as well. But he uses it in terms of the growth of the dividends as well. Because what he's showing is there's research that does show that the growth in dividend payouts is actually an overall marker for a company health. Do you have any thoughts on that sort of idea?
Oh, agree, 100%. Because if a company is growing their dividend, then it's probably safe to assume, and obviously you would check the financials, but generally speaking, that company is also growing its cash flow and, you know, Cash flow is the lifeblood of a company. Everybody focuses on earnings, but it's really cash flow that's important because dividends are paid out of cash, uh, and companies pay their bills out of cash. You know, earnings have all kinds of non cash items in it. So cash flow to me is the most important metric. And a company that's raising their dividend every single year is a company that is very likely growing their cash flow. And additionally, it's a very good sign of confidence on the part of management, because if a management team has been raising the dividend every year for a long time, 15 years, 20 years, and then suddenly stop, that sends a very strong message to Wall street that something has changed. So management's really going to do everything in their power to continue to raise the dividend. If they do have this long term track record of doing so, and they're going to make sure that they can fund the dividend. I mean, you know, uh, I guess occasionally they'll raise it even without having the funds available. But for the most part, it is a very, very strong sign of financial health.
What would you say to those kind of investors who would say that a company that's paying out money to dividends is not paying out or investing in any future growth?
I think that's a total misnomer. I think there are certainly stages in a company's life where they need to invest more in growth rather than pay shareholders when they're newly profitable, when they're a fairly new entrant into an industry, then certainly, uh, there are times where you need to focus on growth. But there is a time at a certain point of maturity where the company is generating excess cash flow and that's the time to return it to shareholders. You know, if your growth initiatives are being met. I mean, you don't want a company that's just blowing money on any stupid acquisition just for the sake of purchasing growth. It's got to make sense. So once you get to a point that management is handling money responsibly and they have invested in growth and continue to do so and there's excess cash, then yes, it's time to return it to shareholders. And, and I would say return it to shareholders. Don't buy back the stock. If the stock is at, uh, a
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fair price, fair value, then let me as the shareholder decide whether, uh, that's true and I'll use the money to purchase the stock. I don't trust management to decide whether the stock's a good value.
So can you give us a Beginner friendly explanation of your 101112 system.
Sure. So the 101112 system, the idea is that if you are collecting the dividends in cash, that you will generate 11% yields within 10 years. And if you are reinvesting the dividend, you'll generate 12% average annual total returns over a 10 year period. And 12% may not sound like a lot, uh, especially if you're fairly new to investing. But 12% triples your money in 10 years without doing anything. So if you were to make a one time investment and achieved a 12% average annual total return, you'd triple your money in 10 years. So that's, it's a pretty significant return. And so that's the idea behind it. And the way that we achieve it is by investing in companies with high enough starting yields and high enough dividend growth rates. And we're assuming that we are not the best stock pickers in the world, that we're not finding the next Tesla and Meta and Google. We are picking a stock that's only going to appreciate in line with historical averages, which is slightly under 8%. So if we make that assumption, but have a high enough starting yield and a high enough dividend growth rate and can achieve this 11% yield within 10 years, or 12% average annual total return, then you know, we're doing very well. We're beating the majority of fund managers out there and we're doing it with stocks that are not necessarily shooting the lights out when it comes to price performance. They don't have to. If they do great, then the returns are even better. But we're just assuming an average price appreciation.
Track your investments like a pro. Sharesite is Investopedia's number one portfolio tracker for DIY investors. Simplifying your finances. Get four months free on an annual premium plan@sharesite.com so the yield is what a company pays out to shareholders. What is the kind of yield that you're looking for as the starting point that you described?
So generally speaking, I'd like to see it uh, be about 4% or higher. We can go a little bit lower than 4%, you know, into the mid to high threes. If the dividend growth rate is high enough. So you know, if the growth rate is 10%, maybe, you know, we can go to 3.8%, 3.5%. If the dividend growth rate is smaller, then the yield needs to be higher in order to hit those goals. So it's really just a matter of math plugging in these numbers. So the higher the growth rate, the lower the starting yield can be and vice versa.
And how do you determine the growth rate?
So I'll look at cash flow projections. What Wall street is estimating to be cash flow growth, earnings growth. I'll also look at the historical dividend growth. So if this is a company that is only increasing the dividend by a penny a share every single year, and that you know, comes out to, let's say 2 or 3% a year, even if cash flow is growing substantially, if management has not indicated that they're going to increase the growth rate, well then you know that I would say, okay, well now we're probably only looking at 2 or 3%. Very often management does have projections in their conference calls. They'll say we expect cash flow to grow 10 to 15% this year. Or we expect the payout ratio to be a certain level. Or you know, dividend growth is expected to be between 6 and 10%. So you can also find some clues there. So it's a, it's a mixture of taking what management has said, if they have said anything, and then kind of making my own assumptions.
I always like digging into metrics. And you mentioned payout ratio. What is the payout ratio? What does that mean for investors?
Sure. So when you look at payout ratio on a lot of the free websites, it will be the dividends divided by earnings. So you can either do it on a per share basis. If a company pays out a dollar a share and they earn $2 a share in earnings, the payout ratio would be 50%. You could also look at the financials. If the company's making $10 million a year in profit and they paid out 5 million in dividends and same thing, that would be 50%. I look at cash flow though, as I mentioned, cash flow is a, uh, very important metric. I don't look at earnings when it comes to the payout ratio because earnings have all kinds of non cash items in them. Uh, so earnings have things like depreciation, they have stock based compensation. Those things are not part of cash flow because they have nothing to do with cash that's coming in or out of the company. Cash flow is the true measure of, of how much cash is coming in and out of the company. For uh, example, accounts receivables. If your accounts receivables goes
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higher one year, then even though you've recorded a sale, and that sale may trickle down to your earnings, you actually did not receive the cash yet if the accounts receivable is now higher. So think of it this Way you make a sale on December 28 for a million dollars, that sale gets recorded as revenue, and again it trickles down and shows up as profit. But you haven't even sent out the invoice until January 2nd. So that cash did not come in in that calendar year. And that would be reflected in cash flow. So I want to see that the company has enough cash flow to pay the dividend, not earnings. So I always look at the payout ratio based on cash flow. So the dividends paid divided by free cash flow.
We often hear the term dividend Aristocrats. Is this part of the universe that you start with or are, uh, you looking outside of those Aristocrats?
So they're definitely included in the universe. So dividend Aristocrats are members of the S&P 500 that have raised their dividend every year for 25 years or more. So those would certainly be companies I'd be interested in. But there are a lot more companies out there. There's only about 60 dividend, uh, aristocrats. And many of them don't have very high yields. I mean, they may have been raising their dividend for 25 years, but some of them yield less than 1%, partially because, you know, they may have only raised the dividend by a small amount and very often because their stocks have climbed so high. So that yield is not particularly high. So I certainly look at Aristocrats, but I'm looking at, um, you know, basically any company that has raised their dividend for five years in a row or more. And uh, that'll also include, you know, small caps, foreign stocks. So those are companies that would not be dividend Aristocrats because they're not members of the S&P 500.
Can you tell us about some recent examples of companies that you've included in this?
Sure. So one that I recently recommended is UPS, United Parcel Service. So they have about a 6% dividend yield. I believe right now they've been raising their dividend every year for 15 years. The reason the dividend yield is so high is the stock price has not done particularly great in the last year or so. They're having a change to their business model. So they are disconnecting, uh, themselves from Amazon. So they're, uh, here in the United States at least, they are a very big deliverer of Amazon packages. They are trying to get out of that business because even though it's a high volume business, it's very low margin. So they're trying to improve their margins, improve their profitability, understandably. Wall Street's not too excited about them losing that part of the business. But they're much more than just Amazon's delivery service and they're really, especially now with everything that's going on in the world with tariffs. They are, you know, very much a logistics coordinator when it comes to tariffs and working with their customers and helping their customers figure all that stuff out and taking care of that for them. So I, I do think they have a, A, uh, nice value proposition that's not quite being appreciated yet. Hence the 6% yield. So that's uh, that's an example of a company with a really nice starting yield. I mean, 6% is higher than we normally find in a regular corporation. That's not, let's say a real estate company or a master limited partnership, which is very often energy companies. So that's one that I think is really interesting.
A little while ago, as we were chatting, you mentioned dividend reinvestment plans. What are they and how do they work?
So, dividend reinvestment plans. When you buy a stock that pays a dividend, you have a choice. You can either receive the dividend in cash so that money is deposited right into your account, or you can automatically reinvest it and it will be reinvested at on the day that it's received. So if you receive $100 in dividends in ups the day that it's received, it'll automatically buy shares of ups, so you'll increase your share count. The nice thing about that too is you can buy fractional Shares. So if UPS is trading at $90 and you received $100 in dividends, you would receive 1.1 shares of UPS and those fractional shares continue to pay dividends too. So again, that speeds up the compounding, which is, you know, the reason that you reinvest the dividends is so that you build that position size so that it, it is generating even more and more dividends, accelerates the compounding. And then if you ever need to turn off the compounding machine, if you retire or lose your job and need the income now, you're getting a lot more income. If you've been reinvesting for a number of years. So that's the way it works. It's automatic here in the United States with the brokers, it's typically free, sometimes can do it directly through the company, I usually recommend doing it through your broker. That way it's everything's in the same place and it's free.
Would you generally recommend dividend reinvestment plans or Are there things to be aware of and traps?
I do
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recommend it if you don't need the cash right now. Uh, I definitely highly recommend it. The only traps really would be if you are reinvesting directly with the company, not through your broker. Sometimes there are fees and I guess every broker can be different too. So you want to make sure that there aren't costs associated with it. In the United States, some brokers won't allow you to reinvest dividends in foreign companies. So you'd want to be aware of that. You know, if they don't, you just receive the dividend. It's not a problem. The one thing though that you should be aware of when you're reinvesting dividends is that you are taxed on them. Even so, even though you did not receive the cash per se because it was automatically used to buy more stock, you will pay tax on those dividends if it's held in a taxable account. So you do need to be aware of that.
Yeah, it's very important to understand the tax implications. I've actually got a friend, he spent his whole life receiving stock options from the company that he worked for. And a lot of his friends would sell them and you know, just take trips and that. But not only was he keeping them and hanging onto them, but he was religiously paying the tax on them as well, which cost a lot of money often at the time. Cause he was in a, you know, high marginal tax rate. But you know, he's ended up with a very nice retirement due to this.
Yeah, yeah, you definitely, in all aspects of investing, you need to be aware of the tax consequences. And I always recommend talk to a tax professional. To me, it's the best money you can spend to know that there's somebody who spends all day on this stuff looking over for you. Because that's not how I like to spend my time and it's not my area of expertise.
So, uh, tell us about dividend traps. Why can a high yielding stock be a, uh, trap?
So I always think about Wall street like this. Remember that Wall street is not generous, okay? They don't just hand out money. So hang on, hang on.
I'm losing my mind here. Yeah, what are you talking about?
Goldman Sachs just doesn't give away money. But it's a really important concept to think about in that if you are looking at a stock that has a very high dividend yield, or you're looking at a penny stock, or, you know, you've been presented with an opportunity that the stock is going to triple what have you. All those things come with higher risk, okay? If the more that you stand to make, typically the higher the risk is. Now, it doesn't mean that you're guaranteed to lose money or that the trade can't work out, but it does mean you have to be aware that the risk is higher because again, Wall street doesn't just give away money. So if you're looking at a stock that has a 10% yield and most, let's say quality dividend payers out there are paying 3%, you have to ask yourself why, you know, why is this stock paying 10%? Is it because they need to, to attract shareholders? Is it because the price of the stock is so low that the yield has gone up? You know, there is a reason now, now certain industries pay more. Things like business development companies and REITs, again because they're riskier. So that's really, really important to know is that if you see something that uh, seems like a great yield, and we've seen some of these stocks and ETFs that have really high yields, double digit 20, 30% yield, ask yourself why and make sure you know that the risk is much, much higher here than if you're investing in a stock with 3% or 4%.
Okay, so you mentioned REITs in that answer. Uh, real estate investment trusts. And they can often be high dividend payers. But what are the traps there?
So real estate investment trusts are companies that, uh, by US tax law must pay out 90% of their income in the form of dividends, otherwise they'll be taxed on the income. So at the corporate level they're not taxed and that's why they distribute 90% of the income back to shareholders. So as a result their yields are typically going to be higher. The risk with those companies are, you know, basically, uh, the risk that is associated with real estate. So if real estate sector has a turndown, then those stocks will probably be affected as well. They certainly have the risk of tenants not paying. So depending on the type of real estate you're investing in, whether it's residential, commercial, warehouse, data centers, healthcare, REITs, uh, you know, there's all kinds of ways you can invest in the real estate sector through REITs. And they'll all have different risks associated with it depending on who their tenants are, you know, both from a kind of a macro perspective, but also from a individual tenant perspective. And you know, the REITs will, in their filings and their earnings disclose who they're certainly who their largest tenants are. And if there are any of them that have problems, uh, what their occupancy rates are, you know, what percentage of the rent they are collecting. So you can kind of track these and say, okay, well you know, their occupancy rate is staying steady and they're continuing to collect 98.9% of their rents every quarter.
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And then, you know, if that changes then, then you can make an assessment on whether this is getting riskier or not.
So where outside of the U.S. are you hunting for dividend paying stocks?
So right now I like emerging markets. It's a little bit harder to find decent yields, especially outside the United States and especially in emerging markets. In some countries dividends are just not kind of a part of the investing atmosphere really. It's not particularly important to investors in certain countries and especially emerging markets. So they're not easy to find. But when you do find them, sometimes you can find some really nice yields in some areas that are, you know, a little bit undiscovered. So for example I recently recommended a Brazilian bank has a, uh, about a 6% yield and you know, their financials are terrific. And you know, I think this is, this is a way of also diversifying outside the United States, having some exposure to emerging markets and also collecting a uh, really nice yield. So I really like emerging markets. I'm in Japan also, although it's hard to find yield in Japan, Europe. So generally like to spread my bets outside the United States to some degree if I can.
Have you recommended that Brazilian bank and can you talk about that one?
Sure. It's called Banco Bradesco. Ticker symbol is BBD on the New York Stock Exchange. And one of the things I like about it is they lend to agricultural customers quite a bit. You uh, know Brazil is you know, one of the agricultural giants certainly in South America. And inflation has been coming down in Brazil, still very high compared to the United States and Australia and Europe. But it is coming down, which is a good thing that's going to make uh, the economy stronger there. And I do like having some exposure to agriculture and commodities and so I think this is a great way to do it. And they're not only focused on agriculture but that they do have a lot of exposure to agriculture.
Yeah. I'm not sure if you're aware of the dividend situation in Australia, but Australians love big dividend paying stocks and our large banks uh, are very good dividend payers. Plus there's a tax incentive as well with many companies. You get a tax credit here as well along with your uh, dividend. And the dividend reinvestment plans are all run by the companies themselves and their registries rather than through the broker. But yeah. Have you looked at Australia at all for dividend payers?
Not in a while. I think the last one I recommended was a BHP Billiton and that was a long time ago so I should probably take another look.
Oh no, I just don't want to push you in that direction. But yeah, bhp, even though it's a mining company, for a long time, for a long time it wasn't a big dividend payer. And then suddenly there are so many commodities which have uh, pushed their earnings through the roof that they have been paying it out to investors.
Yeah. So I do need to look at Australia. As I mentioned, I was a little more focused on emerging markets when I was recently looking to diversify outside the United States. But yeah, I'll certainly put Australia on my radar. So maybe I'll have to come down to Australia to do a meeting with management.
Yeah, come and have a look at some of uh, our banks because they're a highly protected industry here. So just getting back to the markets and what we're facing at the moment, there's a lot of volatility, as we all know, in markets going up and down. How is that uh, affecting the way that you're looking at dividends and high dividend paying stocks?
To be honest, not that much because the dividend strategy is very long term. You know, I'm looking at holding these companies for five to 10 years. So I'm not going to worry too much about a market dip or geopolitical headlines because I'm looking at, you know, what are these businesses going to be doing five and ten years from now? Like I said, I have other trading products for more shorter term things, but for the dividends. Yeah, I want to hold these for a very long time. So generally speaking I'm not trying to chase the hot trend. I'm not trying to chase energy stocks higher here just because energy got very hot all of a sudden. I mean I have energy stocks in the portfolio but we've had them for a while. So I'm just going to be, when I'm adding positions to the portfolio, I'm looking for what am I missing at this point? So like I was saying, I needed some diversification outside the United States. I was looking for emerging markets. You know, do I need more health care? Do I need another energy stock? I don't have a problem putting an energy stock in there now. If I'm underweight energy, but that's kind of how I'm approaching it. What's going to make the, the portfolio more complete and truly diversified as opposed to what's hot now? What's a problem right now?
I've spoken with other dividend investors and they do point out that dividends are
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often less volatile than the underlying stocks, for sure.
I'm actually doing a presentation in a couple of weeks and I looked at the last five oil shocks going back to the early 1970s, and yeah, Dividend Aristocrats outperformed the S&P 500 significantly. Now, sometimes they still went down, but they went down a lot less than the S&P 500, often by 10% or more. 10 percentage points or more, I should say. So they were, again, no guarantee that they won't go down. If the whole market drops a third or 50%, they're probably going to go down too. But, uh, yeah, they'll certainly do a lot better in very volatile times. And actually in this recent drop in March, year to date, they're still up, whereas the S and P and the Mag 7 were barely above water for year to date.
So in the latest edition of your book, Get Rich with Dividends, you've made some updates. What are those updates and why were they, uh, necessary?
So I added a chapter on crypto because a lot of people are interested in crypto, but really the main thing was to include data from the pandemic. You know, I wrote the book, the first edition was in 2012 and I think 2015. So a lot of time had gone by. I wanted to update the numbers because as I said, the idea behind the 10, 11, 12 system is we are factoring in the average annual price, uh, appreciation of any stock of the market for any stock that we're considering. So I wanted to. I certainly want to include kind of the craziness that happened during the pandemic and also take a look at how did these stocks hold up during the pandemic and what the results were. So that was basically why we did it, because I think I started writing it in, I want to say late 2021, so probably still in the days of the pandemic as we were starting to kind of unwind from them.
So how would you suggest a beginner who was interested in taking on this form of investing the best way to start?
Well, I definitely recommend my book. There's a shameless plug, Get Rich with Dividends. But it is written for investors that are new or have a little bit of knowledge. But it's not written for expert investors by any stretch. It's written for people who do want to get started. And really the reason was because I know what a difference it made for me in my life by investing early. And having had those investments compound for 20, 30 years, I mean, it completely changed my life. So I really wanted to get this information into the hands of people so that they can get started. And even if you're just starting with a little bit amount of money just to do something to get started so that the clock starts ticking or uh, the meter starts running, let's say, and you can start compounding pretty early on and giving it as much time to grow as possible. There's an expression, it's not timing the market that's important, it's time in the market that's important. So the longer you can be invested, the better your results are going to be. And the numbers really can get very ridiculous when you look at 20, 30 years out and I show them in the book. So I really want people to get started quickly. The other book I'll recommend, it was the first book I ever read on the market. It was called Understanding Wall street and I think the author's name, Shoot, I'm totally blanking. Was it Jeffrey Little? But the name of the book is Understanding Wall Street. It's been had many, many additions and it really is the very basics of this is what a stock is, this is what a bond is, this is how investing works. Fantastic book if you are brand new to investing.
So tell us about the Oxford Club and the Oxford Income Letter and how listeners and viewers can find out more.
Sure. So as I mentioned, the Oxford Club's an independent, uh, financial research publisher and the Oxford Income Letter is my flagship publication that's focused on dividend growth. We do have some other portfolios. We do have a high yield portfolio for investors that can take on a little bit more risk and want to have some immediate high yield. We also do have a bond portfolio for investors that want to sprinkle in. Some bonds have some, you know, a little bit more conservative investments in their portfolio. But dividend growth is the main focus of it all. And each issue we have at least one, uh, stock recommendation. We have a, uh, retirement roundup, so there's some article to do with something to do with retirement, whether it's as you're approaching retirement in retirement. We have a mailbag, so I answer questions and then we also do weekly updates. We have a, uh, once a month live session where I'm on camera and you can ask questions about, you know, the market, the portfolio. So that's always a lot of fun. That's on Thursdays. So that's the Oxford Income Letter. You can go to oxfordclub.com and do
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a search for Oxford Income Letter and you'll get all the information there. Our free E letter is called Wealthy Retirement and go to wealthyretirement.com and we publish five days a week and variety of articles, but including on Wednesdays we have something called the safety net where we analyze the safety of a company's dividend and we take requests so you know, we ask our readers for suggestions. So let's say there's, they want to know about AT&T's dividend. We'll break it down and do an analysis of how safe that dividend is. Is it likely to get cut, is it likely to, to get raised, et cetera. So wealthyretirement.com is the free E letter.
So I can't let you go, Mark, without uh, a brief mention about boxing and pugilism and how did you get involved in it and what's involved in calling prize fights.
So I've been a boxing fan Since I'm 12 years old, diehard boxing fan. And started out I was a, uh, I was covering the fights, just you know, uh, writing about them for some of the websites and local newspapers basically just so I could, you know, get to see the fights for free and be in the front row or close to it. And as I mentioned earlier, I used to be an actor and there was a local uh, promoter that had a ring announcer who was just God awful. And so I said to the promoter, if you ever need anybody, let me know. And sure enough he called me and put me on ESPN six months later. And from there, yeah, I've announced world title fights all over the United States, States, a little bit outside the United States. And I get to be a part of the action. I don't get hit in the mouth and I get the best seats in the house. I'm sitting in front of the guy that paid $1,000 for his seat. So it is so much fun. It's one of the most fun things that I do.
So who's the best boxer you've ever seen?
Floyd Mayweather. No, no doubt about it. He uh, untouchable in his prime. I mean just a textbook boxer as far as his skills, his defense. Uh, not a huge puncher, but he, you know, certainly mounted enough offense and always appreciate that. He always came in in shape you know, at the beginning we started off talking about being prepared. Floyd Mayweather was never out of shape. He's got a big personality. A lot of people don't like him, but this guy works in the gym and came into the ring in tip top condition every single night.
Mark Lichtenfeld, thank you very much for joining me today. It's been a real pleasure chatting with you about dividends.
My pleasure. Thanks so much for having me.
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