Last month my portfolio paid me $3,220.01 in passive income and I didn't sell a single share to get it. The Yieldly Dashboard has the whole thing on pace for more than $43,000 over the next year, and I built it from zero starting in 2018. If I could start over, I would probably simplify my approach.
I originally started by accumulating over 50 dividend-paying positions. However, through experience I’ve learned that a simple 3-fund portfolio is enough to generate thousands of dollars every month and cover your bases.
👉 I want to share that portfolio with you here today.
I currently hold ALL three of these positions within my portfolio so full transparency, I am incentivized for these ETFs to do well. Even better, this 3-fund portfolio has outperformed the S&P 500 over the last two years.
👉 Paid subscribers instantly get access to the Yieldly Dashboard. Plan out your monthly income!
What $1,000 A Month Actually Takes
$1,000 a month is $12,000 a year, and the only question is what yield you trust. The panel runs the math at every yield, and the top rows are where most people get hurt, because a fund paying 12% has to work very hard to do it without handing you your own capital back. That’s how I ended up selling two funds in The Yield Trap.
The build below lands at a blended yield just under 9%, which puts $1,000 a month at about $137,000. That’s more capital than the high-yield route needs and a lot less than the dividend-growth route, and the difference is that this version held its value over the past year while it paid. Start with less and the structure doesn’t change, it just pays proportionally less, and the figures by portfolio size are in the paid section.
3-Fund Portfolio
I don't use one fund for income anymore, because any single fund that pays enough to matter is making a trade-off somewhere. The growth engine owns businesses by how much cash they throw off and barely pays a dividend, so its job is to make the portfolio worth more next year.
The raise layer owns dividend growers with calls written on top, so its job is a monthly check that grows. The paycheck layer sells calls on the Nasdaq-100 every single day and sends the biggest check of the three.
Here’s the portfolio:
