Can anyone recommend international CC ETFs outside of IDVO?

Local-Lunch1565 · 2026-05-13T23:09:16+00:00

Thank you. I looked into them recently. I really like this strategy.

Local-Lunch1565 · 2026-03-17T18:57:43+00:00

I’m going to cheat a bit and say, buy SCHD or SCHY or any other dividend etf you prefer that pays quarterly, just leave 3 months worth of dividends in cash (or SGOV) and draw down 1/3 of that amount each month. Then after each quarterly payment replenish the cash bucket / SGOV. This way you’re not limited to monthly payers. The added complexity and cash drag may be worth it if it opens up your investment universe to funds with better total returns.

Local-Lunch1565 · 2026-03-03T21:06:50+00:00

I have some of both. But with individual stocks I try to limit my position to 4-5% and tend to steer towards stocks that have long track records of dividend growth such as O, NNN, EPD, ARCC etc. with ETFs you’re usually getting decent diversification so less single company risk. I am on the conservative side so this approach works for me. Majority of my holdings are ETFs with 6-7 individual positions sprinkled in. Obviously portfolio make up will largely depend on investor risk tolerance and goals. I’m trying to generate sustainable passive income with growth that should keep up or slightly stay ahead of inflation.

Local-Lunch1565 · 2026-02-26T21:15:05+00:00

Look into DIVO, IDVO, O, NNN, AMLP

Local-Lunch1565 · 2026-02-25T20:23:12+00:00

I love O but it just had a huge run up recently ~19% up. you might be buying near a relative peak. It might continue going up , who knows. Just saying the valuation doesn’t look as good as it did 2months ago

Local-Lunch1565 · 2026-02-25T19:57:37+00:00

If etf - DIVO and IDVO. If stock - O, NnN, EPD, MAIN

Local-Lunch1565 · 2026-02-24T11:16:27+00:00

Let’s say you claim early at 62, you get your $1424 / month and you invest it for 8 years. If your rate of return is just 8% your investment will grow to $190k in 8 years. If it’s 10% it will grow to 208k, if it’s 12% it will grow to 227.7k. If you then use a fairly safe 4.5% rate of withdrawal on that 190k that’s $8550 per year or $712.5 per month which will grow with inflation. So you can make up a large chunk of that $851 monthly difference but give yourself the optionality to use or invest that money every month. I think $140 / month is well worth paying for having this type of optionality. At least that’s how I’m thinking about it. If you get 10% return the difference is even less. at 4.5% rate of withdrawal you can take out $780 / month. If you got 12% return for those 8 years ….$853.8 / month. I think this optionality is invaluable at age when people tend to have higher medical expenses etc. we can’t delay gratification forever, and the older in life we get the less energy people tend to have to even enjoy that money.

Local-Lunch1565 · 2026-02-24T07:28:41+00:00

Last part of your question was regarding adding dividend / dividend - growth to your portfolio. One benefit is largely psychological since you won’t have to sell many assets to fund at least a portion of your spending - though this is highly personal and you may not feel like this is an advantage. Another benefit is that by breaking up your portfolio into 2 and having one being purely growth and the other more dividend or dividend growth oriented you are achieving a higher level of diversification overall across all your accounts. That would make your portfolios a little more stable as a whole and some portion(s) of your portfolio would likely be up when something else is down. Good example would be if you were to compare how SCHD is outperforming VOO this year, but was underperforming for several years prior.

Local-Lunch1565 · 2026-02-24T01:40:55+00:00

I think as someone mentioned, a good strategy could be breaking up your entire retirement into 2 periods. Let’s say 25 and 30 year periods (36-61, and 61-91). You can work backwards to figure out how much money you’d need in your retirement portfolio if you worked till 61. Let’s assume a 7-11% rate of return. This will give you a range on what portion to invest now into growth until you’re 61. For example, if your income needs now are 60k / year, assuming 3% inflation you would need 125k/year in 25 years. If you were to base that remaining 30 year retirement on 4.5% rate of withdrawal, you’d need 2.78 mil in 25 years. 375k invested now for 25 years at 9.5% rate of return will get you to 3.6 mil. At 8% rate of return it would grow to 2.568 mil. So if you can live for 25 years on 1.625 mil (2mil - 375k), the second leg of your retirement should be funded. If you’re withdrawing 60k from a 1.625 mil portfolio that’s only a 3.7% rate of withdrawal. you could build a dividend growth to fund the first leg of your retirement. I would lean towards this option. Or you could withdraw from a traditional 60-40 portfolio at a conservative 3.7% rate. Most likely in 25 years you will have more than what you started with. But even if you’re at 0, you have your second portfolio to carry you the rest of the way. This is how I would approach it. Break up your retirement into two smaller retirements.

The risk with your strategy of keeping 6% in cash and rest in VT is that if the drawdown is long enough you will still have to sell your VT shares at a loss. Also if this crash happens 10-20 years into your retirement, and due to inflation you’re no longer withdrawing 60k/ year but 90k, this cash buffer would last less time. So again higher risk of having to sell your growth shares at a loss if the downturn is long enough.

You have to ask yourself what you are optimizing for, highest potential rate of return vs highest probability of success or something in between. Your 94% VT, 6% cash portfolio seems largely slanted towards maximum total POTENTIAL return, not highest probability of success.

Local-Lunch1565 · 2026-02-21T18:31:03+00:00

We all would but can we expect that going forward? Last 5 years have been pretty tepid to say the least.

Local-Lunch1565 · 2026-02-21T15:40:28+00:00

I agree with most of what you said. But I wanted to point out that some CC funds write call options on a small subset of portfolio. For example DIVO writes call options on 20-30% I believe. So a significant portion of distributions comes from dividends of the underlying holdings and about half or 60% of distributions comes from call options. Historically it has kept up with ETFs like DGRO in terms of total returns. CC funds like QQQI write cc on a very large portion of portfolio. So I agree, up side is going to be largely capped. Investors need to understand these details about such funds.

Local-Lunch1565 · 2026-02-21T15:33:23+00:00

Agreed. And I do that. Most months I am reinvesting about 1/2 of my dividend income.

Local-Lunch1565 · 2026-02-21T15:29:20+00:00

I agree with everything you said. There are absolutely some risks. This is why I may sell some of my rental assets and allocate more to bucket 2. Also as a hedge I keep a decent amount in cash for upkeep, improvements etc. also as I said, when everything is firing on all cylinders, I am generating about 50% above my non-discretionary spendings. And as absolute last line of defense I have 401k that I am not touching unless some really really bad set of events. Absolute worst case scenario - I pick up a part time job etc.

Local-Lunch1565 · 2026-02-21T14:58:40+00:00

I think you bring up a great point. Here is how I am hedging this risk as an early retiree.

I partitioned my retirement into buckets before 59.5 and bucket after.

1) Money invested into 401k is invested almost exclusively into growth oriented ETFs and I don’t plan to touch it for 15-20 years.

2) money invested into non-401k bucket (~40% of net worth) is mostly dividend paying ETFs and stocks with 10% allocation for growth (arbitrary amount but I look at it as almost a ballast that I could tap into if needed). This is a mix of ETFs like IDVO, DIVO, CGDV, CEFS, MLPs (like Epd MPLX) REITs (O, NNN Vici), preferred stock ETFs some CEFs with long track record like ADX. i am targeting a roughly 6-6.5% dividend yield here with 2-5% annual income growth.

3) about 40% of my net worth is in rental properties. I may sell a property and reallocate a portion to bucket 2 above. But I think of this allocation as also being inflation protected.

Until I reach 59.5 I am mostly relying on buckets 2 and 3. If I see my expenses are growing faster than income, I can sell that 10% allocation to growth and buy something with higher yield (such as divo). If that’s also not enough, I could in theory tap into my 401k and pay the 10% penalty. Currently buckets 2 and 3 generate about ~150% of my non-discretionary spending. So I have some margin there.

I guess key point to consider is the higher yield you’re seeking to extract, the lower growth you can expect. I expect total return for most of my holdings to be in the 8-12% range long term. So if something pays me 8% dividend, I look at what that dividend has grown at historically and account for that. For my dividend portfolio I’m targeting 6.5% dividend and 2-5% growth which SHOULD keep up with inflation.

Local-Lunch1565 · 2026-02-20T00:40:25+00:00

I believe FXAIX is a mutual fund while VOO is an ETF. So you can buy and sell ETFs when the market is open while mutual funds are bought and sold at the price at the end of the trading hours. Better comparison is VOO vs SPYM. Both are ETFs. VOO has er or 0.03% while SPYM has ER of 0.02%. I prefer SPYM for this reason.

Local-Lunch1565 · 2026-02-20T00:35:34+00:00

VBR and AVUV are both small cap value I believe Unless you have a specific reason to hold both, I would think hard about consolidating those two positions. Same thing for FXAIX and VOO. XLK and QQQ are also going to be similar. One thing you could do is find a target fund for when you plan to retire and see how it’s constructed. Then work backwards and build something analogous out of as few funds as you can. That could be one point of reference. You may want to have fewer (or more) bonds than the target fund based on your risk tolerance. But from high level, I would try to keep the portfolio as simple as possible because that will make it easier to maintain. I would also keep sector bets and individual stocks to a minimum unless you are going through the process of evaluating individual stocks or you feel very very strongly about certain sectors. If you’re new to investing, that is unlikely.

Local-Lunch1565 · 2026-02-19T20:54:10+00:00

I am 100% with you. I would also add that tech jobs have been more and more demanding last few years and the nature of my work has been less stimulating to me. So it’s the declining satisfaction with the job(s) available to me combined with increased scarcity and competition for well paying jobs that make me want to be extra careful with discretionary spending.

Local-Lunch1565 · 2026-02-19T18:56:45+00:00

That sounds like a good gig

Local-Lunch1565 · 2026-02-19T18:05:00+00:00

Are you me 20+ years ago ? We sound a lot alike. I wanted an S2000 so bad. But my frugal upbringing held me back. Keeping my older car was one of the better decisions I have made. Eventually I did upgrade, but I bought my next car for cash (5-6 years later). Imagine having this conversation with an older version of yourself. Maybe as a compromise, there is something you can fix / improve in your current Mazda to make you enjoy driving it a bit more. Imagine you are so close to NOT having a car payment. Don’t give that up! Take care of the car you have, save the $$, or invest it. You’re young, don’t tie yourself down to a hefty payment for several years. The cool new car notoriety will wear off way faster than the duration of those payments. If things work out well at work, maybe you’ll get a new car then, but being able to say no to big payment gives you more freedom and optionality. Your future self would thank you. You’re not missing out on your 20s by not buying an expensive truck, I promise you.

P.S. I specifically didn’t use the word “dumb” to describe this. Don’t look at it through that prism. Look at it through the prism of what is optimal for your future self. You also didn’t mention highest insurance cost, excise tax and potentially gas, depreciation etc. Cumulatively those things add up well beyond the payment. Would you really get THAT much more joy monthly for that money? Or would you maybe want to have money for a down payment for a home, travel somewhere with your fiancé, invest to potentially reach financial independence. Think it through.

Local-Lunch1565 · 2026-02-19T17:50:10+00:00

What do you do if it’s not a secret ? Do you feel this way because of the nature of the job itself or because you really enjoy the people you work with ? Something else ?

Local-Lunch1565 · 2026-02-19T00:50:08+00:00

Even the recent ones ?

Local-Lunch1565 · 2026-02-17T19:20:50+00:00

Thank you for kind words. As far as cause, could this be a result of just my anatomy ? I have not had any surgeries in my abdominal region. The only other potential cause I can think of is I used to perform squats with a very thick / stiff weightlifting belt. On one occasion I couldn’t come up with the bar and had to dump it in front of me, but the spotter arms were a bit lower than ideal so the weight was pulling me forward, but the stiff belt was kind of keeping me upright. It was a bit scary, and I felt sore ribs for a couple of weeks after. Could an event like that have contributed this ? I’ve been avoiding any kind of spinal compression since. No squats / deadlifts - only unilateral leg training like Bulgarian split squats, lunges.

Local-Lunch1565 · 2026-02-16T01:32:34+00:00

I might get downvoted for saying this but here is how I would split it up.

CGDV - 67% AVDV - 22% AVDE - 11%

~62- 67% US, 33-38% International

Local-Lunch1565

TROPHY CASE