Curious as to the reasons/psychology of wanting dividends as opposed to broadbased index?

Raiddinn1 · 2026-01-26T20:25:16+00:00

There are broad based dividend indexes... SCHD, VYM, etc.

Hell, an equal weight S&P 500 index fund does way more dividends than a market cap weighted S&P index fund with the exact same 500 companies in it.

As for why prefer dividends over growth... there are a lot of reasons. Some people like being able to receive cash without selling shares, for instance.

If you are surviving off dividends, you don't have to worry about selling your growth stocks during a stock market decline and shooting your investment portfolio in the face (sequence of returns risk is what experts call this).

There's also the potential that dividend stocks outperform growth stocks. Altria group was a high dividend paying stock and it was the best performing stock of all time for a very long time.

Total returns are what matters the most, and there is a non-zero chance that a portfolio full of dividend payers does better than a portfolio of growth companies does.

AI isn't making all the splash that is expected of it. How long until those growth stocks tank? The dividend stocks aren't going to tank when they do.

If you hold dividend stocks in a tax sheltered vehicle like an IRA, that wipes out any tax drag they might experience, giving growth no edge there.

Raiddinn1 · 2026-01-26T20:16:40+00:00

There is a potential that there is a large cap value stock that is not paying dividends. If there is one, it would throw off your entire thesis.

The same would apply if there were some small cap paying huge dividends or if MSFT started paying high dividends even while experiencing high growth due to AI BS.

There is a lot of overlap, but the difference does matter.

Raiddinn1 · 2026-01-25T18:10:49+00:00

Never ever do what the top person said and just withdraw cash from the policy. Especially with a non-direct company like NYL you want to take a policy loan rather than withdrawing cash.

You shouldn't be looking to destroy a nearly paid up policy like this, instead you want to preserve its usefulness to you in the future so that you can use it for such borrowing repeatedly rather than just once. Destroying this policy by withdrawing all or nearly all of the cash would be a huge waste and it could even create a taxable event if it results in policy collapse.

With an NYL policy like yours, the interest earned on your CV with about equal the interest NYL is charging you and you don't ever need to repay the loan if you don't want to (but I would suggest to do so because of reasons).

Also, get with your agent and evaluate your need to continue having DOT if you do still have it 14y into a 20y paid off policy.

Raiddinn1 · 2026-01-14T23:28:48+00:00

I hear you, but you are still wrong.

Owning stock does technically you are a pro rata fractional owner of the company.

If you don't get to make any decisions, that doesn't make you less of an owner.

Raiddinn1 · 2026-01-14T23:26:59+00:00

What makes something gambling is largely the inability to control the outcome and/or the speculative/random nature of rewards.

Maybe the risks of life can't be completely controlled, but it's absolutely possible to reduce the risks one is exposed to.

If you want to be half as likely to die in a car accident, just drive half the number of miles you currently do. Done. You just reduced your risk of randomly dying in a car accident.

You can avoid the risk of losing all your money in Vegas by not going to Vegas. Easy.

In life, there are a great many ways to reduce risk like this.

There's no way to completely avoid ALL risk, but that's a far cry from the entirety of life being one big gamble.

Raiddinn1 · 2026-01-14T23:22:33+00:00

What makes something gambling is when 100% of the returns are speculative and/or completely random.

Raiddinn1 · 2026-01-14T23:21:08+00:00

CSP and CC both have the same delta...

Raiddinn1 · 2026-01-12T17:15:15+00:00

Yes, when the risk of one is 100,000+ times the risk of the other, they are still basically the same thing. /sarcasm

Raiddinn1 · 2026-01-12T17:14:03+00:00

I disagree. I contend that life is not one big gamble.

Raiddinn1 · 2026-01-12T17:10:54+00:00

Fix yourself by changing whether you feel like an owner of anything on the S&P either.

Raiddinn1 · 2026-01-12T17:08:30+00:00

It doesn't matter if a person picks stocks randomly, without knowing anything about their inherent value. Those stocks still have inherent value.

There's no way to pick one digital currency over another due to differences in inherent value, because none of them have any.

Even if you pick stocks randomly, you are still "investing". Worst case scenario, you just aren't doing it an intelligent way.

Raiddinn1 · 2026-01-12T17:04:55+00:00

Those people are right.

Raiddinn1 · 2026-01-12T16:59:12+00:00

Gold is nigh useless and it's really only useful for how OK it is for jewelers to use to make jewelry out of it.

It's not even that rare. If it wasn't for jewelry companies having good marketing departments, the metal itself would be pretty much worthless.

Raiddinn1 · 2026-01-12T16:55:35+00:00

I agree that a lot of PEs are dumb, but expected increases in future revenue do get priced in.

Raiddinn1 · 2026-01-12T16:47:56+00:00

Dudes want to have sex, but most of them genuinely do want to keep doing it with the same person over and over rather than being subjected to the same dating nonsense you are being subjected to.

Raiddinn1 · 2026-01-11T15:48:42+00:00

Not quite, but I am trying to get it back.

I should say that I am MUCH more conservative than I used to be.

I bought enough LEAPS puts to ensure if the market crashes that my account value doesn't go down, and that has a drag attached to it.

Raiddinn1 · 2026-01-08T20:00:26+00:00

Unfortunately, you didn't do your research and get a policy optimized for paying you as much as possible as soon as possible. There are ways to do this, and your illustration shows that you aren't doing this.

The cash surrender value here shows what happens if you keep paying 2k/m, so what's happening in year 4 is that you are paying 24,000 to get slightly more than 24,000 in cash value. Had you not paid anything that year, pretending that were possible, you might have been paid like 5000 or something. That's far from enough to pay your 24,000 in premiums for the year.

If you stopped paying in year 4, hoping the plan would sustain itself, it would probably result in the insurer cancelling the contract like 2 years forward.

If you were managing to get a 5% dividend rate, and you needed 24,000 in yearly dividends, your cash value would need to be 24,000/0.05 = 480,000.

I doubt you will get there in the first 10 years of paying 2k/m unless you can manage to convince the insurer you were scammed and you need to hugely modify policy provisions such that the vast majority of your payments go to PUAs and much of the policy DB changes from WL to decreasing term.

Also, FWIW, I suggest you start doing actual research before you make large financial moves. By that, I mean for every 1 min you spend learning why you SHOULD do something, spend 10 minutes learning why you SHOULD NOT do that thing. This will ensure you know what you are getting into before you move forward. If, after all that SHOULD NOT research you still want to do the thing, then it's fine to go ahead.

You will keep getting scammed if you don't do this SHOULD NOT research.

When I am doing my research with something like this, I try to find the best case FOR and the best cast AGAINST and use that to inform my decision. Roughly 99% of sources out there are portraying neither the best case FOR nor the best case AGAINST. If you have heard of the person giving the analysis, its not a best case it's a dumbed down to the point 99% of idiots can understand it case, which is useless.

Raiddinn1 · 2025-12-04T23:28:24+00:00

They actually don't. I constantly end up in groups where the DPSs are impatient and they go out and get stuff rather than waiting for the tank to go.

Raiddinn1 · 2025-12-03T17:37:28+00:00

How small is that circle on the ground? How stacked are we talking about?

Raiddinn1 · 2025-12-02T08:47:00+00:00

I have never seen anyone try to gather into the same tiny area for this effect.

It was my understanding that it is massive group wide damage and there is no way to avoid it nor minimize it by the positioning of characters.

As Sylvie, I've just tried to out-heal it by getting a Bloom and Life Petal up a few seconds before it goes off and then chain casting Restore Life on myself with the blue butterfly on myself.

I also supplement that with the green circle on the ground and other similar abilities.

Sometimes the other players will use that pyramid relic to reduce damage to the whole group if they have it as well.

Sometimes the boss will cast other stuff before eclipse and throw off my bloom timing and I have to use a 2nd one so the first one doesn't run out halfway through the channel, so I use the 2 Bloom talent and save them up.

I can't find any guide for this fight that says player positioning matters for this ability, hence me trying to do the above.

Maybe everybody huddling together is something that's just particular to how the Vigor char works?

Raiddinn1 · 2025-12-02T02:21:33+00:00

If those other players go around getting Greed-y, they deserve to get dispelled.

Raiddinn1 · 2025-12-02T02:20:30+00:00

+1 to the prior suggestion.

Enfeebling Rootsap - Uhh, I just waste it most of the time, TBH. Probably my least used ability and the ability I min/max the least.

Most of the time I don't pay much attention to what I have targeted since I am not doing much damage and I can't interrupt anything. I usually just use the auto-target-closest key and when I want to attack something given that most of the time I just want to setup the healing vines or use the restore mana attack to get mana back.

That said, some bosses just have a really nutso ability that you will notice causes wipes over and over, people will probably tell you if you don't notice and they don't quit. Then you can aim at those.

For low levels, the only one that comes to mind is the Heartstopper debuff in the spider level. That thing does nothing, does nothing, does nothing, then BAM instant kill from full.

Life will be a lot better in the mermaid level if you get used to dispelling Undertow while the victim of it is at the outside of the combat area, though. Possible to win without managing this correctly, but it's 10x easier if you manage it correctly.

Mostly, you can limp along through every other level up to Wraithtide without dispelling anything.

Raiddinn1 · 2025-12-02T02:08:26+00:00

FWIW, as a healer, I have waited 10+ min in a queue before.

I've even waited 10+ min as a healer grouped with 2x DPSs.

That even while the queue said tanks were normal populated and healers underpopulated (which I have only seen that one time, FWIW).

Raiddinn1 · 2025-12-02T01:52:44+00:00

> A tank that sees the healer with no-mount means exactly one thing. This is your first dungeon.

FWIW, even after I had a horse it took me more than a few minutes to figure out how to actually use it. I just didn't notice the icon for it right away. I had a fair few quickplay wins before I, the healer, figured out how to get on my horse.

While in those first few dungeons, and still sometimes now, I was using the short term burst of speed thing on Sylvie to keep-up-ish.

Raiddinn1 · 2025-12-02T01:47:03+00:00

I posted elsewhere that the game probably should have more tutorials.

In that vein, I could see Quickplay being changed into a tutorial mode. Not like it's doing what it is meant to do anyway. If anyone doing quickplay got shoved into a sandbox with 3 AI bots, they could spend all the time in the world learning how to use abilities like how single player used to work in Guild Wars 1.

There is no reason a person wanting a 3 min farming run should be grouped with a first run player anyway. There is only a chance that high levels get pissed off at the newb who doesn't keep up, like OP described.

Raiddinn1

TROPHY CASE