Reply #44: I fell out of love with New Zealand Telecom recently. [View All]

[tclambert]

It's a phone company, so I regarded it as "safer" investment. When my wife and I bought some, it was paying 10% dividends. Time passed, the share price went up (good) and the dividens went down (bad) until it was paying 5.5% dividends. Well, AT&T, the mother of all phone companies, was paying 5.9% dividends. So, we switched phone companies. We got in just a few days before the ex-dividend date (sweet). My wife is actually parking some of her money there until she finds another stock she likes. I'm thinking of it as a kind of savings account with a much better interest rate. Our credit union is currently paying about 0.1% interest on savings. That equals 1/59th what AT&T pays.

I still hope the "riskier" investments will make me rich one day, but it's good to have some "safer" income-producing investments, too.