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What are those teased “Sponsored Retirement Plans (SRPs)?”

George Leong at Lombardi is pushing an ad these days for a service he’s calling Automated Income, which recommends something he calls “Sponsored Retirement Plans” (SRPs).

The basic gist is not a huge surprise — this is very similar to past teases by various newsletters about the “secret” way you can make more than Social Security without dealing with brokers or “Wall Street”… and most of these types of ads include examples of “regular folks” who used these SRPs to become millionaires.

It’s not surprising that newsletters continue to push these plans — they’re generally pretty sensible (though not secret, and they don’t require a newsletter’s help), they have tended to work well over long periods of time, and there have been some nice fortunes assembled using similar strategies… We’ve seen teases that refer to the same basic strategy that called them “801(k) plans,” “$1.10 a day retirement plans,” “424 Dividend Boost” plans, “Black Market Income” and “IRM(72)”, among many others.

Here’s a little bit of the intro from Lombardi, to give you a taste:

“Congress restricts over 1,100 companies from advertising these plans. Yet they’re legal and could pay up to 10 times more than Social Security.

“See how everyday folks, retirees, even widows have become millionaires from SRP accounts…and how to get your own plan started now….

“A select group of Americans are retiring with a little-known retirement plan that’s censored by Congress…

“Yet this plan enables Americans to potentially collect anywhere between $1,166 and $12,160 in monthly income that’s sponsored entirely by large-cap American companies.”

Sounds compelling, right? Maybe not as easy as the just-as-misleading “piggyback on Canada’s social security” pitch that we saw a lot of last year, but similarly enticing…. particularly for those who are on the doorstep of retirement but haven’t saved enough money to support they lifestyle they’d like to have in their “golden years.”

So what is it that he’s talking about? A profitable but censored retirement plan?

Well, I hate to be the one to tell you, but it’s just DRIPs — Dividend Reinvestment Plans, specifically those that you can enroll in “directly” with a company through what are also called Direct Stock Purchase Plans (DSPPs).

These kinds of direct-purchase offerings were quite powerful 20 or 30 years ago, when discount brokerages were not the norm and the high minimum balances and high commissions of regular brokers made it difficult for small individual investors to invest in their favorite blue chip companies. And yes, they are “censored” in that companies (McDonald’s, Coca Cola, etc.) are not allowed to advertise or promote their direct purchase plans — whether that censorship is designed to protect broker commissions or to protect investors from misleading marketing, I don’t know.

DRIP/DSPP plans certainly exist and work, and you can open them with many of the best companies in the country. They are direct accounts offered by many individual companies that allow you to buy stock directly from the company on a set schedule (ie, $25 or $100 a month, for example), and to reinvest your dividends automatically. But on the whole, they do not offer anything dramatically different than you would get by buying the same company stock from a discount broker — many people do still recommend them, and they can be a valuable part of some investing strategies, but similar performance is certainly available by using low cost or free brokerage accounts.

DRIP plans from individual companies occasionally offer a slight discount (though that’s becoming less common, and they sometimes also charge fees), dollar cost averaging, partial share purchases, investing discipline, and automatic reinvestment of dividends. This last bit, in particular, was revolutionary in the 1960s when brokerage accounts were uncommon and commissions high.

Today, in my opinion, you can easily do much the same thing through most discount brokers with easier bookkeeping and management, though of course it all depends on your specific circumstances, preferences, account size, and goals.

Essentially, this is how the process works for both a DRIP plan and a standard brokerage-managed dividend reinvestment plan:

For the DRIP/SRP strategy:

  1. Buy one share of a company’s stock, you might have to get the actual certificate and make sure the share is listed in your name (not in “street name”, as it might be at most brokers). Some companies make this easier than others and will let you do it through their transfer agent, others make you buy the shares before you contact them. This has gotten much less complicated over the years, it used to be a deterrent but probably isn’t much of one anymore.
  2. Set up a DRIP/DSPP account with that company. For McDonald’s, for example, you would go to this page for the info, prospectus, and enrollment form. Nearly all companies that offer these plans provide information on their website in some way, though some hide it better than others — McDonalds happens to make it more visible than most. Alternatively, you can also now search through the offerings from the various transfer agents to see which companies they cover, which can make it a little easier to set up multiple companies. Almost all of the direct purchase plan are run through large firms like Computershare or AmStock.
  3. Set up your ongoing purchases — decide whether you want to put in $50 a month, or $100 a quarter, or whatever you want (within the individual company’s guidelines — each company is different, even if they’re through the same transfer agent).
  4. Start over with the next company you want to set up a DRIP with, and set up your files to enable you to track the individual accounts that you have with each of these companies. Recordkeeping and tax accounting has also improved over the years, but it’s still not necessarily as simple as brokerage account recordkeeping
  5. Repeat until you’ve got your full portfolio set up of 2, 3, 5, 10, or 12 companies — as many as you feel like managing and investing in on a regular basis.
  6. Watch your investment slowly grow as you dollar-cost-average in with more purchases on a regular basis, and allow all of the dividends to be reinvested in more shares.

For a more streamlined strategy:

  1. Open a discount brokerage account with a broker who will offer free dividend reinvestment and low commissions. I personally use TDAmeritrade among the discount brokers, and there are certainly plenty of others like TradeKing.com, Scottrade, E*trade and many more that might work for you. (There used to be a few services that allowed for fractional share investing, led by Sharebuilder, but I don’t think any such services are currently available)
  2. Buy as many shares of a particular stock as you want. Buy as many shares of another stock as you want. And another.
  3. Tell your broker that you want to reinvest your dividends. Almost all discount and full-service brokers will do this for you, for free.

In my opinion, the main valuable thing that DRIP/SRP plans offer to small investors that your standard discount broker doesn’t is fractional share purchasing — that’s what allows you to invest a set dollar amount every month without worrying about the exact price of the shares.

For McDonald’s, for example, you might be investing $50 a month even though the price is $120 per share one month and $70 per share another month — you just get fractional shares. If you’re using a free or discount broker instead, you have to buy some number of whole shares (though that number can be 1 if you like). Most brokers do allow fractional shares for dividend reinvestment, just not for purchases, and you should earn dividends on those fractional shares no matter who you buy through.

If you were using a regular discount broker, you would probably want to invest at least a couple hundred dollars at a time to make sure the commissions are a small percentage of your investment — I think keeping commissions at 1-2% is a reasonable goal to shoot for when you’re starting out, which with a $5 commission would mean investing at least $250 at a time. Most DSPP/DRIP/SRP plans have significantly lower minimum and ongoing investment requirements than that, though some do not. Pfizer, for example, requires $500 to set up the account but only $50 for each subsequent investment.

And finally — do note that that if you decide to open a DRIP plan or a DSPP plan through an individual company, they generally all have different account minimums, fees, and general policies.

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On the plus side, if you’re the kind of person who is a reckless emotional trading addict and is trying to lock himself into being a buy-and-hold investor, these plans can be great for that because they make it quite a bit more inconvenient to sell your stock — you can’t quickly sell the stock and have that cash available to trade 30 seconds later so you can buy the next hot Chinese IPO, like you can with a brokerage account. For some people, that’s probably a good thing.

When you’re building a steady and “safe” portfolio of stocks for dividend reinvestment, stability of earnings and growth of the dividend are the key considerations, you’re not betting on a stock that will double in a year or even in five years, you’re betting on steady compounding growth as each dividend adds to your holdings slightly, and builds on that next dividend slightly until you open that statement a few years later and are pleasantly surprised to see how the holding has grown.

It’s not sexy, but if your grandparents built stock market wealth that’s probably how they did it … and it’s a lot more consistent than picking hot mining or biotech stocks or trading options or staring bleary-eyed at stock charts all day and churning your portfolio. Not that those other options, with their occasional 1,000% gains, aren’t a lot more fun to try with some of your play money, of course.

So the plans do exist, though it’s much better to think of them as “incremental investment” plans than it is to daydream about the “$1,166 to $12,160 in monthly income” that you might possibly get from a portfolio of these kinds of stocks after many decades of investing small amounts in “blue chip” dividend growth companies… assuming that you choose stocks that really do have staying power, and that you’re able to keep up the monthly or quarterly investments for 20 or 30 or 40 years to accumulate some real wealth. If you’re already in your 60s or 70s, this is not a “rescue” that can create miracles in the last few years before you retire — though that doesn’t mean it’s necessarily a bad idea, just that it’s still “investing in stocks.”

There’s nothing magic about investing in stocks, putting a bit more each month into your portfolio, and watching the returns compound — but if there is anything surprising about the performance of these kinds of plans it comes mostly from the time, not the plan. Compounding, automatic saving/investing that you can gradually forget about, and long periods of time can make this a powerful investment strategy, but ‘buying direct’ doesn’t make the investment better by itself…. and I think the “long periods of time” part is more important than anything else, and is the fuel for most of those stories of the multimillionaire secretaries who never made much, but saved for 50 years and then retired with fortunes.

And Leong does actually get into suggesting a couple specific investments for his “SRP” plan — so we can check on those if you’re interested…

“Sponsored Retirement Plan #1
“Your first recommended plan is sponsored by a cash-rich company based in Virginia that paid higher annual dividends for 45 consecutive years. It paid $2.9 billion in the past nine months and recently announced that it will increase its dividend by 8.3%, a major driver for its sponsored plans.”

That data’s a bit old, but I suspect this is Altria (MO), the old Philip Morris and the owner of those iconic cigarette brands like Marlboro and Merit in the US (along with a few other mostly tobacco-related businesses). It’s been a fantastic investment for decades, and they have been raising the dividend pretty rapidly in the years since they spun off Kraft and their international divisions (into Philip Morris International, PMI), including recent dividend increases that have been in the 8-9% area most years. The current dividend is about 3.5%, and they do indeed have a direct stock purchase/DRIP plan administered by Computershare, the basic info is here.

I won’t invest in cigarette companies, both for personal reasons and because I’m skeptical of their ability to continue to sustain good investor returns in an era of steady declines in smoking, at least in the US, but it has certainly worked well for a long time — and I haven’t checked recently, but Altria (in all its previous names) is probably the single best dividend-paying investment of the last 50 years. And be careful about making huge assumptions about how “cash rich” they are, if this is indeed Leong’s stock — they also carry a bucketload of debt and face significant regulatory and tax liabilities that may not be predictable.

“Sponsored Retirement Plan #2
“This plan, sponsored by a leading global consumer products company, has paid uninterrupted dividends since 1895 and increased payments every year for the last 51 years. The company recently announced an increase to its cash dividends of 6%…a boost for its sponsored plans.”

This one is Colgate-Palmolive (CL), though again the data is a bit old, the most recent dividend increase was 3% and the current yield is only a touch over 2%… this one has also been a stupendous long-term performer, though like most “blue chip” type stocks it’s also the kind of thing that everyone is buying right now as they panic about the future and bemoan the fact that even 10-year notes pay sub-2% coupons. CL is a good example of what dividend reinvestment can do, over the past 25 years the stock has gone up by 1,300%… but if you reinvested dividends, the return would have been more like 2,300%. Their direct purchase plan details are here.

“Sponsored Retirement Plan #3
“A global brand in more than 175 countries that generates over $3 billion in cash flows from its operations, this company has a record of 41 straight years of dividend increases. The company joined the elite ranks of the ‘Dividend Aristocrats,’ a few dozen companies that have 25-year track records of annual increases in their payouts.”

This one, assuming that we’re dealing with data that’s a couple years old for each of these teased examples, is Kimberly-Clark (KMB), which you almost certainly know because of their large global brands like Kleenex, Scott tissues, Kotex, Huggies, etc. KMB has faced declining cash flow since 2012, but it was over $3 billion a couple years ago (it’s now about $2.8 billion over the past four quarters), and it is a dividend aristocrat with a long history of increases — the last dividend increase was by about 4.5%, and the current yield is just under 3%. Kimberly-Clark’s direct purchase plan details are here.

So there you have it — yes, investing a set amount each month and letting dividends reinvest for decades can help you compound your savings into a pretty substantial nest egg… but picking the right stocks, being disciplined with making regular investments, and having a long period of time are all important parts of the strategy. Think Leong has picked good stocks to start with? Have others you’d favor? Let us know with a comment below.

P.S. Should you decide that you love Leong’s ideas and you want to try out this subscription from the Lombardi folks, do note that they’re a bit sneakier than most with the pricing — unlike most newsletters, who will “lock you in” at the price you pay originally, this one has two teaser prices… first is a $10 fee to start a six month subscription, then if you don’t cancel within 30 days they charge you another $87.50 for the balance of the six month subscription, and at expiration of that six months they charge you $295 a year. That’s all in the small print on the order form — as always, caveat emptor.

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Steve
Member
Steve
June 13, 2016 12:52 pm

Travis,

A couple of points. Computershare.com has a long list of companies for which you can start a DRIP. Also, Interactive Brokers charges a commission of $1.00 for most share purchases.

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Lee
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Lee
June 13, 2016 2:13 pm
Reply to  Steve

I have a few drip shares with swx. Any comments would be helpful.
Lee

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ginridge
Member
ginridge
June 19, 2016 10:22 am

One thing to be aware of if using Computershare (CS) for a DRIP is their selling fees. Back in 1978 we bought a small number of GTE shares at a reduced price through an ESOP and placed them in the company DRIP with no further investments. These eventually became VZ and it has been a tremendous investment. At some time management of the DRIP was turned over to CS. Later when FTR was spun off from VZ, those shares also became part of a DRIP ran by CS. In 2014 I decided to sell my 850 shares of FTR. CS charged a commission fee ($25 if I remember) plus a fee of $0.12 per share to sell them. I was more than a little unhappy to pay >$125 for a $5K trade. I afterward learned I could transfer my shares without a fee and moved all my 3200+ full VZ shares to my brokerage who is still reinvesting them for free. I then closed my CS account and they kept the partial share which was less than $10.

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dealerdeb1
December 13, 2016 9:07 pm

IF you have Capitol one for $12 a month you get 12 free investments after that it is $6.95

dealerdeb1
December 13, 2016 9:06 pm
Reply to  Steve

Most online brokerages like capitol one has automatic investing and reinvesting the dividends. I have several with mine. I automatically get X number of dollars invested each month into three core stocks. I started with 10 shares each one now has 1403 shares. Compounding dividends is the key

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James R Clark
James R Clark
June 13, 2016 1:07 pm

Travis. thanks for another great analysis. A note about Sharebuilder: it does still exist. I still have my sharebuilder account although it has been bought out by Capital One. It still allows me to purchase fractional shares. I can only afford $400 a month for investments, so I buy $100 of 4 different stocks that I want to accumulate each month. Dividends are automatically reinvested. What I don’t know however is whether Sharebuilder is available for those who did not have an account before Capital One took over.
Clark

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KC BILL
Member
June 13, 2016 8:56 pm

The Sharebuilder account currently is called CAPITOL ONE INVESTEMENTS since the change in ownership a few years ago.

dealerdeb1
December 13, 2016 9:09 pm

ANYONE can open a Capitol One account at any time. For $12 a month you get 12 free or $1 a trade each that covers my account. I am thinking of doing my investing weekly because it won’t cost me any more just dollar cost average more efficiently

gjbormann
gjbormann
June 13, 2016 1:18 pm

There are several ETFs such as NOBL and VIG that you could also use with a broker and set up a regular monthly investment amount, This would be much simpler than doing it individually with a bunch of companies. With Vanguard you would probably escape the brokerage fees, especially with VIG and have much broader exposure to a basket of such stocks.

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eleellee
eleellee
June 13, 2016 3:12 pm

During the mid-1990s, as a young, wet-behind-the-ears, investor, I bought my first share of Bristol-Myers Squibb (BMY), Chevron (CVX, formerly Texaco Oil), General Electric (GE) and a few others using the DRIP strategy. Over the first few years, I consistently added to each position on a quarterly basis, Then after a wife and two kids came along, stopped contributing and just let the dividends and stock splits ride. Now 20+ years later, I still have a few of these stocks and they have done well, and I am slowly cashing them out to help pay my bills in my retirement.

My one regret was not paying attention with my DRIP stock Fannie Mae (FNM). I still have it and the certificate will come in handy when I run out of toilet paper!

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KC BILL
Member
June 13, 2016 3:40 pm

I thought that this was a very accurate informative write up explaining what DRIP/DSPP plans and similar NO FEE dividend purchase brokerage plans (I use Scottrade) are for everyone that has wondered what they are like and never bothered to check out the details. I have used DRIP/DSPP plans for approx 25years (I was 83yo Sunday) to build my portfolio and mainly have switched to the FlexibleReinvestment plan whereby dividends are accumulated and then you may purchase a share of ANY listed stock with the proceeds. The main advantage comes when at some point you are going to sell some of your investments and most DRIP/DSPP plans have selling costs between $15 to $25 whereas if the stocks are with the discount broker you pay only their lower commissions.

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Squirrelling Away
Member
Squirrelling Away
June 13, 2016 8:56 pm

We invested in DRIPs for a few years 1996-99 when we were DINKs (Dual Income, No Kids): $100 a month in each of four blue chip stocks (and one stinker regional bank). Travis, I saw a suggestion recently that made a lot of sense for closing out these positions; and I’d like your thoughts on it. The author said that since there is no tax on capital gains in the 15% bracket, I can sell the shares, wait 30 days to avoid the wash sale rule, and then re-buy them in a brokerage account in order to basis-up the stock. (Ideally, I should also turn off dividend reinvestment a year ahead, to avoid taxable short-term gains.) This makes sense to me. Our best performer, McDonalds, has grown from a $3600 investment, plus reinvested dividends, to over $20,000 now.

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Ed the Merlin
Member
Ed the Merlin
June 13, 2016 11:11 pm

I did DRIPS years ago and once I became more aware cashed them all in and did it on my own. Sometimes the fees affect your returns. By doing it all myself I can accumulate cash from dividends and then make larger buys that offset the commissions.
This way I also take the dividends and instead of reinvesting in the same stock invest it where I see better returns. Right now I have ten nice dividend paying stocks. I currently am up to $55k a year and that number grows each month because I have several monthly paying stocks…so it can be done. My latest strategy is taking dividends from one account and using them to feed ROTH IRA dividend paying stocks to get more tax free benefits. Like Warren Buffett does…I buy the stock for its dividends and forget appreciation. If the stocks go up…that gravy. My ultimate goal is to have all dividend paying stocks.

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Lin
Guest
Lin
January 14, 2017 10:10 pm
Reply to  Ed the Merlin

I like the way you put it. I don’t know what I’m doing with this but I know I’ve got to start somewhere. At 53 and a small 401 with work, where do I start? A little late starting but life is getting better so its never to late. Any pointers or advice I would appreciate it. I guess what not to do. At $16.00 and I work hard for it, I don’t want to screw this up by doing the wrong thing.
Thanks in advance.

SoGiAm
January 15, 2017 10:06 am
Reply to  Lin
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Karen
Guest
Karen
March 13, 2017 3:15 am
Reply to  Lin

Vanguard has lowest fees usually,
Fidelity has best research and informative website.
They both let you buy no-load mutual funds. Expense ratio is your cost so keep it low. Index funds have the lowest ratios.

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cyberguy
Irregular
June 14, 2016 10:21 am

Want some “free” place to compile “drip” trades? Checkout LOYAL3. They don’t have every stock but for investing in shares monthly almost automatically, it doesn’t cost anything in trading fees — and you don’t have to belong to a special group.

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Thomas
Thomas
June 14, 2016 9:45 pm

Capital One will reinvest all dividends at no charge. Any stock buys other then dividends cost 6.95.

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debuskc
debuskc
June 17, 2016 9:48 am

Wells Fargo brokerage allows one if you have a PMA account to reinvest dividends on stack in fractions with no brokerage fees.

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1clue2go
1clue2go
November 18, 2016 12:08 pm

I do not think DRIP is a good idea and here is why. First of all you pay a higher price for the stock you buy on a DRIP partially because the brokers (regardless of who) buy a huge number of stocks at the same time. They do not care what they pay so it is an automatic market price, they do not use limit. The second reason is why not have cash and diversify or buy whatever you like at market dips instead.

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Hank Fulton
November 22, 2018 1:43 pm

I started out with DRIPs over 20 years ago. I still have several but most are less than 100 shares. I then stopped DRIPS when I discovered LEAPS. I love leaps because I control my investments like DRIPs, can invest any amounts, sometimes 5.00 or less and can sell covered calls for every one contract which equals 100 shares of stocks, so in effect I create my own dividends, weekly or monthly. I can also exercise my gains and convert to stock until the leap expires. My biggest success has been aapl. Through many years and leap conversions, I now have 1,000 shares. I sell covered calls on my stock and use the premium to buy more leaps. I try to not collect big premiums so I protect myself from problems. Example: 1-2% premium is usually very safe and much greater than a DRIP dividend. No DRIP can match this system. You can create income quicker than DRIPS. Yes, it has risk, what doesn’t. This works best if you plan to accumulate stocks you would like to own for life.
My biggest mistakes have been selling stocks. The secret to wealth is never sell.
Yes, you have to pay option commissions. I use TDameritrade.
Hope this helps.

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