It’s always an interesting experiment to ask people how much money (in today’s dollars) they think they will need to retire comfortably. I’ve found that a lot of folks like to throw out the nice, round figure of $1 million. It’s a reasonable guess, but usually it’s just that: a guess. I wanted to dig deeper and figure out just what it takes to retire comfortably at age 65.

When looking to build a long-term portfolio of stocks that pay high dividends, investors usually come up with a mix of stocks that either have high dividend yields or high dividend growth rates. It is difficult to find good companies that have both. This means that there is often a choice to be made. All else equal, should one invest in the company that has that enticing high dividend yield, but a low dividend growth rate, or does one exude patience and invest in the company with a relatively low yield, but a high dividend growth rate? To help answer this question I looked at two companies that offer these different alternatives: AT&T (T) and Automatic Data Processing, Inc. (ADP)

The power of growing dividends over time continues to be underestimated by many investors. Many are concerned with another decade of slow growth and low to negative equity returns. However, one way to prepare for another decade of slow economic growth is to invest in high dividend yield stocks that have shown they can weather tough economic times and even increase their dividends while it happens.

There is a lot of talk out there about how many of us won’t be able to retire until age 70 or 75. It’s a real downer, so I thought I would take this conversation in a different direction: What do you need in order to retire before age 60?

It is a question on the minds of so many people that are planning for retirement: Will I run out of money? We can take into account all of the income a person expects in retirement as well as their assets and spending needs and give a good idea of how long their funds will last. However, this is a static view of things, and as we all know, investment returns and inflation have been anything but static.