Generating An Income Greater Than You Had When You Where Working

 What I learned about the real power of money I learned late in life. I was 55 and this was 2016. I was working for Coca-Cola Enterprises (stock ticker CCE). An independent, authorize bottler and distributor, for the Coca-Cola Company (stock ticker KO). It was a huge company in North America and Europe. 

It was announced that KO was buying all of the North American facilities back from CCE. And that everyone who had CCE stock in their 401k's would get 2 shares of KO since KO was doing a stock split and CCE North America was going away. It was also announced going forward in the new 401k the company match would be in KO stock, as opposed to how it use to be. That is, the match was distributed into whatever fund(s) you happened to be in. By doing this Coke made thousands of people instant shareholders.

At the time I had no idea why I'd even want to own KO stock in my 401k. So, I went on Yahoo and did some searches. Things like "is KO stock a good buy" and "why would I want to own KO stock" and "should I sell my KO stock?".

What I found was how the rich stay rich. I found out Warren Buffet owned 2 millions shares of Coke stock. I've asked over a dozen people at work why and just like me back then, none of them know. KO pays a dividend every quarter. This year it's 42 cents. Warrens 2 million shares will pay him $3,360,000 in 2021. And I learned he's owned it since the seventies, earning over 100 million in dividends. I learned the Coca-Cola Company is a Dividend Aristocrat. A company that has raised their dividend every year for over 50 years.

I also learned some say the eighth wonder of the world is compounding interest. A single share of KO cost $40 at the IPO on September 5, 1919. A century (and change) later, a $100 investment in Coca-Cola would be worth at least $1.1 million today. If you reinvested your dividend checks along the way, the return would have doubled again. Talk about a rolling snowball getting bigger and bigger...

A huge bell went off in my head. Everyone, sooner or later, will think about retiring and wonder how they are going to pay the bills. Social security is a big help but it isn't enough to keep you in your current lifestyle. I learned how to purchase retirement income using a stock and bond portfolio of quality, high dividend equities.

I worked for the Coca-Cola company for three years until they sold us to Arca. In those three years I managed to accumulate 1,025 shares of KO in my 401k at a cost bases of $42 each. 

CLICK IMAGE TO ENLARGE

This graph is a screen capture from Fidelity, It is a shot of Life Of Data for our four accounts there. You can see accounts were first opened at the end of 2015 with two 401k rollovers. Mine was from a seventeen year run at ADT Security and Cindy's was about a twenty year run at EDS/HP and they totaled about 72k.

The light blue line is our deposits, uninvested, and the dark blue is invested balances.

The next big event was mid 2016 and that was my CCE pension rollover, about 32k.

The next big event was Covid  in March 2020 were we had a 82k loss. The last big event was the rollover of 1,025 shares of KO from the 401k. I've sold all shares doubling our dividends.