POWER UP YOUR DIVIDENDS WITH A 3 STOCK UTILITY PORTFOLIO

Last month I posted about utilities and the possibility of their benefiting from low interest rates for the next year or so.  Then it occurred to me that if you had only enough money to invest in a few stocks, you could do a lot worse than investing in a few good utility companies.

For instance, if you're goal were to receive monthly dividend payments, by purchasing shares in 3 different utilities paying dividends in different quarters, you could create just such a portfolio. 

As an example:

1.  MDU Resources Group (MDU) 3.1% dividend yield, pays dividends in January, April, July and October.

2.  NSTAR (NST)  3.7% dividend yield, pays dividends in February, May, August and November.

3.  Wisconsin Energy (WEC)  3.3% dividend yield, pays dividends in March, June, September and December.

All the above stocks have 5 year estimated dividend growth rates of 5 to 7%, meaning that dividend payouts should increase nicely over the next few years.  This is just an example, you'd want to do your own research and choose your own stocks, but the idea would work with any three stocks paying in different quarters.