When the day arrives and you want to start to spend some of your hard earned, you could buy an annuity. The gamble is there is no way of knowing what the income will be.
Canada Life figures show the 65-year-old with a £100,000 pension pot could buy an annuity linked to the retail price index (RPI) that would generate a starting annual income of £3,896. That’s up from £2,195 in the New Year following a 77% spike in rates this year. Oct 22
You have to hand over all of your hard earned, so not an option for the SNOWBALL.
Option 2.
Use the 4% rule.For further information use the search facility above.
The SNOWBALL has a comparative share VWRP for passive investment where the value is £158,788, not too shabby.
Option 3.
Your Snowball.
The current fcast income for the SNOWBALL IS between 10 and 11%.
Lets say income of 10% p.a.
Using the comparison share the income would be £6351 p.a.
If we plan ahead
Let’ say income of 18% p.a.
The comparative share VWRP, would have to have a value of £450 k.
After periods of out performance, comes under performance, not if but when.
An option could be to have part of your Snowball in a passive investment as if you can choose the time when to sell, you may not make a huge profit but you shouldn’t lose any of your hard earned, maybe drip feed some of your dividends after the price has fell. Not advice, as you alone are responsible for your Snowball.
A Retired Engineer’s “Buy ‘Em All” Strategy Is Crushing It
Brett Owens, Chief Investment Strategist Updated: February 25, 2026
Oh, the joys of home ownership. We found a moldy corner last week. And not a little spot, either.
The house is still standing. Still appreciating in value. And still ours. We dealt with the setback. Which is exactly what one of our Contrarian Income Report subscribers has been doing with his portfolio for 138 straight weeks.
Roy M. from New Jersey wrote in recently with a report that made my whole week. Roy has an IRA that is exclusivelyCIR. Every single position, equally weighted. No picking favorites, no second-guessing your editor, no overthinking it. His reasoning?
“I like CIR but I don’t have the expertise to pick and choose from an already recommended list. Why would I pay for a site in which I still have to decide which ones are best? Why don’t I just buy ’em all equally?”
Love this!
Roy is a retired engineer, and engineers solve problems with systems rather than gut feelings. His system is beautifully “boring” (a compliment in our world). He keeps a rolling 10% cash position and lets dividends flow to cash rather than reinvesting them. When we add a new pick, he buys it. When I sell something, he sells it.
He even has a daily 30-second routine: pull up the CIR portfolio, count the 25 positions, flip to closed positions, and make sure the last one removed is still the last one removed. And when a new issue drops? He hits CTRL-F, types “action,” and executes whatever comes up. (Roy describes himself as a “lazy reader with a touch of dyslexia, LOL.” I’d call him the most efficient investor we’ve got!)
The results speak for themselves. Roy started with $50,172 in June 2023. His portfolio now sits at $65,163. That’s roughly 11% annualized returns with no new money added and no withdrawals taken. Not bad for a “lazy” strategy!
But here’s what I really love. Roy has tracked every single drawdown (temporary decline) over those 138 weeks and compared it to the S&P 500. There have been 8 drawdowns total, and the data tells our story better than I ever could:
On average, when the S&P dipped about 6%, Roy’s CIR portfolio only fell about 4%.
In one nasty stretch, the S&P cratered 18% while Roy’s portfolio dipped just 6%!
Only once did CIR drop more than the broader market, and it was by barely a percentage point. This is excellent because the shallower the drawdowns, the more our portfolio compounds higher.
Roy’s 11% CIR Portfolio
Remember, Roy is a retiree on a fixed income. He doesn’t want drama. He wants to sleep at night and know his money is working. That’s exactly what he’s getting!
This is the whole idea behind what we call the “No Withdrawal” approach to retirement. We build a portfolio that throws off enough cash in dividends so that we never have to sell a single share.
Roy’s 25 CIR positions currently yield 8.3% on average. On a million-dollar portfolio, that’s $83,000 per year in dividend cash flowing straight to your account, paid monthly and quarterly. On a $500K stake? A cool $41,500 per year. Without touching principal!
Plus, Roy’s principal isn’t just intact. It’s actually up. He’s collecting the income and the appreciation—that’s the beauty of a dividend-heavy portfolio. The cash keeps coming whether the market is up, down, or sideways.
And when those drawdowns come (they’re normal, not unusual), CIR members do way better than vanilla investors riding the S&P rollercoaster. We are spared the 18% plunge. We simply ride a 6% dip while our dividends keep depositing!
It’s like my house. Mold showed up (“drawdown”), we didn’t sell the entire place (panic and lose money). I know it sounds silly—who sells their house over a moldy corner?—but that’s exactly what many “investors” do when the market dips 6%!
Roy? He plays it right. Eight drawdowns, eight recoveries, and 11% yearly gains. Keep on truckin’ indeed, Roy!
Roy’s results aren’t magic. They’re the product of a diversified, high-yield portfolio built to pay you in cash, not one that depends on stock prices going up, prayers being answered, and principal drained.
I call it the “No Withdrawal” Portfolio. It’s designed to generate 8%+ yields so you can live on dividends alone, without ever touching your precious shares. Need a miracle to retire? Nah. A “No Withdrawal” Portfolio will do just fine!
The Robots Are Coming for Insurance (and Paying Us 8.3% Dividends, Too)
Brett Owens, Chief Investment Strategist Updated: February 24, 2026
There’s a group of stocks out there that most people think yield just 2%—or less.
But they’re way off. In reality, these “elite” payers yield 2X, 3X—and in the case of a stock we’ll talk about below, even nearly 4X that. I’m talking about a tidy 8.3% shareholder yield (remember that phrase) here.
This one has another advantage we love in a market like today’s, too: Its management team “buys the dips” in the share price for us. We don’t have to do anything at all!
Stocks like this are perfect for times like these, with the economy still ticking along nicely.
At the same time, we’re likely to see continued market choppiness as AI takes more industries to the woodshed.
But the major American insurance stock we’re going to dive into next doesn’t care. It’s already making money from AI. And as the tech boosts this company’s earnings and cash flows, I expect its 8.3% shareholder yield to climb higher still.
Aflac: A Dividend Stock at the Leading Edge of AI Disruption
We’ve discussed AI in the insurance industry before. The sector is ripe for AI disruption, as many of the things insurance companies do are good candidates for automation.
That’s not news to the management team at Aflac (AFL), which has automated 54% of its “wellness” claims—dental visits, eye care and the like. That’s a perfect job for AI because these customers don’t have to provide a raft of documents like, say, those filing disability or critical illness claims do.
The upshot for Aflac, a holding in the portfolio of my Hidden Yields service, is that it can reassign humans to more complex tasks, cut costs (including, yes, spending on new hires) and keep customers happy by processing claims faster.
What’s more, insurance is not likely to be disrupted the way, say, software stocks have been. After all, while you can use AI to “vibecode” your own app, you can’t use it to whip up your own insurance policy!
Which brings me to that 8.3% shareholder yield.
Shareholder Yield Beats Dividend Yield in Every Way
A dividend stock like Aflac has three ways to pay us:
Its current payout: This is the dividend we get immediately after we buy.
Share buybacks, which cut the number of shares outstanding, juicing earnings per share and other per-share metrics.
Buybacks get a bad rap, but they shouldn’t, because when they’re done right (i.e., when the stock is cheap), they can juice our returns. This is another problem with the current yield—it tells us nothing about this buyback effect.
This is where shareholder yield, which includes buybacks and dividends, shines.
An 8.3% Shareholder Yield Is Aflac’s Best-Kept Secret
Over the last decade, Aflac has nearly tripled its dividend. That soaring payout has acted like a magnet, yanking the share price up as it’s soared:
Aflac’s “Dividend Magnet” Goes to Full Power
Because of that payout growth, investors who bought Aflac a decade ago are actually yielding 8.1% on their original buy now.
And that’s just the start of the company’s shareholder-return story.
Let’s move on to buybacks: Over the last decade, Aflac has taken 38% of its shares off the market, making all of the company’s per-share metrics (most importantly earnings per share) look better. And earnings per share drive share prices over time.
In addition, those buybacks fuel dividend growth, as they leave Aflac with fewer stocks in which it has to pay out. It’s no coincidence that Aflac’s dividend growth (in purple below) has taken off as its share count (in orange) has dropped:
Buybacks Ignite Aflac’s Share Price
Let’s zoom in on the last year for a moment. In the chart below, you can clearly see that management has tempered its buybacks when the share price has strengthened (as in the summer of 2025), then accelerated them on dips.
Management Buys the Dip for Us
That’s the kind of smart buyback management we love—and it’s a lot different from what many companies do: robotically buy back the same amount of stock whether it’s cheap or dear.
Which brings me back to shareholder yield, which combines all three shareholder rewards: current dividend, payout growth and buybacks. To calculate it, take the amount spent on buybacks and dividends in the last 12 months, deduct share issuances then divide that into the company’s market cap.
Aflac makes this easy for us: In its fourth-quarter earnings presentation, it broke this all down nicely:
Source: Aflac fourth quarter 2025 update
Here we see that in 2025, Aflac spent about $4.8 billion on dividends and buybacks, with a lean toward buybacks. (Which is okay by us, given the stock’s strong performance.)
With a $58-billion market cap (or the value of all outstanding shares) as of the end of 2025, we can say that Aflac has an 8.3% shareholder yield—again just a bit under four times the current dividend yield 2.2%.
Let me close with another fast mention of AI, because the tech ties back in here: As AI cuts Aflac’s costs and helps it tap new growth areas, I expect the company’s shareholder-friendly management team to share more of that wealth with us—and boost the firm’s shareholder yield as they do.
Start With Aflac—Then Build a Whole Portfolio of Big Shareholder Yields
Shareholder yield isn’t just another indicator to look at when picking dividend stocks. As we just saw with Aflac, it’s a whole new way of dividend investing.
Once you start applying it to other dividend stocks, you’ll be spotting big yields all over the place—and in plenty of stocks regular investors never bother to look at.
This strategy starts with a strong Dividend Magnet, like the one we saw with Aflac. As payouts rise, stock prices follow. Add in a smartly run buyback program and voila—you’ve got yourself a strong, and growing, shareholder yield.
There is a stock market saying Penny expensive, pound cheap as lots of investors would not buy a penny share because of the risk but would consider buying if the price rose.
Similarly with Renewables lots of investors will not take the risk of buying because of the high yields but IF/WHEN the price rises and the yield falls they may be enticed back into buying.
Capitulation is the moment in which investors/traders lose hope in their long position and liquidate at a loss.
When investors/traders capitulate, they sell for fear of a continual decline in the stock price.
The end of a capitulation can present a buying opportunity due to the opinion that everyone who wanted to sell has already done so.
If you read any BB’s, you would have seen lots of investors posting they have sold out, capitulation.
The rules for the SNOWBALL for any new readers, there are only 3.
RULE 1
RULE 2
RULE 3
Here’s the plan.
The 2026 fcast is 10k. The SNOWBALL is ahead of fcast so it’s possible it could earn income for year 7/8 subject to Mr. Market but it’s too early in the year to change the fcast.
