If you are thinking about being a dividend investor you want to take a longer view and in many cases it is hard. If you examine the Fortune 500 list and go back 10 years or 20 years you will see many companies do not stay in the list. The fortunes of companies go up and down, sometimes based on the underlying commodity or reason the company exists. If you bought them and kept them, for some you would lose money, for others the combined dividend payments and capital gains would make your portfolio very healthy. Most investors start in one area of the economy and hopefully branch out, but staying close to where you earn your money, your interests, and what you spend money on typically means we do not invest in all sectors of the economy. If you want to do that a low-cost ETF is a very good place to begin. In the long term, change tends to be a constant and to be a long-term investor means you like the changes that are coming.

A change that is coming, is the Green Economy and one book among many is The Green Collar Economy by Van Jones, published by HarperOne, New York 2008. The book is old, but many of the ideas being circulated are now coming into the economy.

If you read, the US sits atop the 2nd largest fund of geothermal resources in the world. The American Midwest is the Saudi Arabian of wind: North Dakota, Kansas and Texas could produce enough harnessable wind to meet all the nation’s electricity demand. If solar was on 19% of the most barren land in the Southwest, it could supply as all the nation’s electricity needs without any rooftop installation.

Those are theorical numbers, but there is a movement to capture some of the wind and sun’s energy. For there are large barriers, the oil and gas industry and coal receive subsidies and has infrastructure to make the change harder. The national grid cannot accommodate new kinds of power or it would need to be upgraded. There are numerous local rules that impede access to new markets and the state and federal government would need to develop energy efficiency standards that would incentivize the private sector to move towards non fossil fuels faster.

Recently heard a speech in Congress that was trying to discourage incentives in the green industry without acknowledging the oil and gas industry receives subsidies or there is still a long way to go.

In the book, there is the reality as energy prices increase, the alternative is to increase energy efficiency in existing homes and buildings. If that is done, jobs are created to put in the energy efficient installation, windows, and new ways to heat and cool the homes. In reality, most home owners do not have access to change the home and need some form of government assistance.

There are ideas that all new processes should consider what happens to the product when it needs to be fixed or changed or used. Should we pay extra to throw in the garbage, or should the manufacturer build the action in the price as an added cost of business?

Linking to dividend paying stocks, to invest in these stocks is to invest in the long term and think of the long-term future which will be better for you and the world. It is important to ensure that you are thinking about the long term and move your assets to those companies that benefit from changes in the economy. By being positive about the future, you will be able to embrace what is new and has lasting legs of income stream to invest in. One of the most important aspects of being a dividend paying investor is being positive about the future, are you?

There are more questions than answers, till the next time – to raising questions.