How To Transform Your Dividend Portfolio Into An ETF Portfolio

3A%2F%2Fwww.gravatar.com%2Favatar%2Fad516503a11cd5ca435acc9bb6523536&r=G /% By: IS

Date posted: 02.24.2012 (5:00 am) | Write a Comment (7 Comments)

This is a guest post from BuildYourETFPortfolio.com . a website dedicated to helping investors manage their own retirement and other portfolios by buying and holding ETFs….

Dividend investing is not only a great way to accumulate money but its also something that is fun to do, at least it is for me. I and many others that I know have started building a dividend portfolio and I personally feel like this could go on for a very long time. Why? Because even when I retire, I still expect to be more than capable of spending a few hours every month to look over my portfolio, reinvest any new amounts but also make any necessary changes to my existing positions.

I Wont Go On Forever Though

As much as Id like to pretend like I will be dividend investing, playing golf and running half-marathons for the next 50 years, chances are that it will not happen. Someday, I will unfortunately start to lose some mental and physical capability, I might even start to lose interest. Hopefully that wont be the case but life can change so quickly that I think its much more prudent to be prepared.

Have An Alternative Plan

If tomorrow morning, you became unable or unwilling to manage your dividend portfolio, what would happen to it? If you picked some great stocks with an approach focused on dividend growth, chances are that youd be fine and collecting nice dividends every month. After some time though, you might start having some dogs in your portfolio. Those would likely increase over time.

I personally think that building an ETF portfolio is a great alternative for when that time arrives. Why?

-An ETF portfolio is much easier to manage (could spend at most 1 hour per month)

-Fees remain very reasonable

-You remain in control of your finances

-Etc (for a full list of ETF portfolio benefits, visit BuildYourETFPortfolio)

The point is that you can easily build an ETF portfolio that will have great diversification with only 5-10 ETFs. Those will likely have hundreds of different holdings which will give you solid diversification. We did build quite a few smaple ETF portfolios but once that you might be very interested in would be an income focused ETF portfolio that could include:

-Dividend focused ETFs

-Fixed income ETFs

-REIT ETFs

Depending on where you live (Canada, US or elsewhere), the composition of your portfolio might change slightly but the main point is that you could simply try to stay as close as possible to your target weights by doing a handful of trades every year and would be achieving a return comparable to what you currently have with a dividend portfolio.

Downsides

Of course, I will not stand here and pretend that there are only benefits. If there were, what would be the point of even building a dividend portfolio? The two main ones in my opinion are:

- Costs: Even if ETFs are much cheaper than other managed alternatives, they still set you back 0.40% or so every year, which compounds and does become significant over time. Its an incredible bargain when compared with mutual funds for example but still adds up if you compare to a dividend portfolio that does not incur such fees (there are more trading costs though).

- Less Control. While there are many specialized ETFs, nothing beats the power of buying exactly the stocks that you believe in, and avoiding those that you dont. Obviously, that is not something you can do with ETFs and often you might not even know what exactly the ETF holds. I would still argue that in the end, you will be able to find an ETF and/or combo of ETFs that will make the portfolio representative of what youre looking for.

Transition

I think one important part about moving from a dividend portfolio to an ETF portfolio is to ideally go through a transition period. You can subscribe to the BuildYourETFPortfolio mailing list to get a step-by-step series of emails that explains how to actually get it done. Its easier to take time to get familiar with the asset classes, ETFs, sample ETF portfolios, etc. To start off, I would simply start by reinvesting any income and new contributions into ETFs and as time goes by and you feel more comfortable, you can transition over more of those assets over. Having a combination of ETFs and dividend holdings can make a very strong long term portfolio so any investor can start off there.

In the End

I think its important for all dividend investors to stat considering adding ETFs to their holdings sooner than later as they can both add a lot of benefits and become a much easier portfolio to manage, especially as we become older. What are your thoughts on this?

Do you hold any ETFs?

Do you have any plans regarding the longer term direction of your dividend portfolio? I would love to hear from you.