Quick Read – Realty Income (O) yields 5.11% with 670 consecutive monthly dividends, while Verizon (VZ) anchors the group at a 6.46% yield. – All five stocks raised dividends through two recessions with cash flow covering each payout, making them viable alternatives to Social…
curity’s 2.8% COLA. – Act now: the analyst who called NVIDIA in 2010 just named his top 10 AI stocks — and Johnson & Johnson didn’t make the cut. Grab the names FREE today
The 2026 Social Security COLA came in at just 2.8%, which is barely keeping pace with a grocery bill, let alone replacing a paycheck. With the 10-year Treasury yielding 4.55% and the national average 12-month CD paying just 1.65%, retirees hunting real income are increasingly turning to a small group of blue-chip dividend payers with multi-decade track records of writing checks through every recession, rate cycle, and bear market. The five names below have paid and raised dividends long enough to earn the “sleep-at-night” label, and each one lands the income first, growth second.
Realty Income (O) Realty Income (NYSE:O) is the closest thing in equities to a payroll direct deposit. The REIT pays monthly at a current rate of $0.271 per share, with an annualized forward dividend of $3.252. Against the Alpha Vantage-reported dividend yield of 5.11%, that puts O comfortably above Treasuries as an income source.