In fact, one of the ways the rich get richer is that they just purchase a few high paying, stable, dividend paying stocks. Then take those cash dividends that you receive quarterly, and invest them into more speculative stocks. Once you make a bit of mad money on your speculative stocks, cash out some, or all of them, and re-invest into your high paying dividend stocks or other safer investments.

Alan Brochstein of AnalystForHire has been preaching that this is not the time to "be reaching for yield." He wrote articles in November, July and

Baby Boomers are retiring in mass in the next 20 years, and that means they will be shifting assets to passive income. Consequently, it is a good time to start investing in solid dividend stocks, because the boomers will likely invest heavily in them and push yields down over time (but increase the stock prices).