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3 Stocks That Cut You a Check Each Month

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Collecting reliable dividends is great, particularly if you're going to use that income to pay your recurring bills.

The quarterly payout schedule that most dividend-paying companies have adopted, however, isn't exactly ideal for this purpose. Utility bills, mortgage payments, and insurance premiums are just some of the living expenses that are incurred and paid on a monthly basis.

The thing is, there are some dividend stocks that do dish out their distributions every month. They're not exactly high-profile organizations, but lots of them boast strong payout histories. Here's a closer look at three of them.

None of these are traditionally structured companies: Instead, they're real estate investment trusts (REITs). That just means they own portfolios of rental real estate, and -- vitally for income-focused investors -- they're obligated to pass along at least 90% of their taxable income to shareholders via dividends every year. As it turns out, the REIT business model is well suited to supporting consistent monthly dividend payments.

Realty Income

You may not be familiar with Realty Income (NYSE: O), but you've almost certainly set foot on at least one of its properties. This REIT owns on the order of 15,600 buildings in the U.S. and abroad that it rents to retailers and other consumer-facing companies. 7-Eleven, Dollar General, FedEx, and Walmart are among its biggest tenants.

Investing in anything connected to the brick-and-mortar retail space may feel scary these days. We're in the midst of a retail apocalypse, after all. As industry research outfit Coresight reported, 7,325 storefronts were shuttered last year in the U.S. alone. Blame the continued growth of e-commerce, mostly.

There's an important footnote to add to this data nugget though. That is, 5,970 stores were either opened or reopened in 2024. So while there's no denying that in-person retail is on the defensive, conditions are clearly not all bad. The industrywide dynamic could be thought of as a thinning of the herd rather than an apocalypse. The chains left standing are and will be the top names -- and those also include key tenants of Realty Income.

The REIT's occupancy rate remains steady at 98.7%, and never dipped below 97.9% even during the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic when huge numbers of retailers temporarily shuttered their stores. In a further testament to Realty Income's consistency, not only has it paid dividends in each of the past 656 months, but it has raised its payout in each of the past 110 quarters at an inflation-beating annualized pace of 4.3%.