Get Rich with Dividends: A Proven System for Earning Double-Digit Returns

Dividend Aristocrats

The concept of a Dividend Aristocrat is simple. A Dividend Aristocrat is a company that is a member of the S&P 500 index and has raised its dividend every year for at least 25 years.

These are primarily blue chip companies with long histories of growing earnings and dividends.

If your investing goals are to impress your friends at cocktail parties with your knowledge of brand-new technology and to brag about the millions of dollars you will make off of the companies behind those technologies—well, then, Dividend Aristocrats aren’t for you.

Most people don’t find a company like Genuine Parts (NYSE: GPC), which makes auto replacement parts, to be terribly exciting. I’m not even sure Genuine Parts’ CEO is all that excited about replacement parts.

But the company makes a ton of money—$565 million in 2011—and it has increased its dividend every year since 1956. That is pretty exciting.

Think about that for a minute: Every year. Since 1956.

Through the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Kennedy assassinations, Vietnam, Watergate, gas lines, the Cold War, the rise of Japan, the rise of China, 9/11, the dot-com collapse, the housing bust, and the Great Recession—through all of these difficult, and in some cases tragic, events, when pundits were saying the sky was falling, at times when the economy really did stink, Genuine Parts went about its business, making and selling auto parts and returning more money to shareholders than it did the year before.

The last time Genuine ...