Dividend investing is changing. Over the past decade, many dividend-paying companies have slowly trended away from paying traditional dividends. Don't get me wrong, many long-time dividend payers will keep paying and growing their dividends into the future. But certain ones are starting to reward shareholders in two other, more tax-friendly ways. Fortunately for investors, these two hidden, "extra payments" could be much more valuable than traditional dividends alone.

It's the single best way I know to get market-beating returns from your dividend stocks. It's called Total Yield investing. I call it that because it looks at all the ways a company rewards shareholders. This not only includes dividends, but also accounts for two other "extra payment" metrics: stock buybacks and debt paydown. You're familiar with how dividends work. If you invest $100 into a stock with a 10% dividend yield, you can expect to receive $10 in dividends (or 10%) a year from that investment. The other two "yields" are a bit more complex. The data to calculate these yields isn't posted blatantly like a dividend yield is on a stock ticker page. Instead, we must find this data deep with a company's financials.

Source: NASDAQ

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