Imagine $2.2 BILLION in Dividends for the Year!

The Australian iron ore mining giant Fortescue (FMG) just recently published their full year results and announced a dividend payment of A$0.89 cents per share, bringing the total dividends paid for the year to A$1.97 cent per share. Andrew Forrest and his now ex-wife Nicola control about 36.7 percent of the Fortescue company.

Which means that they’ll be taking home roughly $2.2 billion dollars in dividends for the year. That is Billion with a B. Imagine how that would change your life?

Let’s say that Andrew Forrest now only receives half of that because of his recent divorce. That brings it down to $1.1 billion for the year. Even if we took off another 30 percent for possible debt and taxes he would still take home $770,000,000. That’s more than $64,000,000 every month or about 15 million dollars in dividends every week of the year!

I’m also an investor in Fortescue and guess how much I’ll be taking home for the year? I currently own 151 shares of FMG and my total dividends for the year will be A$297.47. That’s two Hundred with an H! Yes, almost $25 per month or $5 per week.

I mention this story as it got me thinking about perspective and the paths that we all choose. Here I am in my late forties and I’m counting my dividends in the hundreds or sometimes thousands while there’s people out there with millions or even billions worth of dividends coming in each year.

And it’s all because of the choices we make in life. Andrew Forrest made very different choices to me and he’s rewarded very differently. Sure, he may have grew up in the right place at the right time, he may have had the right influences, and he may have been very lucky at times but at the end of the day, he is where he is because of the choices that he made throughout his life.

I discovered dividend investing very late in life, I’ve never been interested in money, business was never of much interest, and I never could do the 9to5 thing properly but I have travelled and have always pursued my love of painting, so I can’t complain too much. I really do wish that I owned 151,000 FMG shares instead of the 151 shares that sit in my portfolio right now though. I could be thinking about how to spend my $297,470 worth of dividends from Fortescue.

Ps.. the old (younger) me would have happily spent all of those $297,470 dividends and more but the new (older) me would be thinking about where to reinvest at least half of those dividends!

I think it was Benjamin Franklin who once said “Life’s tragedy is that we get old too soon and wise too late.”