The 20 Monthly Dividend Stocks I'm Building Around

The whole point of DivToCrypto is that dividends pay for my crypto buys. That only works if I actually own things that pay dividends, and as of October 31, 2026, I don't own any yet. This post is the list I'm building toward: 20 monthly dividend stocks and ETFs, split into a Core 10 and 10 Boosters, plus the five I'm starting with.

To be clear up front: this is my plan, not a recommendation. Several of these are risky in ways that a big yield can hide.

Why monthly dividend payers

I want monthly payers for three plain reasons:

• They line up with how I want to buy crypto. A payment every month means a small crypto buy every month, instead of a few bigger ones a year.
• Feedback is fast. On a small account, I want to see the engine working, even if a single payment is tiny.
• They're easy to track. One payment per holding per month makes the dividend log on the dashboard simple and easy to audit.

I'm also a buy-and-hold investor here, not a dividend capture trader. I'm not trying to jump in before the ex-dividend date and out right after. I want to own these through good and bad markets and let the payments add up.

The Core 10

The Core is meant to be the foundation: a mix of real estate, a business development company, dividend-focused stock ETFs, and bond funds.

Why this mix? REITs and BDCs are built to pass most of their income through to shareholders, so they tend to pay meaningful dividends. Funds like JEPI and DIVO add income from selling options. SPHD and DGRW give me broad stock exposure with a dividend focus. BND and VCIT are the ballast: bonds usually don't move like stocks or crypto, and that's the point.

None of these is risk-free. REITs and bond funds can drop when interest rates rise. A BDC's payout depends on its borrowers paying it back. Option-income funds give up some upside when markets rally hard.

The 10 Boosters

The Boosters are higher-income, higher-risk names. The way I think about them, they come after the Core is in place, and each one stays smaller than a Core position.

The pattern in that last column is the lesson. A higher yield usually comes with a specific risk attached. A booster is fine as a small kicker. It's not something I want carrying the whole plan.

The starter five

I'm not buying 20 positions on day one. The plan is to start with five, about $20 each:

1. O, net-lease real estate with a long monthly dividend history.
2. MAIN, a BDC for income from lending to private businesses.
3. JEPI, large U.S. stocks plus option income.
4. PECO, grocery-anchored shopping centers.
5. BND, broad U.S. bonds as a stabilizer.

That's five different sources of income: net-lease real estate, private credit, option premiums, grocery-anchored retail, and bonds. On $20 each, the monthly payments will be small, possibly well under a dollar per position at first. That's fine. The point of starting small is to get the system running: buy, hold, collect, log, and move the dividend into crypto.

I'm deliberately not quoting yields in this post. They change every day with the share price, and a number frozen in a blog post goes stale fast. If you're looking at any of these, check the current yield and the dividend history yourself before buying.

How I'll judge whether this is working

• Payments show up every month. The dashboard's dividend table should fill in over time.
• Dividends actually go into crypto. The "Dividends to crypto" stat on the dashboard should track close to dividends received.
• No dividend cuts I ignore. If a holding cuts its payout, I'll write about it and decide whether it still belongs.
• Bigger positions go to the Core, not to whatever has the flashiest yield that month.

Takeaways if you're building a monthly dividend portfolio

• Know where the income comes from. Rent, loan interest, option premiums and bond coupons all behave differently when markets get rough.
• Treat a very high yield as a question, not an answer. Find out why it's high.
• Diversify the type of income, not just the ticker count. Five REITs is still one bet.
• Start small and keep a log. You learn more from your first few months of real payments than from any screener.

I'll report each buy and each dividend in the weekly recaps on this blog, with the same rule as always: real numbers only, good or bad.