Simply Safe Dividends Review - Is This Service Trustworthy? (2024)

About Simply Safe Dividends

Simply Safe Dividends is an investment research service built for responsible income investing. The platform helps investors find stocks that deliver strong and reliable dividends and avoid stocks that are at risk of cutting their dividends.

In our Simply Safe Dividends review, we’ll take a closer look at this platform and help you decide if it can help you invest for income more effectively.

Simply Safe Dividends Pricing Options

Simply Safe Dividends costs $399 per year. Once you sign up, the price of your subscription will never increase as long as you continue renewing the service. Simply Safe Dividend offers a 14-day free trial and a 60-day money-back guarantee.

Simply Safe Dividends Features

Dividend Safety Scores

The most important feature that Simply Safe Dividends offers is its Dividend Safety Scores. These are scores on a scale from 0-100 that indicate how likely or unlikely a company is to cut its dividend. A score closer to 100 indicates that a dividend is likely safe, while a score closer to 0 indicates that the dividend is at risk of being cut or suspended.

The Dividend Safety Score is determined by analysts, not algorithms. Analysts at Simply Safe Dividends consider payout ratios, debt levels, industry performance, cash flow, analyst estimates, and a company’s likely performance in a recession to determine the Dividend Safety Score. Helpfully, Simply Safe Dividends displays this data on each stock’s page and tells you when a stock’s Dividend Safety Score was last reassessed.

Since this scoring metric was introduced in 2015, Simply Safe Dividends has a 98% success rate at predicting dividend cuts. During the COVID-19 pandemic, 93% of dividend cuts came from companies with a Dividend Safety Score of less than 60.

Dividend Stock Analysis

Simply Safe Dividends covers more than 1,000 dividend stocks, each of which has its own page on the platform. Stock pages display the Dividend Safety Score, the data that goes into that score, and details like the company’s long-term dividend growth. For dividend investors who want to get into the weeds, Simply Safe Dividend also has visualizations of earnings payout ratio, free cash flow ratio, operating margin, net debt, and more for each stock.

One neat thing about Simply Safe Dividend’s stock pages is its timeliness rating, which offers a basic indication of whether now is a good time to invest in a dividend stock. The timeliness recommendation is based on a stock’s dividend payout relative to its five-year average payout, its P/E ratio relative to its five-year average, and its share price relative to the 52-week price range.

Dividend Screener

Simply Safe Dividends offers a basic screener for dividend paying stocks. You can build a custom screen based on dividend-related metrics like annual dividend yield, payout frequency or schedule, dividend growth over 1-, 5-, or 20-year timeframes, payout ratio, or net debt. You can also screen stocks based on Simply Safe Dividends’ Dividend Safety Scores or timeliness ratings.

Screen results are displayed in a customizable table that clearly shows yield, stocks’ Dividend Safety Scores, and dividend growth rates. So, it’s fairly easy to focus in on the best dividend stocks turned up by your screen.

Ideas and Model Dividend Portfolios

Simply Safe Dividends also helps investors find top dividend investing ideas. The Ideas list includes 11 premade screens for high-yield dividend stocks, stocks with payout streaks longer than 25 years, REITs with high Dividend Safety Scores, and stocks that pay dividends monthly.

There are also three model portfolios you can follow. One is focused on low-yield but high-growth dividend stocks, another is focused on maximizing dividend income, and the third blends growth and dividend payouts. The portfolios each have between 20-30 holdings, and Simply Safe Dividends issues a portfolio update at the beginning of each month.

Simply Safe Dividends doesn’t provide historical performance data for the three dividend portfolios.

Simply Safe Dividends Customization and Layout

Simply Safe Dividends enables you to set up an unlimited number of portfolios and watchlists for your dividend investments. The dividend portfolio tools enable you to monitor your average dividend yield, your overall dividend growth, and your diversification across sectors. There’s also an income calendar that shows your upcoming dividend payouts and a forecast of your projected annual income from dividends over the next 20 years.

Compatible Brokerages

Simply Safe Dividends can sync portfolios from Fidelity, TD Ameritrade, Charles Schwab, M1 Finance, Vanguard, ETrade, Interactive Brokers, Chase, and Wells Fargo. You can also enter holdings manually or import a spreadsheet.

Simply Safe Dividends Platform Differentiators

Simply Safe Dividends is designed specifically with the needs of income investors in mind. The platform offers very useful tools for finding high-quality dividend stocks.

Importantly, Simply Safe Dividends doesn’t just point investors towards stocks with high payouts and low debt, like some other dividend investing services do. Instead, analysts review every stock that Simply Safe Dividends covers and assign a Dividend Safety Score to help investors avoid stocks that are at risk of cutting their payouts. Simply Safe Dividends’ 98% accuracy at avoiding dividend cuts is quite impressive.

Simply Safe Dividends also makes it easy for investors to start building or add to their dividend portfolios. The platform’s screener, ideas lists, and model portfolios are all easy to use and highly actionable.

What Type of Investor is Simply Safe Dividends Best For?

Simply Safe Dividends is best for long-term income investors who want to maximize their dividend payouts. The platform caters to both retirement investors who are worried about capital preservation and to more aggressive investors who want to use dividends investing as part of a broader growth investing strategy. Simply Safe Dividends is extremely easy to use, so the platform is suitable for both first-time dividend investors and more experienced investors.

One thing to keep in mind is that Simply Safe Dividends’ $399 annual subscription fee isn’t cheap. If you average 4% in dividends payouts per year, you’d need to have nearly $10,000 invested just to pay off the subscription. As a result, Simply Safe Dividends is best for investors with relatively large amounts of capital to invest.