If you think cash on hand is hard linked to stock price, I have farmland ten miles south of Galveston to sell you.Then you may want to inform vanguard,
Buying a dividend and its effect on your taxes | Vanguard
Why shouldn't you buy a stock or fund right before it pays a dividend? You might increase your taxes.investor.vanguard.com
and fidelity,
Why Dividends Matter - Fidelity
Learn why dividends matter and why you should consider them when making your investment decisions.www.fidelity.com
and every company that has ever paid a dividend, that they are not deducted from the share price. The reality is that they are, but most people just don’t know any better. I’m not sure who is teaching that a companies share price is unaffected by a reduction in that companies assets, but I hope they aren’t charging much.
I wasn’t trying to go down the rabbit hole of how dividends work. The important thing that most investors should realize is that chasing dividends is a bad idea if they want to hit that $1.8 million number sooner than later. You can backtest the dividend fund of your choice in portfolio visualizer and see that dividend funds tend to underperform the broad market even ignoring the tax drag. This is because the market is driven mostly by companies that do not pay dividends.
And yes, I did factor inflation in in the last post.
You keep going back to the youngster preparing for retirement decades in the future. You fail to grasp that is totally different than being at retirement age. The investing strategy is not the same.
Your last sentence shows you failed to read what I posted. Again.