Why a map
Over the past two months this blog has grown into a small library — twenty-one posts covering covered-call ETFs, REITs, banks, utilities, pipelines, taxes, and the arithmetic of living on dividends. Publish order made sense to us while writing it. It makes no sense to a reader arriving today with a specific worry and a portfolio full of specific tickers.
So this is the map, organized the honest way: by the question that actually brought you here. Start wherever your money is. Every path eventually crosses the same idea — is this income earned, or manufactured? — because that question turned out to be the spine of everything else.
"This fund pays 11%. What's the catch?"
The most common arrival point, and the reason this site exists. Start with how covered-call ETFs actually work — the machinery behind every double-digit yield on the Canadian shelf, and the myths that sell it. Then the verdict piece: are they actually worth owning, which turns out to depend on three questions about you, not the fund. If the fund is being sold to you as defensive, read what really happens in a crash before believing it. And underneath all of it sits the concept that unlocks the category: return of capital — the difference between a distribution and a refund, and the single most important thing a high-yield fact sheet doesn't explain.
"How do I spot the ones that blow up?"
Two posts form the warning system. The five-sign yield trap checklist is the framework — the pre-cut pattern that repeats across funds and stocks alike. Its companion piece takes apart the most trusted credential in income investing: what a dividend streak actually tells you, written after watching one fifty-year streak deserve its reputation and one decade-long streak walk straight into a 60% cut. Together they compress to one rule: the streak is the receipt, the coverage is the inventory, and when they disagree, coverage wins.
"I own the boring stuff. Is it actually safe?"
The blue-chip aisle, sector by sector — because it turns out the standard toolkit misreads every one of them differently. Canadian bank dividends haven't missed since the 1940s, and the record is structural, not lucky. Fortis fails every stock screener while raising for half a century, because free cash flow is the wrong lens for a regulated utility. Enbridge has two payout ratios — one alarming, one routine — and knowing which denominator to trust is most of the answer. If you hold the big dividend ETFs instead of the stocks, VDY vs XEI vs ZDV vs CDZ explains the four different selection machines wearing the same label.
"What about REITs?"
A trilogy, built around a live case study. Why every REIT's payout ratio looks insane covers the FFO lens that makes the sector readable at all. How much debt is too much covers the balance-sheet half — the three leverage numbers, and why coverage and debt multiply each other. And the Allied Properties post-mortem is both lenses applied to a real 60% cut that was telegraphed for years to anyone reading the numbers instead of the reassurances.
"What's this all costing me?"
Two quiet leaks, both fixable in an afternoon. MER divided by yield reframes fees in the only unit that matters for an income investor — the share of your monthly cheque the manager keeps, which runs from a nickel per dollar to over a quarter. And US withholding tax across account types explains the arrangement almost everyone has backwards: the tax-free account is where the 15% is permanent, the RRSP is where it vanishes, and the ETF wrapper you bought for convenience may be cancelling the exemption without appearing on any statement.
"Just tell me the head-to-head."
Two matchups carry the whole thesis. One scale for VDY and a 13% covered-call fund is the framework — the three questions that let a 4.5% yield and a 13% yield answer the same exam. VDY vs HDIV is the framework with live ammunition: the year the 3% fund returned roughly double the 10% fund, and why that outcome was structural rather than lucky. For the archives, the early ticker work — the HCAL deep dive and the HPYT review — shows the same exam applied to the aggressive end of the shelf.
"How much do I need? And what happens in a recession?"
The two planning posts, best read as a pair. How much you need for $1,000 a month prices the goal across tiers of trustworthy yield — anywhere from $100K to $400K, where the difference is entirely which yields survive. And what happens to your dividends in a recession is the stress test: the resilience hierarchy that history keeps re-running, from the banks that never miss to the cuts that were announced years early by their own coverage math.
Where all of it points
Every post above is one question — earned or manufactured? — asked of a different corner of the market. The systematic version of that asking is our methodology, and the always-current output is the research directory, where every fund and stock we cover sits on the same scale, graded by the same exam these posts teach you to run by hand.
The library will keep growing, and this page will keep pace as it does. But the spine won't change, because it hasn't yet: find out what's actually funding the payout, what it costs to collect, and what happened to the capital underneath — and let the yield be the last thing you look at, not the first. Everything we've written is that sentence, unpacked.