Retirement Expert Wes Moss Says 90% of Everything You Own Should Pay You Income, at Any Age

Wes Moss is a Certified Financial Planner and chief investment strategist at Capital Investment Advisors. In his book The Retire Sooner Method, he makes a claim that most 45-year-olds would push aside. “I’m a big believer that 90 percent or more of what you own should pay you some level of income, regardless of your age.”, according to The Retire Sooner Method (Greenleaf Book Group)

Most savers treat income investing as something you switch on at retirement. If your forties and fifties go into assets that pay nothing, you reach 65 and have to buy your income all at once, at whatever yields the market offers that year.

Why Moss Has the Accumulation Years Right

Moss’s advice is sound. Income investing is “a way to grow wealth without running out of capital over time.” Total return splits into growth plus income. Growth comes in bursts and drops. Income arrives on a schedule you can plan around.

His book gives an example from a dividend growth fund. From 2015 to 2025, a $1 million investment grew to about $2.4 million.

The more telling figure is the paycheck. Annual dividend income rose from $24,217 to $53,405. The owner more than doubled their cash flow without selling a single share, which is the whole point of a dividend ladder built for lifelong income (we walked through how to construct one in a free guide). That is the “without running out of capital” part in practice.

Compare that with a broad index fund. The S&P 500 yields about 1.2%, or “12 grand in dividends” on a million dollars.

Higher up Moss’s “yield ladder,” utility funds pay around 3%, and REITs and closed-end funds pay 7% to 8%.

Starting Yield Decides How This Plays Out

Your purchase price matters most for bonds. Moss writes that “your starting yield does much of the heavy lifting on long-run results.”

Moss is managing partner and chief investment strategist at Capital Investment Advisors, a fee-only SEC Registered Investment Adviser with over $8.1 billion in assets under management.

Moss takes listener questions at wesmoss.com/ask, and lays out his retirement framework in The Retire Sooner Method.

If you hold an individual bond to maturity, your total return lands close to the yield to maturity you locked in at purchase, apart from credit surprises. Bond fund prices move with rates, but as coupons reinvest, long-run returns drift toward the yield at purchase. “For bonds, yield is destiny.”

This year shows both sides. The 10-year Treasury fell to 4% in late February and now stands at 5%.

A buyer in February locked in close to 4% for a decade. A buyer today locks in above 5%. Same bond, different results.

That is why the “any age” rule matters. A 50-year-old who builds an income allocation slowly buys at many yields over 15 years. Someone who waits until retirement buys at one rate and lives with it.

How Moss’s Bucket System Puts This to Work

Moss spreads income across four buckets, and each one pays something:

1. Income bucket (20% to 50% of the portfolio): government, municipal and corporate bonds. His target yield is 2% to 5%, depending on current rates.
2. Alternative income bucket (5% to 15%): REITs, energy pipelines, preferred stocks and closed-end funds. These often yield more than traditional stocks and bonds.
3. Growth bucket (40% to 75%): mostly stocks. That includes dividend payers plus a small piece of pure growth companies that pay nothing.
4. Cash bucket: six months or more of expenses in CDs and money market funds. It yields 0% to 4%, depending on where the Fed sets rates.

While you’re still saving, every dividend and coupon reinvests in the bucket that produced it. In retirement, Moss says you “open the gates” and let cash flow into the cash bucket to pay living expenses.

In his bad-year example, the growth bucket drops 15%, but its 3% in dividends keeps coming. So the portfolio’s value falls while the retiree’s income barely moves.

Steps to Take This Week

1. Audit your holdings. List every position with its yield and mark the ones that pay nothing. If zero-yield shares top one-tenth of your portfolio, you’re running a different strategy than Moss describes.
2. Check your bond fund’s yield to maturity. Compare it with the 10-year Treasury near 5%. That number guides what the fund will earn over the long run.
3. Price-check your cash. The national average 12-month CD pays 2%, while the Fed’s upper target stands at 4%. Compare online banks and money market funds.
4. Confirm your reinvestment settings. If you’re still saving, ensure dividends and interest reinvest automatically. If you’re within five years of retiring, map out which buckets will feed your cash bucket.

Income bought in your forties and fifties, at a range of starting yields, is what pays your bills in retirement without forcing you to sell assets.

Contact [email protected] for any questions or corrections.