How does a 7.8% dividend yield sound?

Dividends are a wonderful thing, because healthy and growing dividend-paying stocks will tend to keep paying their shareholders regularly, no matter what the overall economy is doing. Better still, they'll generally increase their payouts over time -- often annually.

Extra-generous dividend yields can be had when a stock swoons. That's explained by simple math. A dividend yield is simply a company's total annual payout divided by its current share price. So an $80 stock with a quarterly dividend of $1 (that's $4 on an annual basis) would have a yield of 5% ($4 divided by $80 is 0.05, or 5%).

In that example, if the stock price falls to, say, $60, you'd divide $4 by $60, getting 0.067, or 6.7%. See? Lower stock prices boost dividend yields, all e

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