People should embrace failure. According to some of the most successful people in the world, failing once in awhile is actually important.

Mark Cuban, Bill Gates and others say failure is key to success

Failure is a learning experience, according to tech entrepreneur Mark Cuban “…truly believe each and every one of us is really good at something. The hard part is finding out what that is and going through all the different — kissing all the frogs before you find the prince of the job.”

Bill Gates accepted experiences of failure as challenges and learned from them.  “Once you embrace unpleasant news not as a negative but as evidence of a need for change, you aren’t defeated by it,” Gates says in his book “Business @the Speed of Thought: Succeeding in the Digital Economy.”

Virgin Group founder and billionaire Richard Branson says that learning from failure is one of the five skills and abilities that successful entrepreneurs share. “Nobody gets everything right the first time. Business is like a giant game of chess — you have to learn quickly from your mistakes. Successful entrepreneurs don’t fear failure; they learn from it and move on.”

Apple founder Steve Jobs put failure in perspective.  “All fear of embarrassment or failure — these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose.”

Sara Blakely states that embracing failure allows her to take risks. In fact, failure was actually celebrated in her house as a kid. Blakely says at dinnertime her father would often ask, “What have you failed at this week?” She “…can vividly remember saying ‘Dad, I tried out for this, and I was horrible,’ and he would high-five me and say ‘Way to go.” Her “…dad growing up encouraged me and my brother to fail, calling it a “gift”. Failure “…allowed her to be much freer in trying things and spreading her wings in life.”

(Source: CNBC Making It, “Perfectionism is up among college students—but Mark Cuban, Bill Gates and others say failure is key to success”, by Sarah Berger, January 23, 2018)

The Kiplinger Dividend 15, the list of our favorite dividend-paying stocks, doled out plenty of payout love in its first year, with an average yield of 3.7%.
To make it into our lineup, dividend stocks had to first beat the 2% average yield of the Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index. We then looked for firms that are leaders in their industry and that have solid prospects for expanding their sales and profits, while also generating enough cash to pay investors. And we aim to avoid dividend traps— stocks with high yields but weak underlying businesses and poor prospects.

Dividend Grower: AbbVie
YIELD: 5.3%

ANNUAL DIVIDEND: $4.28

CONSECUTIVE YEARS OF INCREASES: 6

FIVE-YEAR DIVIDEND GROWTH RATE: 21.7%

ONE-YEAR TOTAL RETURN: -26.2%

AbbVie (ABBV, $81), a pharmaceutical company with several blockbuster patents and a strong group of new products in the pipeline, is the newest member of the Kiplinger Dividend 15 and the replacement for CVS.

AbbVie expects sales of Humira — used to treat rheumatoid arthritis, psoriasis and Crohn’s disease — to approach $21 billion by 2020. The firm is developing a drug to treat glioblastoma, an aggressive form of brain cancer, and another to treat multiple myeloma, a blood cancer.

AbbVie has paid dividends only since 2013, when it was spun off from Abbott Laboratories. Since then, the payout has grown at a five-year annualized rate of nearly 18%, with a 40% bump in the annual payout in 2018
— Read on www.kiplinger.com/slideshow/investing/T018-S003-kiplinger-dividend-15-favorite-dividend-stocks/index.html

The conventional wisdom about investing in retirement is wrong. Rather than decreasing the percentage of stocks in a portfolio during retirement, he argues, investors should do the opposite.

You try something, it doesn’t work, and maybe people even criticize you. In a growth mindset, you look for what you’ve learned. – Carol Dweck

Growth Mindset is a set of beliefs and behaviors that adapts to challenging situations; it sees failure as a chance for learning and creativity; and it knows that growth is possible when it comes to talent, abilities and intelligence.

My dad encouraged us to fail. Growing up, he would ask us what we failed at that week. If we didn’t have something, he would be disappointed. It changed my mindset at an early age that failure is not the outcome, failure is not trying. Don’t be afraid to fail. — Sara Blakely

If you fail, you do not lose. You only lose when you quit or do not try.

Carol Dweck states that “In a growth mindset, people believe that their most basic abilities can be developed through dedication and hard work—brains and talent are just the starting point. This view creates a love of learning and a resilience that is essential for great accomplishment[.

When things do not go your way, remember that every challenge — every adversity — contains within it the seeds of opportunity and growth. ― Roy T. Bennett

Successful people are able to persist through all of the doubt, pain and failures that come with following their goals and dreams due to their Mindset. To be successful, people must have and vigorously embrace the concept of a Growth Mindset, a mindset that sees challenges as opportunities for learning, growth and expansion.

History has demonstrated that the most notable winners usually encountered heart-breaking obstacles before they triumphed. They won because they refused to become discouraged by their defeats. — B.C. Forbes

Growth Mindset is about attitudes towards seeking challenges, learning from failures and set-backs, and the ability to progress and achieve. Essentially, the concept is that if you believe your talents can be developed, you have more of a ‘growth mindset’ and will tend to achieve more.

Financial Mindset – behaviors and beliefs about how you earn, spend, save and invest money.

Financial Independence means Never have to work again to live your life.

Secrets to Financial Independent, according to Tony Robbins, are…

• Spend less than you make, and invest the difference.
• You want to put your money to work for you.
• Re-invest your returns so you can earn compound interest on it
• Never get financially independent by work alone.
• Only reason to invest is for income, not assets
• Three Financial Buckets: Security | Growth | Dream

While still in the workforce enduring my typical 7:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. professional career, a respected colleague shared a nugget of advice that became the bedrock of my life, he said…”you should never run from something; instead, you should run to something”. The advice became a mantra used to guide my professional and personal life.

The same advice is relevant when considering retirement:

You shouldn’t just retire from something, but to something

Retirement can be a confusing, even a stressful time, as retirees create a new way of life for themselves. Thus, it becomes imperative that retirees know what they want to do with themselves and their lives. No one can provide the answer and there is not a secret formula or recipe to a happy and fulfilling retirement.

Furthermore, it is surprising how many retirees don’t have a clue who they are or what they want to do.

Experts say that creating a new schedule helps. There is an transition period to understand and a new retiree must devote time to determine a new routine and daily schedule. Without some sort of regularity in a retiree’s day, it will be easy for a retiree to waste away their day and more importantly not do the things that make them happy.

Experts advise retirees should spend the first three to six months without any firm commitments and instead make a list of activities and goals they would like to achieve in retirement. After doing the things they enjoy like playing golf, writing blog posts, meeting friends for lunch or coffee, trading stock options, working out almost every day, traveling, reconnecting with friends working in the yard and volunteering, retirees might fine that they have created a new routine for their days.

Bottom-line, it is imperative for retirees to figure out how to spend their time in retirement. It behooves them to live with a schedule that makes them productive, fulfilled and happy.

The Anatomy of a Market Correction – An infographic by the team at Fisher Investments