Meta, Salesforce, Booking Holdings: Top Dividend Growth Stocks Today

I love dividends.

I also love secular growth stories.

Thankfully, there are a select few stocks in the market that allow me to have both.

In recent months, several well-regarded growth stocks have initiated dividends, making that list a bit longer.

So today, I wanted to compare these companies – Meta Platforms (META), Booking Holdings (BKNG), and Salesforce (CRM) – to my other high-conviction double-digit dividend growth plays.

Sleeping Well At Night As Dividends Compound

If I had a dollar for every time someone suggested that a younger person like me (I turned 34 earlier in the year) shouldn’t own dividend stocks, I’d be retired already.

I’ve been managing a dividend growth portfolio for over a decade now…and yet, despite the naysayers’ negative opinions of the strategy, I’ve managed to outperform the broader market consistently.

Why is that?

Simply put, by focusing on dividend growth stocks, I own the highest quality companies in the world… and quality, over the long term, tends to generate outperformance.

What’s more, because of these high-quality holdings, I don’t make many of the mistakes that lead retail investors to underperform.

My dividend growth focus inspires me to own stocks, not trade them.

I sleep well at night with my dividend-centric portfolio because I know that these companies are working 24/7 to generate massive profits…and all I have to do to receive my small portion of them is to stay disciplined and patient.

My portfolio literally makes me money while I sleep. And that’s great because according to Warren Buffett, that’s what it takes to reach financial freedom.

Regarding retirement, Buffett once said, “If you don’t find a way to make money while you sleep, you will work until you die.”

Knowing this, I rarely fall prey to fear and greed.

I rarely sell low or buy high because doing so would be counterproductive, with regard to building out my income stream.

Human nature causes people to make those mistakes (buying high and selling low) all of the time.

But, a passive income focus inspires me to do just the opposite…

Buying high would result in relatively lower yields on cost than buying low.

And selling low makes it very difficult to bolster my passive income stream (because of the high current yields attached to those shares).

On the other hand, it’s easy to use active management to boost passive income when I sell high and use the proceeds to buy something else that is out of favor.

I’m hyper-focused on the compounding process of my passive income stream because that’s what I’m basing my early retirement plans on.

I plan to retire as soon as possible so that I can spend more time with my family and dedicate more energy to my passions. My passive income stream is the foundation of that plan. But, I’m not just focused on dividend yield…

As someone who plans to retire early and, therefore, needs their money to work effectively for them for decades, dividend growth is much more important to me.

My retirement plan revolves around spending my passive income but never touching my invested principal.

I don’t subscribe to the “4% rule” or the “die with nothing” mindset.

I plan on creating a dividend machine that pays me for the rest of my life.

Ideally, I’ll continue to build my invested capital base throughout retirement by reinvesting excess dividends (I don’t plan on pulling the plug on my active income until there’s a 10-20% margin of safety between my passive income stream and my expected lifestyle expenses).

When I die, I hope to pass along a massive dividend machine to my kids (and their kids) as a legacy, which will hopefully give my life a further sense of meaning and purpose while also setting up future generations of Wards for success.

Sure, I’ll have a withdrawal rate throughout retirement, but my plan doesn’t involve selling shares to raise capital. Instead, I’ll rely on passive income so that I don’t slowly, but surely, erode away my asset base over the years (and God willing, decades).

Simply put, I don’t want to have to worry about running out of money in retirement.

If I’m never eroding away my share count of blue-chip companies, then I’ll never have to worry about running out of assets to sell.

This is why I gravitated towards the dividend growth strategy all those years ago.

Building a passive income stream that grows in a reliable and predictable fashion – at a rate that exceeds inflation – is paramount to my plan’s success.

With that being said, I spend most of my time (and allocate most of my invested capital) towards high-growth companies that reliably compound their earnings, cash flows, and dividends.

Therefore, In recent months, when several high-quality growth stocks initiated dividends, I quickly moved into those names.

I bought shares of all…