Does DRIP actually feel meaningful when your portfolio is still small?
I turned DRIP on a couple years ago and pretty much stopped thinking about it. Recently I was messing with my spreadsheet and realized how little it’s actually adding right now.
Most of the growth in my share count is still just my own monthly contributions. The dividends buy tiny fractional shares here and there, but compared to what I’m putting in myself it barely registers.
I get that the whole point is what happens over 10 or 20 years. I’m not expecting magic right now. But it did make me wonder if I’d rather just take the dividends as cash and put them toward whatever I’m buying that month. Sometimes I don’t really want more of the stock that happened to pay me.
Only downside is I know myself and having random cash sitting in the account would annoy me lol. DRIP at least makes sure it gets invested.
For people with bigger portfolios, when did you actually start noticing DRIP doing some real work? Was there a point where the reinvested dividends stopped feeling tiny?