What your own purchase price yields today, after years of dividend increases
Estimates only, not financial advice. What you type stays on your device. Updated on 25 Oct 2026.Current yield measures the dividend against today price, which is what a new buyer would get. Yield on cost measures it against what you paid, which is what your own holding pays you. After fifteen years of increases the two are nowhere near each other, and the second is the number that answers whether holding for the dividend worked.
The page opens with dividends taken as cash and Dividend growth a year at 7%.
Enter what you paid in Amount invested and Share price, and today's yield.
Set For to the number of years you plan to hold the shares.
Compare Yield today with Yield on cost then, the income measured against your original price.
Three numbers get confused with each other whenever dividends are discussed, and this page keeps them apart.
Yield is the annual dividend divided by the share price. It describes what a buyer would get today, and it changes every time the price moves, which is why a stock that has fallen appears to yield more.
Yield on cost is the annual dividend measured against what you originally paid. It cannot be looked up anywhere, because it depends on your purchase, and it is the figure that answers whether holding a dividend payer for a decade actually worked. A dividend rising 5% a year doubles in fourteen years while your cost stays fixed, so the two figures separate steadily.
The rest of the article, and all 7 questions about Dividend Calculator, are on the Dividend Calculator page.
Multiply the number of shares by the annual dividend per share, or multiply the amount invested by the yield, which comes to the same figure. A 10,000 dollar holding at a 3.50% yield pays 350 a year. Divide by four for a quarterly payer, or by twelve for a monthly one.
Twelve thousand a year at a 4% yield needs 300,000 invested; at 3% it needs 400,000; at 6% it needs 200,000. The share price does not enter into it, only the yield. Higher yields usually mean either a higher payout ratio or a price the market has marked down for a reason.
Yield on cost is the current annual dividend divided by what you originally paid, rather than by today's share price. Buy at 50 with a 1.75 dividend and the yield is 3.50%; fifteen years of 5% increases take the dividend to 3.64, so the same purchase now yields 7.28% on its cost.
Yields move with the share price every trading day, differ between share classes, and are never the yield your own purchase locked in. A figure printed here would be wrong for most readers on most days, so the yield is taken from the quote or annual report in front of you instead.
Formula only: no rates or limits are read from an official source.
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Same job, other tools: ROI Calculator – Return on investment as a total percentage and as a yearly (annualised) rate.
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