TGI is a rules-based system for finding stocks that grow in two directions at once — dividend income and portfolio value. Here's the framework, in plain language.
The goal of investing is simple to state and hard to execute: build a collection of assets whose revenue covers the expenses of the life you want to live — without ever having to sell anything. Dividends pay the bills. The portfolio keeps growing. That's the summit.
Getting there requires two things working together. Your portfolio value needs to grow so you're building real wealth over time. Your income stream needs to grow so that by the time you retire, the dividends arriving each month are enough to replace your paycheck. TGI is designed to pursue both simultaneously, because chasing only one of them leads to dead ends.
Chasing high dividend yield feels productive — the income is real and visible — but those stocks often stagnate or decline in price, and the dividends rarely grow. Chasing pure price growth feels exciting, but you end up with a portfolio that doesn't generate income. TGI looks for companies doing both: raising dividends and growing in value, year after year.
Every stock on the TGI watchlist is evaluated on three measurements. The results are combined into a ranking score. Lower score means higher priority — those are the stocks to buy next when new capital is ready.
How much has this company's dividend grown over 1, 3, 5, and 10 years? A stock paying a 1% yield today isn't exciting — but if that dividend has been growing at 15% annually for a decade, the math compounds dramatically in your favor. We're measuring the growth rate, not the current payout.
How much has the share price grown over the same timeframes? This shows whether the market is consistently rewarding the company's fundamentals over time — not just in a good quarter or a bull market, but across multiple years and market conditions.
What percentage of earnings is the company paying out as dividends? A low payout ratio means the company is retaining most of its earnings for growth, and has room to keep raising the dividend without strain. A high payout ratio is a warning sign — there's less room to run.
The same underlying data powers five different ranking scores, each asking a different question about a stock. TGI and HII are the primary strategies — the ones actively used to manage real portfolios. The Balanced score bridges them. DGI and PGI are single-dimension views available for investors who know exactly what they're optimizing for. All five are available in the AppSheet search tool.
Ranks stocks on dividend growth rate and price growth across four timeframes, with payout ratio as a sustainability check. Weighted toward companies compounding aggressively in both directions. Current yield is often low — that's by design. You're buying future income, not today's income.
Replaces the payout ratio with a target yield of approximately 4% — roughly twice the S&P 500 average. Ranks stocks on how well they combine dividend growth, price growth, and proximity to that yield target. Income now, still growing.
A simple average of the TGI and HII scores. The approach used in practice to navigate the middle ground — still building portfolio value, but with an eye toward income. The AppSheet surfaces stocks ranked by all five scores so you can find what fits your situation.
Single-Dimension Reference Scores
Ranks stocks on dividend growth alone — 1-year, 3-year, and the average across all four timeframes — with payout ratio included unless a stock already ranks at the top of that metric. The formula gives extra weight to recent performance: strong dividend growth in the last 1–3 years counts more than older results. No price growth factor at all.
The simplest of the five scores — a straight average of the ranking scores for 1, 3, 5, and 10-year price growth. Nothing else. No dividend factor, no yield, no payout ratio. Pure capital appreciation, ranked consistently across all four timeframes.
DGI and PGI are included in the data and searchable in the AppSheet app. They are not the standard approach — TGI's dual-dimension ranking is what this methodology is built around — but they're available for investors who want to explore a single-dimension view.
When new capital is available — from a paycheck, a dividend, or anywhere else — the watchlist tells you where to put it. You go to the top of the ranked list, check the diversity rules, and buy the highest-ranked stock that fits. No guessing, no news-chasing, no reacting to what the market did this week.
The TGI watchlist currently tracks over 900 stocks. It's updated continuously as new dividend and earnings data comes in. Rankings shift over time, which means a stock near the bottom today might move up after a strong earnings report — and vice versa. The list does the work of surfacing what deserves attention.
The AppSheet app puts the full watchlist in your pocket. Search by ticker or company name, filter by TGI score, HII score, or balanced score, and see where any stock sits in the rankings. It's the fastest way to answer "is this stock worth buying?" without opening a spreadsheet.
The TGI approach to diversity is straightforward: no single stock should represent more than 5% of the total portfolio, and no single sector should represent more than 10%. When new capital is ready to deploy, you start at the top of the ranked list and work down until you find a stock that fits within both limits. If a stock or sector is over the cap, you skip it and move to the next.
Critically, these rules only apply to new purchases. If a stock you already own grows to 7% of your portfolio because it performed well, that's not a problem — that's a win. You don't trim winners to rebalance. You just redirect new capital elsewhere until the rest of the portfolio catches up. Organic growth is never punished.
A real tradeoff worth knowing: always buying from the top and never trimming means positions accumulate over time. The TGI portfolio currently holds 77 positions across four accounts. That's comfortable for this system, but it's not for everyone. If you prefer a tighter portfolio of 10–20 stocks, you'll want to adapt the diversity rules to fit that goal. The methodology is a starting point, not a mandate.
The mountain metaphor is deliberate. There's a destination — a portfolio generating enough revenue to cover your expenses without selling anything — and there are multiple paths to get there. What follows is one way to think about the journey, not a guarantee or a prescription.
In the early years, TGI does the heavy lifting. You're building portfolio value and letting dividend growth compound. The income stream may be modest, but it's growing every time one of your holdings raises its payout. Over time, as the portfolio matures and retirement approaches, the balance shifts. HII becomes more relevant — not because TGI stops working, but because the priority changes from building the orchard to harvesting it.
At some point the revenue from dividends matches what a paycheck used to provide. That's the Day of Freedom — not necessarily the day you stop working, but the day you no longer have to. Everything built after that point is legacy: assets that outlast your working years and give the next generation a head start.
This path is speculative by nature. Every investor's situation, timeline, and goals are different. The tools work. The strategy works. How you apply them to your own climb is something only you can determine.
The full methodology, the mistakes that shaped it, and the philosophy behind it are all in the book — free to read, or available on Amazon Kindle.