Brett Owens

Brett Owens is a dividend investing author, analyst, and contrarian income strategist. He specializes in teaching investors how to turn the pile of cash they've saved up their whole lives into a steady, sustainable income stream. A longtime Forbes contributor, Brett has written hundreds of columns on dividend and income investing, and his research reaches millions of income-focused readers. He also serves as chief investment strategist for Contrarian Outlook.

Brett is the author of How to Retire on Dividends: Earn a Safe 8%, Leave Your Principal Intact — the book behind his flagship retirement strategy, the 8% No Withdrawal Portfolio. The key to the No Withdrawal Portfolio: it works like an annuity, but better — you leave your principal untouched instead of trading it in. It turns your cash into a dividend machine. The second edition of How to Retire on Dividends is on the way. Brett's contrarian income recommendations in his newsletter have averaged 9.4% annualized total returns since inception in August 2015, with most of those gains paid as dividends.

Brett's path to income investing ran through tech and Silicon Valley rather than Wall Street. After graduating cum laude from Cornell University's engineering school (Operations Research and Industrial Engineering), he left corporate America at 26 and co-founded three software-as-a-service companies — Chrometa, LeadDyno, and Afluencer — which still serve more than 60,000 business users combined. Brett invested his software profits in dividend-paying stocks and funds, and began studying income investments with the same rigor he'd once aimed at software. Rather than lean on Wall Street's lazy retirement advice — like the 4% rule, which requires you to buy stocks and hope they go up — Brett's engineering mind wanted retirement reliably funded by cash flow alone. The result: the calculated contrarian approach that powers the 8% No Withdrawal Portfolio.