The following is a guest post from Matt Becker, founder of Mom and Dad Money. Matt is a proud father and husband, and his site is dedicated to helping new parents build financial security for their family.

Although Matt and I have somewhat different personal opinions in regards to dividend strategies, I thought it might be fun to invite him to take the stage and share his perspective on why he thinks Total Return Investing would be better.  I’ve always maintained the message on My Money Design that there is more than one way to reach financial freedom.  If you can keep an open mind and not reject something just because it is different than what you use, then maybe you might just learn something.

Go ahead Matt ….  

I’ll take the whole pie thank you!

If you have paid any attention to the investment world since 2008, you have undoubtedly heard of dividend investing. A dividend investing strategy is simply one in which an investor chooses to put his or her money in stocks that have a strong history of paying consistent dividends.

An alternative to a dividend strategy is called total return investing. With a total return approach, an investor is looking for returns from any source, including but not limited to dividends. Specific to stocks, this essentially means that an investor will view capital gains as an equally appealing source of returns and will proceed with the sole goal of maximizing returns for a given level of risk, without preference as to where those returns are coming from.

It is my view that a total return strategy is superior to a dividend approach in several ways.

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