“Margin of safety” is something that you will hear investors talk about all the time.

Having spent a lot of time researching and refining margin of safety over the years, I have come to the conclusion that most of them don’t actually know what the hell they are talking about.

There are several facets to investing with a margin of safety and if you don’t pay attention to all of them you are NOT maintaining any margin of anything, much less safety.

In engineering, a margin of safety is easy to understand.

If a bridge is going to have a 10,000-pound truck driving over it every day, design it to carry several 20,000-pound trucks at once. If a building is in Miami and can be expected to undergo 150 miles per hour hurricanes a few times, design it to withstand sustained 250 MPH storms.

In other words, build to experience a multiple of the worst-case scenario.

As an investor, as you begin analyzing an opportunity, you have to ask yourself a very blunt question:

“What’s the worst that can happen? What can happen to destroy this business and how much will I lose when that happens?”…

My name is Tim, and I like dividends.

I realize that’s an archaic opinion to have in these days of buybacks and shareholder yield as the flavor of the day.

When we get right down to it, I guess I’m archaic.

When I smoked my last cigarette four years ago, I lit it with a Zippo lighter just like the one my father had.

When I walk the dog late at night, I carry an old-fashioned snub nose revolver (before you get your drawers in an uproar, I live in a concealed carry state, have a permit, and we live in an area that has coyotes, alligators, and snakes of several nasty varieties along with the occasional criminally minded morons).

I drive a pickup truck with roll-up windows, and I read two actual newspapers every day. I still write checks once in a while.

And I like dividends.

Especially the ones attached to these 6 stocks.

That may make me old-fashioned, but guess what? It also makes me smart…