3 Dividend Aristocrats to Buy and Hold Forever

Investors understand that buying dividend-paying stocks is a smart play because the payouts can juice the returns achieved through capital appreciation. But with thousands of dividend-paying stocks, how does an investor choose the best stock? Chasing yield without looking at the business could be a prescription for disaster as high-yielding income stocks could signal danger.

So, we asked three Motley Fool contributors to choose a Dividend Aristocrat, a stock that has paid investors for 25 years or more. Companies with long, consistent records of paying dividends are often a safe bet (though certainly not a sure thing). They chose Becton, Dickinson (NYSE: BDX), Lowe's (NYSE: LOW), and Altria (NYSE: MO) as income investors can count on for the rest of their lives.

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Source Fool.com