3 Dividend Stocks That Should Pay You the Rest of Your Life

When it comes to deciding what dividend stocks to own in long-haul portfolios, a company's quality and consistency are more important than a sky-high dividend yield that can portend trouble lurking around the corner. In a bid to help you find top-notch dividend stocks to buy, we asked our Motley Fool investors to scour the market for high-quality companies that are likely to have dividend-friendly staying power. Read on to discover why they settled on Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT), Johnson & Johnson (NYSE: JNJ), and PepsiCo (NYSE: PEP) as stocks to stash away in income portfolios for the long-term.

Todd Campbell (Microsoft): Why would I recommend a maker of PC software for a forever portfolio? Because it's no longer fair to think of Microsoft as a PC play. Microsoft has become a cloud-software services giant, it's a leader in artificial intelligence (right, Cortana?), and it's a behemoth in online gaming. These "next-gen" businesses represent an increasingly larger share of Microsoft's revenue, and they're throwing off plenty of cash to support Microsoft's dividend-darling status with investors.

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Source: Fool.com