If history is any guide, the best thing you can do with your money is buy dividend stocks. Numerous studies underscore the idea that when it comes to building generational wealth, dividend stocks outperform nonpaying ones by a wide margin.

The asset managers at Hartford Funds similarly found that dividends contributed 40% to the total return of the benchmark S&P 500 going all the way back to 1930. Even during the so-called "lost decade" of the 2000s, when the dot-com bubble burst, 9/11 happened, and the housing and financial markets crashed -- resulting in the negative returns on the S&P 500 -- dividend stocks on the index still gained 1.8%.

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Source Fool.com