Over the past 100 years, the stock market has proved that one of the best things you can do with your money is buy dividend stocks. Study after study shows dividend stocks outperform non-paying ones by healthy margins, and even when the market was generating losses, income-producing stocks still gave investors positive returns.

Data from Hartford Funds shows that there has never been a single decade where dividend stocks in the S&P 500 lost money. Even during the so-called "lost decade" of the 2000s when the Tech Wreck, 9/11, and the collapse of the housing and financial markets conspired to cause the S&P 500 to decline, dividend stocks showed modest gains.

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Source Fool.com