If you are an investor looking to generate passive income from your portfolio so you can use it to live, you'll want to be very careful with what you buy in the exchange-traded fund (ETF) world. For example, Vanguard Dividend Appreciation ETF (NYSEMKT: VIG) has the word "dividend" right in its name, but it won't be a great fit for most dividend-focused investors.

Let's look at the fund, who it is right for, and who it would let down. Plus, I'll discuss a higher-yielding alternative that might be a better fit.

Most investors who see the word dividend probably think about income. But with Vanguard dividend Appreciation ETF, it really can't be separated from the word "appreciation," as in dividends that rise over time. That's because the key criterion for selecting stocks for this index-based ETF (it tracks the S U.S. Dividend Growers index) is equities that have a history of increasing their dividends annually for at least 10 consecutive years.

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Source Fool.com