I'm sure I'm missing something, so I would love some help from this community.
Can you make up lost time by investing more when it comes to dividends?
That is the question, though let me preface the following with the fact that I realize dividend payouts are a reduction in the value of the underlying company and are similar (but not the same) as selling a equal amount of owned shares.
Presumably the number of shares is mostly irrelevant when it comes to appreciation as like inflation, it's an average increase over time, and that only matters if you sell. However, dividends are directly correlated to the number of shares you own, so it's that number that's important.
I'm concerned that because I've only just gotten our act together in terms of investing, and we have a 5 year FIRE goal, that even though we'll be investing large sums annually (instead of small or medium sums over the last 10-20 years) that the total # of shares we'll own by FIRE won't sustain a high enough dividend payout to be meaningful. For us that's ideally 50% of our annual spending.
Here's the math I'm thinking about.
If I had invested $100k in VTSAX in 2008/2009 at $20 that would have netted me 5000 shares which would be worth ~245k (@$49) today and would have paid $1030 last quarter or roughly $4k/yr in dividends.
If I had invested $100k in VTSAX in April 2014 at $47 that would have netted me 2127 shares which would be worth ~$104k (@$49) today and would have paid $417 last quarter or roughly ~$1.6k/yr in dividends.
That's a HUGE difference and it makes me worried that in the next 4 years, even at the amounts I'm hoping to put into the market, I won't accumulate enough shares to rely on dividends for as part of our income.
Obviously this is an over simplified example. I'm actually buying in monthly, and reinvesting dividends over the next 4 years, so I'll accumulate more than the illustrative examples above.
What say you Mustachians? Am I over thinking this? If my thinking is right, what else should I be looking at instead of dividends?