This money is already income. Use your budget to determine where to allocate this income, and put it in an account appropriate to how you plan to use it. You're going to be investing for a long time before you have enough saved to withdraw more than $150/month and preserve the principal, and whether that's the best use of this money is dependent on the rest of your finances.

If you don't already have a budget: https://www.reddit.com/r/personalfinance/wiki/commontopics

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>After that I would take the dividend payout for me

How much are you looking to eventually withdraw? If you want to live off this, that ain't happening. If you want to buy a fancy coffee or two a month, that's doable.

Is this the entire amount you are investing? Quick math is $150 per month starting at $0, and standard 7% return per year, you would be investing for about 17 years before your dividends equal your deposit. Basing this on 3% dividends, but not sure what dividend aristocrats average. Google "investment calculator" to run numbers. You should read the links below and make sure you've covered every other avenue before just using a taxable account.

https://www.reddit.com/r/personalfinance/wiki/commontopics/

https://www.reddit.com/r/personalfinance/wiki/windfall/

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At $150 a month it's going to be a long time before the dividends are really a sizable amount.

For example, CLM pays out like $0.13 a share per month and many consider this to be a non sustainable dividend per share.

At their current market value it was take 105 months to gain sufficient shares to make $150 a month in dividend payouts. All of this assumes that those dividends are not eroding the basis of the fund and are sustainable. Which again many people do not believe is the case.

The time frame just gets longer the more reliable the dividend is. For example att which has been a dividend King pays $0.27 cents a share per quarter and trades around 18.50. This extends the time frame to make $150 in dividends a month to 205 months.

It is doable but you're talking long term to see any sizable return at your investment level

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That $150/month is already income. Don't need to treat it differently, allocate it the same way you normally would as extra money saved after expenses. Which should go to your portfolio after your emergency fund is topped off.

Im making like $600/month from dividends and fixed income. I just reinvest it and let it compound.

You can open up a brokerage account with this one deposit going into an index fund, and just leave it alone. You can check now and then to ensure there's nothing untoward.

My goal once I am back in the workforce (in school right now) is to open up a taxable putting $500/mo into FZROX and just leave it on auto pilot, check back in after 30 years. This on top of the regular suite of retirement advice. I figure it would be a nice gift for a deserving relative.

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I mean, if you're goal is to have income not appreciation it is what it is. You're not likely to find income generating return that will exceed this with the low amount you have to invest.

You can look at high yield savings accounts but considering att is generating 6% dividend yield its still a greater return albeit smaller than you're hoping for as far as dollar amounts go

You can run a spreadsheet to give you some projections. Assuming an investment with a 3% return (conservative, especially now), you would have $1,887 at the end of year 1, and $9,679 at the end of year 5. The income at the end of year 5 would still only be under $25 per month.

Taking the income destroys the "power of compounding."

The idea of living off the income works for larger figures. If you had a $1 million investment, it could generate $40,000 per year in income at 4%, the commonly-accepted figure for annual distributions. To tell you the truth, people who can set aside $1 million for this purpose won't be impressed with $40,000 per year as income.