RE:RE:yield vs total return No theme to this, just a collection of thoughts ...
I retired early, mainly for health reasons. I was self-employed so my 'pension' is based on investments. As the retirement possibility loomed I went for capital growth at first (100%), but eventually began shifting to dividend and dividend growth (now about 90%).
I took notice of the Amazon threat and thought it would be good to aim long-term investment dollars at non-distributable services rather than distributable products. It went well, dividends were growing nicely ... and then COV came along, shutting down services of many kinds, and in only three months it had hacked away 20% of my dividend income and halted or slowed many of my dividend-growth prospects.
I think growth always comes with risk. Safety lies in things that don't need to grow to survive -- certain (not all) utilities, certain (not all) banks, well-established supermarket chains.
Canadian banks are profitable and of sufficient scale that share buybacks actually benefit shareholders (usually buybacks are designed so that only senior management benefits). The annual NCIBs give room to raise dividends on a per-share basis without a requirement that the bank grow its business any faster than the inflation rate.
Utilities are now in a changing space. I wouldn't go into one that has a coal problem to extinguish, nor one that's too heavily into natgas, nor one that does not have substantial regulatory protection on billing rates.
Supermarkets chains in Canada have low dividend yields and can seem unattractive as income investments. But they keep paying, and problems beyond our borders don't often affect them.