I have t, mo, utx, bac
Nothing too sexy, @dstark, although I, too, am open to some suggestions. T, VZ, KO, GM, PG, KHC to name a handful.
Mo dividend yield is 3.5 percent?
Utx dividend yield is 2.65 percent?
Bac dividend yield is 1.6 percent?
Are these yields close to reality, @Doct ?
yes
Okā¦ I am getting very old. I didnāt think stocks with yields below 2 or 3 percent were really dividend stocks.
I guess itās a new day. A new century. Low interest rates.
I am long t vz gm cvx pcg aig amgn and gild (which I do not think is a dividend stock even though a dividend is paid).
Wellā¦I see I have matched 3 of @doschicos stocks. I should get a prize. 
I wish I had jnj. Never traded jnj ever. Nevermind. I am seeing things. I thought I saw jnj listed here. That stock was in a friendās fund.
I see t is on Doctās list too.
@colorado_mom, we learned the difference in costs and quality for Continuing Care (non-profit) Retirement Communities when we needed to move my elderly mother into assisted living. She was living in the Bay Area, and we were in OH, and the difference in annual cost was almost 50% less in the midwest. So she happily moved near us and could afford a much better standard of nursing care in a top ranked facility than she could have afforded on either of the coasts.
@IxnayBob and @Silpat, I am completely with you on taking things into oneās own hands rather than getting trapped into unwanted and intrusive medical interventions late in life. I do not understand the cultural resistance to allowing people to make their own choices about quality of life and arranging for assistance when the time comes.
I donāt need tax free interest - my income is very low, so not paying federal taxes - but I also wouldnāt touch NJ debt with the proverbial 10 ft pole! I have far too many individual stock positions, and I am trying to clean them up in my IRA (where there are no tax implications) and move to a few ETFs. In my taxable brokerage account I have built up a portfolio of dividend stocks since the great recession of 2008/09. I have sold MCD at much lower prices (I decided they were purveyors of garbage and wanted to disassociate myself from that company even though they paid a good dividend). I also sold out of T in my IRA at lower levels. Many of these stocks I bought almost solely because of the generous dividend yield. I jumped on KMB at 4+% and sold out at much lower than current prices. Here is what I still own: COP (rode it all the way up, and all the way down), NCT (high yield REIT type) NEWM (spinoff from NCT) SNR (also spun off from NCT), BMO, K, INTC, KKR (darn! thought I sold everything that generates a K1ā¦ oops!) , DD, UHT, NRZ (also spun off from NCT) PEP, PG, BCE, AEE, STI+E (preferred stock), KHC, AGM+B (preferred stock), WEC (spun off from something), JNJ, DUK (sadly, one of my best performing stocks - really want to divest due to local reputation), LLY. So, Jim Cramer, am I diversified?
Looks like a lot of us avoided the mlp fiasco.
I had friends who were in memp, evep, kinder morgan (after it was no longer a mlp).
They got buried. They are smart guys. They have done well over time. Didnāt do well with this group of stocks.
I do own jnj and intc as well which have performed decently for me on top of the dividend.
@doschicos, I guess I thought of jnj because of telepathy.
I could have bought jnj but I bought mei. Never heard of mei? No reason toā¦ The stock is zero. 
I own nearly every one of those . . . In my TSM fund
@IxnayBob, as low as your fees are, ours are lower.
@IxnayBob Aw shucks, I bet thatās what you tell ALL the stocks! ;
For those of you who have retired, any surprises? Has your income matched your expectations and your needs based on the expenses that you determined prior to retiring?
Also, does anybody have any suggestions for what to do with excess income coming from taxable accounts?
Excess income! Nice. My solution was by avoiding dividend stocks. I bet there are better ways.
shawbridge, ā. I have loads of ways to fill my time if I were to retire from my full-time occupation. I would do more pro bono projects, serve on a couple of boards, be more aggressive about writing books, do more traveling for pleasure, read more books, ā¦ . But, I prefer doing what I do and over timeā
- I envy you. You have a great plan. While I love my job, I do not like anything else that you listed, I do not like to travel, read books, I cannot write, I cannot tell a story if you pay me a million and I would sleep thru any board meetings if I were in fact a member of any, but I am not. I really do not like anything else that most other enjoy, like TV, shopping. I am not big fan of house chores either, I hire to do them and planning to continue hiring. I have only couple activities that I can possibly be engaged on the beach and in addition, I am planning to force myself to read, but it will not be for pleasure, it will be for wasting the time.
@MiamiDAP, I just got off a fairly dull conference call for the Finance Committee of the NGO on whose board I serve (Iām on Finance and Strategy committees) so not all is scintillating.
Is there a way to volunteer work remotely? Like the equivalent of Code for America? Can you bid yourself out on one of the online sites like Amazon Mechanical Turk? Could you develop a software product? [My recollection, maybe incorrect, is that you are in software development. Ignore these specific suggestions if I am wrong but modify to the thing you enjoy doing]. Could you volunteer in your country with a US-based NGO?
I must be doing something wrong. It is hard to find my dividend paying stocks (there are a lot of accounts), though I see JNJ, Altria, Lilly, and BP. In the account that has these, about half the stocks have doubled and about half have declined by 50%. Treading water, I guess.
I used to work part of my time in the investing game but decided to put my time into the making money game and try to have sensible investment strategies. But, that means Iām not as attuned to what I own (even though I approve all decisions).
Shawbridge, nice try, but good luck! All great suggestions, but miamiDAP has shut her mind to any suggestion that she can continue to do the thing she loves. She has determined there is no other way. No other company will hire her, there is no way to do it as a volunteer or on her own for free. Itās just the end of all fun as she knows it, when she loses or has to retire from this job. Thatās it, and no excellent suggestion you have can possibly work.
Sadly, some people get like this as they get older, whether beginning stages of dementia or lifelong personality of stubbornness getting worse. I hope I never lose my ability to listen to people, to learn, to solve problems, to never give up.