4 Dividend Stocks Showing You the Money

Last year may have been a year of dividend slashing, but there are now more and more companies committed to sending more money out to their shareholders in 2010.

Readers of the Motley Fool Income Investor newsletter can certainly appreciate that kind of thinking. Let's take a closer look at some of the companies that inched their payouts higher this past week.

Let's start with TJX (NYSE: TJX  ) . The retailer behind T.J. Maxx and Marshalls is dressing up its quarterly dividend by 25% to $0.15 a share. Most retailers had a strong March, and TJX's emphasis on value-priced apparel has served it well during the recent recession. However, TJX was rolling long before that. It has now upgraded its distributions in 14 consecutive years.

Entergy (NYSE: ETR  ) is putting a little more energy behind its yield. The electricity provider's new quarterly rate is $0.83 a share. It was previously only sending $0.75 a share to its shareholders every three months.

Tanger Factory Outlet Centers (NYSE: SKT  ) is also ringing up the register. The outlet-center operator is inching its dividend 1% higher to $0.3875. It's a small uptick, but the real estate investment trust has found a way to juice up its disbursements in each of the past 17 years.

Finally we have Monro Muffler Brake (Nasdaq: MNRO  ) hitting the accelerator. The auto repair shop chain is jacking up its quarterly payout by 29% to $0.09 a share.

Companies are starting to return more of their money to their investors, and shareholders aren't likely to be complaining. IDEX (NYSE: IEX  ) and Bank of the Ozarks (Nasdaq: OZRK  ) have also boosted their distributions in recent days.

Subscribers to the Income Investor newsletter can appreciate the companies sending more and more money to their investors. The newsletter singles out companies that are committed to growing their distributions with market-thumping results.

Want to see what is being recommended these days? Go ahead and give the newsletter service a shot with a 30-day trial subscription. Who knows? Maybe the next thing that will get hiked will be your interest.