Kermit Weeks has a great life. Because his geologist father asked for a 2.5% royalty from BHP Billiton in lieu of payment for helping the company find oil, Kermit and his kin are multimillionaires. Kermit's antique airplane collection was even featured in Forbes.

But that can't happen to you, right?

Actually, it can ... with dividends.

Be smart with your cash
While BHP still pays Kermit, that money is "less significant than his income from investments." You see, Kermit reinvests his dividends, and that's the secret to supercharging returns.

Reinvesting means you use dividends to buy more stock. It's a simple process, but its effect is overwhelming. While a $1,000 investment in Altria in 1980 would be worth $71,000 today, 25 years of reinvested dividends would make it worth nearly $170,000 (and you'd be earning $7,000 per year in dividends).

Multiply that effect a few times over. That's why Kermit Weeks is living in the lap of luxury.

Make your dreams come true
But you have to be smart when choosing dividend sugar-daddies. Since nearly 3,000 publicly traded companies pay shareholders, that can be tricky. After all, you can't reinvest in a company that goes bankrupt, and no amount of reinvesting could have saved you from DaimlerChrysler (NYSE:DCX) over the past few years.

The key is to find companies that deliver capital gains and growing dividends. For Fool dividend guru Mathew Emmert, these are growing stocks that generate substantial free cash flow and pay out less than 50% of it to shareholders. Companies that fit this profile include:

Company

FCF per share

Dividend

FCF Payout Ratio

Costco (NASDAQ:COST)

$1.08

$0.46

43%

General Mills (NYSE:GIS)

$3.87

$1.36

35%

Clorox (NYSE:CLX)

$3.20

$1.16

36%

Procter & Gamble (NYSE:PG)

$2.35

$1.12

48%

Hormel (NYSE:HRL)

$1.90

$0.56

29%

Campbell Soup (NYSE:CPB)

$1.78

$0.72

40%

Data courtesy of Capital IQ, a division of Standard & Poor's.

Yet none of these cash opportunities fit the bill as Income Investor recommendations. Why? Because their dividend yields are simply too low. Every month Mathew sets his sights on finding two dividend growth opportunities among REITs, MLPs, and stocks with greater than 3% yields -- a nice chunk of change to reinvest.

Even if you have no interest in antique airplanes, living off your investments may still sound appealing. Click here to let Mathew and his Motley Fool Income Investor newsletter service help you do it.

This article was originally published on Dec. 23, 2005. It has been updated.

Tim Hanson does not own shares of any company mentioned. Costco is a Stock Advisor recommendation. No Fool is too cool fordisclosure... and Tim's pretty darn cool.