{"id":879372,"date":"2026-10-12T06:14:24","date_gmt":"2026-10-12T06:14:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/879372\/"},"modified":"2026-10-12T06:14:24","modified_gmt":"2026-10-12T06:14:24","slug":"9627-shares-of-wesfarmers-pay-an-income-equal-to-the-age-pension","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/879372\/","title":{"rendered":"9,627 shares of Wesfarmers pay an income equal to the Age Pension"},"content":{"rendered":"

Wesfarmers Ltd (ASX: WES<\/a>) shares are an excellent option for Australians seeking passive income<\/a>. It’s such a solid business that I’d rather invest in it than receive the Age Pension.<\/p>\n

Wesfarmers is the company that owns various businesses such as Bunnings, Kmart, Officeworks, Priceline, Target, a chemicals, energy and fertiliser business called WesCEF and other healthcare businesses (such as InstantScripts).<\/p>\n

Australia’s Age Pension is one of the most generous in the world. The maximum per fortnight that a single person can receive was recently hiked to $1,237.70 per person.<\/p>\n

For me, there are two key reasons why I’d prefer Wesfarmers shares to the Age Pension.<\/p>\n

\"Senior<\/p>\n

Image source: Getty Images<\/p>\n

The payout is growing faster than inflation<\/p>\n

The Age Pension is regularly growing over time, with inflation<\/a> playing a key role in how fast it increases.<\/p>\n

However, the Wesfarmers dividend is growing faster. Therefore, my cash flow could steadily improve beyond the Age Pension if I started with the same income.<\/p>\n

In FY26<\/a> \u2013 the financial year that finished in June 2026 \u2013 Wesfarmers’ board decided to hike its annual dividend per share by 7.8% to $2.22. That payout growth rate was significantly more than the inflation rate.<\/p>\n

Its dividend is projected to increase again in FY27. According to Commsec’s forecast, the business is expected to grow its payout by 5.5% in FY27, 6.5% in FY28, and 8.8% in FY29.<\/p>\n

Of course, projections are not guaranteed future payments.<\/p>\n

Potential for a rising Wesfarmers share price<\/p>\n

Another reason I prefer this ASX dividend share is its potential for capital growth. I think it’s a good thing to have a strong asset base.<\/p>\n

In the past four years, it has risen by 70%, at the time of writing. Past performance is not a guarantee of future returns.<\/p>\n

The business has proven that its main businesses are excellent at growing their earnings. In FY26 alone, Bunnings Group (which includes Beaumont Tiles) grew earnings by 5.1%, and Kmart Group grew earnings by 6%. WesCEF grew earnings by 18.5%, but it’s significantly smaller than Bunnings and Kmart.<\/p>\n

In my view, for two retailers to deliver solid growth in a difficult retail environment is really impressive.<\/p>\n

Both Bunnings and Kmart achieve returns on equity (ROC) of close to 70%, while Wesfarmers’ overall return on equity (ROE)<\/a> was 35.5%. The company achieves enormous returns on money invested in certain areas of the business, which, to me, is a stronger indicator that future internal investments can help profit grow.<\/p>\n

Over the long-term, profit growth is the best driver for the Wesfarmers share price, so I’d say this business is a solid ‘compounder<\/a>‘ option.<\/p>\n

How many shares it’d take to match the Age Pension<\/p>\n

I’m going to focus on the FY27 payout, given that investors have already received the FY26 dividend.<\/p>\n

The business is projected to pay an annual dividend per share of $2.34 in FY27. The maximum Age Pension currently annualises to an approximate total of $32,180.<\/p>\n

If we exclude franking credits from the income goal, it’d take 13,753 Wesfarmers shares. Including franking credits<\/a>, it would take 9,627 Wesfarmers shares to match the Age Pension. <\/p>\n

But, I wouldn’t suggest putting someone’s entire investment portfolio into one business. I’d include other quality ASX shares as well.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Wesfarmers Ltd (ASX: WES) shares are an excellent option for Australians seeking passive income. It’s such a solid…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":879373,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[39],"tags":[28,147,530],"class_list":["post-879372","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-personal-finance","tag-business","tag-personal-finance","tag-personalfinance"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/879372","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=879372"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/879372\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/879373"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=879372"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=879372"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=879372"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}