Almost every ASX investor loves a good dividend. Dividends represent real, cash-in-hand returns from share investing and can provide investors with passive income to help fund the cost of living, or else provide additional firepower to reinvest into even more shares.
But finding ASX shares that offer both reliable and high dividend yields is a hard ask. After all, it is often the case that a high dividend yield and a reliable dividend yield are mutually exclusive. You don't want to be caught in a dividend trap situation.
This occurs when a dividend share seemingly has a high dividend yield on the table, so investors buy in hoping to net that cash flow, only to be caught out when the company promptly cuts its dividend.
So today, let's discuss two ASX dividend shares that I personally own for high-income yields and that have now built a strong track record of delivering for passive income investors.
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2 ASX dividend shares I'd buy for reliably high yields today
National Australia Bank Ltd (ASX: NAB)
ASX bank shares are probably the go-to space on the ASX when chasing high dividends. That's more than understandable, considering the decades of fat, fully franked dividends that the likes of Commonwealth Bank of Australia (ASX: CBA), Westpac Banking Corp (ASX: WBC), and NAB have delivered to Australians.
As it stands today, NAB is my pick of the bunch. This ASX bank share has been jacking up its payouts over the past few years at quite a clipping pace. The 83 cents per share interim dividend that investors received earlier this month was a decent hike over last year's corresponding dividend of 73 cents — and 60 cents before that. Indeed, NAB's 2022 total of $1.51 per share was also a decent hike over 2021's total of $1.27.
Today, NAB is trading on a dividend yield of 5.68%, or 8.11% grossed-up with those full franking credits. That's at the upper end of the ASX banking range right now and is clearly more appealing than CBA's current yield of 3.99%.
Telstra Group Ltd (ASX: TLS)
Telstra is another ASX 200 dividend share that has a long history of delivering meaningful dividend income to its investors. Pleasingly, Telstra's payouts have been on the rise again over the past year.
For many years, Tesltra made a habit of sticking to a flat 16 cents per share annual payout. Happily, the company was able to maintain that level of income during the pandemic, which helped reassure me that this telco was a strong and reliable income payer.
But additionally, Telstra gave its investors a much-welcomed pay rise in its final dividend last August.
That payment saw Telstra fork out 8.5 cents per share, which the company maintained back in March's final dividend as well.
Today, that gives Telstra a trailing dividend yield of 4.01%. But Telstra's dividends typically come fully franked as well. That means we can gross up this high yield to a pleasing 5.73%.
