Sometimes a cash rich company will declare a special one-time dividend to eliminate surplus cash. These special dividends are generally ignored when evaluating a company's dividend growth performance. Special dividends are nice, but the most special dividend is one that increases each year. Here are several companies that recently raised their cash dividends:

During the large market swings up and down it is easy for investors to lose focus on the big picture and not sticking to their financial plan by converting all of their holdings to cash. Luckily there were several dividend companies that reminded their patient long-term holders that increasing dividend payments could help them out in increasing their total returns over time.

Convertibles issued by many airlines, auto makers, big banks, energy outfits and REITs are trading at deep discounts, and have promising upside.

7 Places in the financial sector to start your due diligence.