Having a little time to think, ponder and then come to a judgment can provide more of us the better ability to make better decisions when it comes to our favorite stocks, bonds and funds.

But at the same time, when something happens, we still need the facts. And we need them now.

So I’m making another change to By George and the Personal Finance Weekly Comment.

First up is a name change to Personal Finance: Pay Me Weekly to reflect its real purpose: to focus on the issues crucial for our investment and portfolio well-being. Don’t worry; I’ll still include the “dead guys of the week” section, as well as some of my how-to-spend-it discussions for some of the best ways to enjoy life through great food and travel as these are just as important to me as they’ve been for years.

But this format will give me the focus to follow the investments in the market that do what’s proven to work not just for a day or a week but for quarters and years.

Pay me: It’s that simple. The Personal Finance: Pay Me Weekly is all about the companies, the bonds and the partnerships that treat us as owners by paying us.

It’s going to be posted on the Personal Finance Web site at www.pfnewsletter.com and will be available to anyone. It will also be delivered to your e-mail inbox each weekend to get us ready for the upcoming week while giving us the ability to form some judgment on the prior week’s events.

Meanwhile, I’m already posting short updates throughout each market day on the PF Web site, available to all PF subscribers. When something happens, I’ll make sure that my team and I have an update concerning all of the stocks, bonds and funds we cover.

This transition will occur in the coming weeks. Look for my journal--now PF: Pay Me Weekly--to read about all the best ways to get paid and get paid regularly starting next weekend.

Those of you who have been reading my articles for the past several years know that when it comes to investing, I’m all about getting paid. “Getting paid” means investing in companies that treat us as they should--as owners, not just fodder.

When I took over as editor of Personal Finance, I immediately looked at what wasn’t working for subscribers in many industries, from petrol to food companies. I then went to work to figure out not just how to dig us out but to build a better way of investing. This became the foundation of the Cash Cow section of the Growth Portfolio.

This drive for a base of big dividend-paying companies with less bull and more real milk led to a collection of Canadian companies called income or business trusts that operated in many of the industries we wanted to be in. And they did more than most of their peers in the US: They paid out a big chunk of the profits, either monthly or quarterly.

The result was that most of us made a killing, not just from the big dividend flows but also the appreciation in their shares as more and more investors from Canada and around the world followed in our footsteps.

But to keep the cash flowing, we aren’t just limited to Canada. Instead, there are a series of new Cash Cows located around the world, as well as in the US. All it takes is simply learning about how another form of business structure--partnerships--works, and what, where and how to buy them.

What made Canadian trusts so attractive is that they’re structured to pay out the profits to unitholders rather than just letting it pile up idly or wind up in management’s personal coffers. But with the new tax changes, many of the trusts will be changed dramatically in the coming quarters.

With those changes, it won’t make sense to own many trusts unless you’re a speculator or have a very good handle on some of the specific trusts that can make the transition to an alternative with the new Canadian tax regime, as my comrade Roger Conrad discusses in Canadian Edge as well as in Personal Finance.

But this doesn’t mean that we don’t have other great alternatives running businesses in varied industries that pay out our cut of the profits without double taxation. They’re called publicly traded partnerships (PTPs).

And we don’t have to worry that one government will surprise us with some whacky new tax change; there are plenty of PTPs in markets from Canada to Europe and Asia. We’ve actually got plenty of quality partnerships right here in the US that own great assets with lots of cash flowing to their investors.

Over the last five years alone, the market for US PTPs, as tracked by a leading index, has returned an annualized 22 percent each year, including dividends and ample price gains that make mincemeat out of the biggie oils in the US and many of the Canadian petrol trusts. And the PTP market has been way ahead of the general US stock market as measured by the S&P 500.

For those who lament the demise of some of our past favorites of Canadian petrols, such as Enerplus Resources, note that our PTP replacements for it inside the Cash Cows section of the Personal Finance Growth Portfolio are doing even better. Our replacement petrol partnerships alone have outgunned and outpaid Enerplus by as much as four times so far this year. The results speak for themselves: Even with slightly lower dividends, the partnerships’ rising revenues and payout abilities are proving out in the markets.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. What’s past is mere prologue. PTPs are still cheap, with yields of 5 percent to 10 percent-plus coupled with distribution growth in the 5 percent to 15 percent range. Simply put, the best PTPs offer a combination of high current income and the potential for that income to grow rapidly over time.

The average petrol PTP currently pays around 6 percent and has managed distribution growth of more than 9 percent annualized during the past five years. And that payout percentage is based on trailing dividend yields; looking at indicated yields (declared distributions for the coming year), the average is nearly a full percentage point higher at 6.8 percent.

But dividends are just the beginning. We can also growth our cash piles in PTPs. While many markets still have some stocks and trusts yielding more than 5.9 percent, there are fewer and fewer--even before the Canadian tax changes--that can grow distributions by 9 percent annualized.

This means that while many of our successful trusts inside Personal Finance saw their yields fall as share prices climbed, in the better portion of the market, PTP distributions can expand, keeping yields high even as stock prices climb.

So, how do we go about becoming a partner? Making partner, whether as a lawyer or investment banker, means that you’ve made it. You’re part of the core of the firm, and you get your piece of the profits. And while making partner at the big legal firms or investment banks is a challenge--necessitating inhuman man hours, lots of politics and even some family connections--when it comes to the investment markets, all it takes is putting in your order at your brokerage.

Let’s start with the US market for local partnerships. PTPs are limited liability shares that trade on the major exchanges, including the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE).

Unlike regular corporations with publicly traded stock, partnerships don't pay any corporate-level tax; instead, these partnerships pass through the majority of their income to investors in the form of regular (typically quarterly) distributions. In this way, they’re similar to the old Canadian trusts but without the new tax risks looming on the horizon.

Partnerships raise capital by issuing units--the rough equivalent of shares in a common stock. When you buy a PTP, you’re known as a unitholder.

To qualify for PTP status, a partnership must receive at least 90 percent of its income from what the IRS calls “qualifying” sources--basically, activities related to the production, processing or transportation of natural resources like oil, natural gas and coal, as well as other commercial ventures.

PTPs consist of two basic entities, limited partners (LPs) and a general partner (GP). When you buy a PTP you become an LP unitholder, which entitles you to cash distributions, basically the cash flows received from running the business.

But LPs do not actively manage or control the assets of the partnership. The actual day-to-day management of a PTP is a task performed by the GP.

GPs typically are compensated for their services in two ways. First, most GPs also own LP units and receive cash flows just like any other unitholder. Second, GPs earn what's known as an incentive distribution, which covers their management duties.

The effect of the incentive distribution formula is that the higher the quarterly distributions paid to LP unitholders, the higher the management fee paid to the GP. The idea behind this is that the GP has an incentive to try to boost distributions.

The bottom line: PTPs are simply another form of incorporation that enables companies with steady, cash-generating businesses to efficiently raise capital and distribute profits to unitholders. And their dividends make them so attractive, much like those we enjoy from our favorite Canadian trusts.

Partnerships have become a vital part of our newer successes inside the Cash Cow section of the Personal Finance Growth Portfolio. And like the other holdings in this section, partnerships provide us access to a steady stream of dividends. And although many dividends are in the single-digit yields, it’s not just the return on our principal but, even more so, the return of our principal that really matters.

One of the costly lessons too many folks learn is the lure of big dividend rates from more speculative companies or trusts. They invest, only to find out the hard way that there was trouble and that the high dividend was a trap to keep cash coming in.

Right now there are plenty of Canadian trusts with huge, double-digit dividend yields. And many of these were in the same position before the tax bombshell. Not all were the most successful of trusts, just those that needed to pay so much in order to keep raising capital in share sales.

Even before the tax bomb went off in Ottawa, many of these trusts were already taking hits, only to unwind when the new tax changes were announced.

The same can be said of many financial stocks in the US. For the past several quarters, we’ve seen too many financials that paid big dividends based on their great acumen or that ran lending operations to folks who never planned to pay them back. Or even if they were being repaid, their inept management, given changing interest rate environments in the US, Europe or Asia, led them to a balance sheets blowup because management lacked serious asset and liability management skills.

So, do we focus only on the biggest possible dividends and ignore the single-digit ones? Or do we recognize that a steady 6 percent to 10 percent yield is better than a 15 percent-plus yield with trouble?

To us and those who learned the hard way, the answer is simple. Steady, sustainable dividends along with solid businesses that can expand their revenues and profits are the way to go. And for the most part, this is the structure that makes up modern partnerships that at their core do exactly what we want: They pay us.

Come and Chat

If you’d like to hear firsthand about some of our investments, particularly those in some of the more-interesting markets beyond the usual Wall Street fluff, join me on one or more of my upcoming conferences or travel opportunities--see below for the various opportunities available.

Head out to the East Coast, and join me and PF Associate Editors Roger Conrad and Elliott Gue at the Washington, DC, Money Show, September 6-8, 2007. The conference will take place at the Wardman Park Marriott, located in downtown Washington DC. Click here to register for free. Be sure to tell them I sent you.

Noble palaces, historic villages, stunning natural vistas and indispensable, one-on-one conversation: I’ll be cruising down the blue Danube Sept. 8-16, 2007, along with PF Associate Editors Roger Conrad and Elliott Gue. You’ll have unfettered access to talk about your portfolio or any other topic that comes up as you take in Central Europe’s rich culture and historic beauty aboard the River Cloud, a “five-star floating hotel.” Interested in exploring Europe and your portfolio? Contact Joseph H. Conlin Travel Management toll free at 877-814-6502 or via e-mail at nycimpresario@mac.com to finalize your plans.

Farewell

Finally, a man who made soda pop really pay died at 79 years.

Pepsi Cola (NYSE: PEP) has often been the also-ran to Coca-Cola (NYSE: KO). But for many chose Pepsi over Coke, thanks to the efforts of Al Pottasch. It was a solid product, but Al’s ad campaign built around his phrase “The Pepsi Generation” made the difference. And he did it all armed simply with a creative writing degree from good old Penn State.

If you’re interested in having me or one of my cohorts address any investment or professional groups, please e-mail me at bygeorge@kci-com.com with ideas or suggestions.

Neil J. George, Jr.

Errors/Omissions: I always welcome being called on facts, figures and commentary from readers and look forward to your feedback. I can be reached by e-mail at bygeorge@kci-com.com.