3 Dividend ETF Picks That Could Build Serious Long-Term Wealth

When most investors think about building wealth, high-performance growth stocks come to mind. And understandably so. After all, these tickers -- by design -- often dish out market-leading gains.

Growth stocks aren't the only path to riches, though. If you're patient enough to leave them alone for long enough, the cumulative effect of consistent dividend payments reinvested in more shares of the stock paying them can build serious wealth as well. Again, you just need to be patient to get that ball rolling.

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With that as the backdrop, here's a closer look at three dividend-oriented exchange-traded funds you might want to plug into sooner than later. Notice that each one is at least somewhat different than the other two, meaning there's a benefit to owning all three since they'll all perform well at different times.

Schwab U.S. Dividend Equity ETF

If there's only room for one dividend fund in your portfolio right now, the Schwab U.S. Dividend Equity ETF (NYSEMKT: SCHD) is your first best bet... not because of what it owns, but what it doesn't own.

At first blush, it looks more or less like any other dividend ETF. Dig deeper, though. This fund is meant to mirror the Dow Jones U.S. Dividend 100™ Index.

That may not mean a whole lot to most investors, but this will: Unlike most index funds that select their underlying stocks based on nothing more than sector or size, the Dow Jones U.S. Dividend 100 Index specifically seeks out stocks with fundamentals that are more attractive than its peers and at least five years' worth of annual dividend growth, prioritizing tickers with higher dividend yields. That's why this ETF's trailing dividend yield of 3.3% is measurably higher than most other dividend ETFs. That, and the fact that the underlying index is more equal-weighted than cap-weighted, preventing massive companies from being over-represented. Its biggest holdings right now are Merck, Home Depot, and UnitedHealth, if that tells you anything. Although it's not the intent, it's very much a value fund rather than a growth fund.

Yes, that's a big reason SCHD has mostly underperformed since this bull market began back in late 2022. It's been led by growth stocks, particularly AI technology stocks.

Nothing lasts forever, though. Value names will outperform again sooner rather than later, as higher interest rates suggest we're progressing into the latter phases of an economic growth cycle. In fact, we're already seeing hints of this in this fund's recent performance.