Want Decades of Passive Income? 3 Stocks to Buy Now.

Passive income is probably what you want if you’re trying to live off your nest egg in retirement. That means you’ll be looking at dividend-paying stocks. Three that should be on your radar screen today are Black Hills (NYSE: BKH), Chevron (NYSE: CVX), and Enterprise Products Partners (NYSE: EPD). Here’s why.

1. Black Hills is a high-yield Dividend King

There’s nothing exciting about Black Hills. And that’s exactly why the stock, and its generous 4.8% dividend yield, are so interesting. For starters, the company is a regulated electric and natural gas utility. That means it has a monopoly in the markets it serves, but it has to get government approval for its rate increases and capital spending plans. Slow and steady growth is the best you can hope for. But given that it has achieved Dividend King status, slow and steady has worked out well for income investors over time.

But what about the future? On that score, Black Hills is kind of small, serving 1.3 million customers in parts of Arkansas, Colorado, Iowa, Kansas, Montana, Nebraska, South Dakota, and Wyoming. But here’s the exciting part: Customer growth in the areas it serves is nearly three times the rate of population growth in the United States. Customer growth supports capital investments in the utility sector, which supports rate increases. In other words, Black Hills’ impressive dividend streak is likely to keep going.

2. Chevron is the strongest giant

Integrated energy giant Chevron competes with some of the largest energy companies on Earth. And its 36-year streak of annual dividend increases isn’t the most impressive of the group. That would be ExxonMobil‘s (NYSE: XOM) 41 years. But there’s one area where the company shines notably brighter than any of its closest peers: the balance sheet. Chevron’s debt-to-equity ratio is the lowest among its peers, giving it more leeway to deal with the inherent ups and downs in oil and natural gas prices. Right now, the debt-to-equity ratio is a tiny 0.12, leaving…