Looking at what dividends do

[NitroZ7]

I reinvest most of the dividends on stocks I own. When you look at the unrealized gain on a statement or in Quicken it takes those dividends and then reinvests them and adds them to your cost basis. This makes sense but does anyone else just keep track of what your initial basis was and then look at what the present value of the holding is? For example I bought 100 shares of Verizon for my kids years ago around $28.00. I have reinvested the dividends and today it is worth $6,500.00. But the dividends get added into the cost basis so it shows around a $2,400.00 gain versus a $3,700.00 increase in value. I know the programs need to do this for tax purposes because that is the true cost basis (and I did pay tax on those dividends) but at the end of the day I still put $2,800.00 in and the rest was funded by the stock itself. Maybe I'm trying to be too optimistic but sometimes it seems like the dividend component gets lost in the numbers when you don't look at what you initially spent versus what it is worth at present time. I know there was a cost to me since I chose to forgo taking the dividend in cash but at the same time it was passive money that went back to work.

[boneil]

In my mind,, the cost basis should decrease to show that you earned more money, because the shares were free. I know thats not how it works, but I like to look at it that way.