Currently, the Federal Reserve is crushing savers and income investors by keeping interest rates near zero.

#-ad_banner-#But the good news is that there are dozens of safe ways to make 10 times more than you would by investing in a CD or a Treasury bill. In fact, there are currently 288 stocks that yield more than 10%, 173 that yield more than 12% and 95 yielding 15% or more.

While not all stocks yielding double digits are good investments, owning a handful of reliable dividend payers is the safest, easiest way to build wealth.

n fact, 156 years of data prove that owning dividend paying stocks and reinvesting those dividends beats all other investment approaches hands down.

If you’re skeptical consider this: Anyone who invested $1,000 in the S&P 500 in 1950 would have $1,033,799 today as long as they reinvested the dividends. Without dividend reinvestment, that figure shrinks to a measly $117,471.

So why does investing in dividend payers make such a difference? Because these are the stocks that often perform the best, even during periods of extreme market turmoil.

Take the vicious bear market from 2000 to 2002 for example. Companies that didn’t have a dividend sank 33.1% on average, while dividend payers actually raised an average 10.4% over the same period.

When you can traverse bear markets like this, you end up way ahead of the crowd over the long haul.

According to Ned Davis Research, $10,000 invested in dividend payers of the S&P 500 in 1972 would have shot up to $226,000 by the start of 2010. Anyone who invested in non-dividend paying S&P stocks actually lost 39% over the same period.

Clearly, stocks with a dividend give you a huge edge. But it’s not as simple as buying anything with a double-digit yield.

Now and then you’ll see stocks, bonds and funds sporting outlandish dividends of 25% — sometimes even higher.

Please don’t rush out and blindly buy these super-aggressive yielders. Chances are its share price has been beaten down… and for good reason. Nine times out of 10, a stock yielding more than 15% is in big trouble.

MCI was a great example of this. There was a period when the stock paid a 30% dividend yield. It paid that enormous yield for a few quarters, but that was about it. The company eventually went bankrupt and investors lost everything.

That’s why I spend countless hours each month sifting through SEC filings, annual reports and financial statements to identify the safest, most reliable companies in the market. Some often yield double-digits, while many sport a modest 4% or 5% dividend yield.

Either way, you’re still besting the S&P 500’s yield of 1.9%.

To further my point, look back to the market crash and recession of 2008-2009, which was a brutal period for investors — even dividend lovers. In fact, 2008 was the worst year ever for dividend cuts in the S&P 500.

As the recession ate into profits, some of the biggest corporate names in the country cut their dividends — or eliminated them altogether.

Even so-called dividend aristocrats like General Electric — whose dividends were considered untouchable — felt the axe.

But it was a different story for those following along with my premium advisory High-Yield Investing. At the worst point of the stock market rout in October 2008, the dividend payouts of the 19 companies in our portfolio at the time had actually increased 16.2% over the previous year.

That’s quite a feat considering 61 companies in the S&P 500 eliminated $41 billion in distributions that year.

Even Bank of America, which had increased its dividend for 25 straight years, was forced to cut back. But only one of our portfolio picks cut its dividend (by 7.8%), while the other 18 either held flat or rose, by as much as 111.5%

In the coming weeks, I will teach you how I look for the right high-yielders and reveal a few of my favorite investments along the way. In the meantime, I urge you to check out my latest research report, which goes into depth about how to put high-yield stocks to work for you. To do so, click here.