It's hard to find places to get a decent return on your money. Around the globe, there is now $13 trillion of negative-yielding government debt, according to Bank of America Merrill Lynch.

Even in Italy, a country with massive banking problems, more than $1.5 trillion in government debt has a negative interest rate.

In an earlier blog post, we discussed the problems caused by negative interest rates. Yet, since that blog post came out just two months ago, we've added another $3 trillion to the negative-yielding pile.

Fortunately, there are other ways besides government securities to get a return on your invested money. And today we'll explore one of them--owning dividend-paying stocks.