Get off the sofa to put a spring in your finances

Nobody has to buy a sofa, and the share price has halved since the company revealed just how few of us have done since Christmas. Yet Land of Leather is continuing its share buyback programme, and the directors, led by chairman Roger Matthews and managing director Steve Jenkins, have invested since the results.

While we must await the annual results to see the full damage to the upholstery, this doesn't sound like a company that's about to put the dividend into the skip, and the payment is 12.5p on shares that cost 58p. Land of Leather is the market leader in these living room flagships, and a year ago the shares cost 320p.

If furniture looks too risky, then here's clothes retailer Next, whose chief executive Simon Wolfson was even more pessimistic than usual in his trading update.

After the grim results from Marks & Spencer yesterday, shares in Next dived to £13.55, where they yield 3.6%, and the dividend will rise even if profits may not.

If shares seem too scary, remember that a five-year government stock offers only the illusion of safety, with a guaranteed return of 4.4%, or 3.6% after basic rate tax. If retail price inflation stays at its current 4.3%, you won't even get your money back. Instead, look at some unfashionable shares where the dividend is highly unlikely to be cut, and wait for fashion to change, as it always does.

It took real talent to find a worse name than Slough Estates, but the directors managed it, and Segro, as it's now called, has forecast 23p of dividends this year, or 5.4% of the current 428p price. Its property portfolio is as strong and unexciting as ever, and it's a nearcertainty that when that five-year Government stock matures, Segro's dividend will be significantly higher than it was last year.

When it comes to unexciting investments, BT is in a class of its own. It will never be rated as a growth stock, however hard chief executive Ben Verwaayen tries to re-invent it. Yet its dull old business has shown astonishing resilience, its management has improved markedly, and on its newly-resurrected dividend, its shares yield 5.5% at 273p. This week Yell, the Yellow Pages business that BT used to own, has plumbed new depths, leaving John Condron and his fellow directors with big paper losses on the investments they made after last month's results. At 319p the shares will return 6.0%.

Outside the FTSE 100, Tomkins is depressed by the prospects for the automotive industry in America.

As sterling sinks, its dollar earnings will look more attractive, but the shares have yet to respond. At 162p they yield 8.5%. Marstons, Wolverhampton & Dudley Breweries as was, has increased its dividend every year for the last 31 years. Profits from its pubs, bars and breweries are likely to fall this year, but it has strong cash flow, something which is invaluable in hard times. Its shares, down from 483p to 274p, yield 4.7%, as near an index-linked dividend as a share can provide.

There are lots of other examples of shares in these strange markets that are being dumped only because they are not miners, oil explorers or potential bid targets.

In each of the cases above, the income is better than lending to the Government, and by the time your old sofa finally collapses, the gains should more than cover the cost of a visit to Land of Leather..