From the perspective of an income investor who wants to earn dividends for many years, there is not much point buying a stock if its dividend is regularly cut or is not reliable. BankFinancial has been paying dividends for a long time, but for the purpose of this analysis, we only examine the past 10 years of payments. The dividend has been cut by more than 20% on at least one occasion historically. During the past ten-year period, the first annual payment was US$0.28 in 2009, compared to US$0.40 last year. Dividends per share have grown at approximately 3.6% per year over this time. The dividends haven't grown at precisely 3.6% every year, but this is a useful way to average out the historical rate of growth.