USA Today reports the average pay raise in 2014 was 3%. Regular Daily readers know Mark explains how to earn substantial, double-digit pay raises every year. His suggestions all include working harder to become invaluable to your company. But one smart group of people just received double-digit pay raises… and they didn’t exert one iota of additional effort.

Tom Dyson and Greg Wilson of the Legacy Portfolio explain how in the excerpt below:

We’ve almost finished our third full year with the Legacy Portfolio…

Now, three years isn’t enough time to see your portfolio swell to enormous proportions. At least, not without gambling and taking unnecessary risks.

But we’re off to a great start. Our portfolio is showing every indication that it’ll make us—and our kids—quite wealthy someday.

Our average Legacy stock has returned 31.8% for us. That’s over an average holding period of just 670 days—less than two years.

And the best part is that our stocks are poised to continue delivering double-digit annual returns for many years—and decades—to come.

All 13 of our Legacy stocks announced dividend raises, with the average raise being 11%.

Think about that for a second. As a Legacy investor, you got an 11% raise this year. Did you get that much at your job?

And we expect our Legacy companies will continue to give us healthy raises year after year.

Our portfolio continues to rise in value as well. Over the past 12 months, Legacy stocks gained an average of 12.9%.

Now, regular Legacy readers know we don’t judge the Legacy Portfolio on year-to-year results. It’s the antithesis to long-term investing.

We won’t be trading in and out of stocks. We won’t be judging ourselves on the yearly return. And when prices go down, we’ll be buying more.

But when we look at these numbers, we feel deep satisfaction. The Legacy approach is serving our subscribers well.

Tom and Greg’s January “Year in Review” issue is a “pay raise” tour de force. Owning the best companies in the world means relentless pay hikes (in the form of rising dividends) for decades on end.

One recurring sentence echoed throughout the issue: “We expect another dividend raise in (X month) 2015.” It’s the reason why Mark says there’s no surer, safer way to generate substantial stock market wealth than through Legacy investing.