Just 1 FTSE 100 stock for 10 years of income? Here's what I'm going to buy

You have been charged a duty to buy one FTSE 100 With a budget to hold for the next ten years, I know which company will be on my shopping list.

What makes this dividend stock so great?

Before revealing the identity of my top income provider, it makes sense to briefly mention why I chose it.

First and foremost, I wasn't looking for a stock with the highest dividend yield.

Although there are exceptions to this rule, a monster payout can be a sign that the market has concerns about how well a company is trading. In such a case, this concern can cause investors to sell and the share price to fall. This raises the yield, but there is a big question mark about whether it will actually pay off.

Call me boring but I'd rather get a mediocre dividend than a big one that never comes.

Instead of size, I place more importance on whether the company has a good track record to raise dividends over time. Why? Because the trend of foot traffic suggests that this business is good at increasing profits over time.

And the winner is…

The top of the revenue stream, at least in my opinion, is the defense juggernaut BAE Systems (LSE: BA.)

This company satisfies the criteria mentioned above. Yes, the yield is only 2.5% as things stand. But it has an almost flawless track record of increasing the amount of money it returns to its investors.

On top of this, analysts expect this year's dividend to be paid twice as much as earnings. If we put it another way, there is a good chance that it will be paid.

On demand

And I think the outlook for benefits from BAE is very good.

This is one of the biggest players in the industry that needs to keep innovating to get rid of bad actors. In fact, ongoing conflicts such as those involving Ukraine and Russia have prompted governments around the world to increase their defense budgets. This caused BAE's order book to swell.

The downside of this purple patch is that most of the growth has already come at a price. Shares currently change hands around 20 times in FY24. That's more than BAE's average over the past five years (15). If the company now fails to meet expectations, some of the recent gains may be lost.

This brings me to another important point.

The true dose

Exercises like this are just for fun. In fact, relying on just one stock to meet all my income needs spells disaster.

This is not idle talk. FTSE 100 peers Burberry forced to completely cut his salary in 2024 due to flagging sales. That's a company with 168 years of trading under its belt.

The best way to reduce this risk is to hold shares in various UK businesses. Doing so should provide some level of protection even if one or two are forced to revise their dividend policies.

Future purchases

Right now, I prefer to have a growth stock in my portfolio, which is why I'm not in a rush to buy this stock today.

But I can see myself participating in the future if I can retire early and live off my investments.