I bought enough stock that the dividend covers my monthly fees.

That's already a good bit of capital locked in stocks just for banking fees. Not saying that's not worth it but not everyone has the luxury of having that capital.

it’s up like 18%+ since I started the other year so I’m not going backwards there either.

Note that this is mostly due to the current economic situation. As the world as a whole recovers from the pandemic, global indices rise.

With this sort of strategy, you must expect draw downs of just as much however; a crisis usually sends stock prices down faster and further than a recovery period like ours sends them up by. As an example: The start of the Palestine war last year sent the FTSE-All-World index down 5% in just a week or so.

Historically, the stock prices as a whole have grown around 7% p.a., so if the historical average growth continues, investing in a broad spectrum of stocks is a winning strategy.