Financial planners often recommend the 4% rule as a guideline for determining the annual amount that a retiree can withdraw from portfolios without depleting their nest egg over a 30-year retirement. And high-yield dividend stocks are a critical component of executing this strategy.

Financial adviser William Bengen devised the 4% rule after evaluating stock and bond data across several decades and discovering that a pattern of 4% yearly withdrawals provided reasonable security without bleeding a portfolio dry for at least 30 years, even through occasional market downturns.

The concept is simple: Draw down 4% of the portfolio value in the first year of retirement, then a matching amount (adjusted for inflation) in each subsequent year. Bengen himself later updated the number from 4% to 4.5%.

It's a good starting point for planning a comfortable retirement, but investors must consider a couple factors when applying it. For instance, the 4% rule doesn't account for big one-time purchases that might push your spending growth above the rate of inflation. It also assumes future market performance will resemble past results.

That said, income from your investments can count toward that amount, so if you draw a high (and preferably growing) yield from your portfolio, it means you'll only need minimal price appreciation to remain on track.

Here are 14 high-yield dividend stocks to buy that yield 4% or more. These picks have other qualities that are beneficial to retirees, too - some feature much lower volatility than the broader market, and many are consistent dividend raisers whose payouts may keep up with or even outrun inflation.

Chevron

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Chevron (CVX, $120.96) is one of the world's largest integrated energy majors, and it boasts a significant presence in the Permian Basin - America's largest oil-producing basin. Chevron's Permian Basin oil-equivalent production grew 35% year-over-year, to 455,000 barrels per day; it's targeting production of 650,000 barrels per day by 2020.

In addition to solid Permian production gains, Chevron benefitted from the ramp-up of its offshore Gulf of Mexico wells and prolific LNG (liquid natural gas) projects in Australia.

The company nonetheless suffered a considerable pullback in third-quarter profits, from $4 billion a year ago to $2.6 billion in 2019. But the company was facing difficult comparisons to 2018's robust Q3, as well as a $430 million tax charge.

Chevron generates plenty of cash to support its ample dividend, though. It produced $4.2 billion in levered free cash flow (FCF), which was almost twice what it needed to cover its payout. Over the past 12 months, it has generated $13.5 billion in FCF versus $8.9 billion in dividends paid. That's a stark improvement from where CVX was just a few years ago, when an energy-price plunge