Financial Newbie » Investing http://www.financialnewbie.com Getting started with personal finance Sat, 31 Oct 2009 06:22:16 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.5 en hourly 1 Sharebuilder or how to start investing with $100 http://www.financialnewbie.com/2008/10/27/sharebuilder-or-how-to-start-investing-with-100/ http://www.financialnewbie.com/2008/10/27/sharebuilder-or-how-to-start-investing-with-100/#comments Mon, 27 Oct 2008 19:04:53 +0000 admin http://www.financialnewbie.com/?p=39 I have little investing knowledge or education, so I found that the following article lines up pretty well with my still developing thoughts on the subject and making the purchases through Sharebuilder. The article is especially helpful if you’re like me and have no idea how or where to buy stocks from, with the additionaly problem of having little cash to start with. Sharebuilder is a good, cheap starting point and he lists a few ETF’s to purchase starting out.

One thing to watch out for with Sharebuilder is the $4 cost per transaction. If you only have $20 a month to spend, I would recommend putting it into the Sharebuilder money market account or a different savings account and not making a purchase until you get to at least $100, thus reducing the fee as a percentage of your purchase. The site will let you do this automatically, so you could have it withdraw $20 a month to the money market account and then purchase an asset automatically once it has $100 to spend.

You can get a further primer on investing at Morningstar.com, where they discuss building a portfolio and different asset classes. You will have to sign up at their site, but the information is available to those at the free membership level. The Motley Fool is another resource to consider and their advice seems solid. Again, I can’t speak with authority, but I hope those provide you the starting point that they provided for me.

]]> http://www.financialnewbie.com/2008/10/27/sharebuilder-or-how-to-start-investing-with-100/feed/ 0 The mistake of selling out in a down market http://www.financialnewbie.com/2008/10/24/the-mistake-of-selling-out-in-a-down-market/ http://www.financialnewbie.com/2008/10/24/the-mistake-of-selling-out-in-a-down-market/#comments Fri, 24 Oct 2008 19:04:03 +0000 admin http://www.financialnewbie.com/?p=34 Previously, I briefly touched on the possibility of investing in a down market. A broadly diversified low-cost index fund is likely to be a great value purchase at this time, as fear overcomes the market and investors greatly undervalue companies. These are investments in companies that are still going to be here and setting records for years down the road. However, I’m no financial advisor or guru, nor can I pretend to be one so you’ll probably want advice from someone far smarter than me.

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