Sunday, November 27, 2011

Dabbling in Stocks

I saw that ING Direct was offering a $100 bonus through Sharebuilder if you opened an account this weekend and made two trades by the end of January. I know very, very little about stocks, but I decided to take the plunge and try to earn $100 (and maybe more if my stocks do well).

I transfered $50 from my ING Savings into a Sharebuilder account. I signed up for a free trial of their premium service so that I could make investments for only $1 (gotta remember to cancel is before January 1st!). I took a survey indicating that I was conservative about investing (more afraid of losing money than excited about earning it), and it suggested two investments. I set it up to make the trades on Tuesday. Since it's two investments, I'm hoping that counts for my two trades. I'll have to double check on that though.

The way I figure is that even if I lose all $50 (which is doubtful), I will still end up $50 ahead thanks to the bonus. I'm honestly planning on closing the account once the bonus posts to my account, since the whole stocks thing makes me nervous. Maybe I'll keep dabbling and let that $50 investment ride, but we'll see how it goes.

Anyone else done Sharebuilder before? I'd love some insight or advice on how to make it work for me!

2 comments:

  1. Ahh! I've never done sharebuilder, but it looks like I missed this :( For some reason I didn't see the bonus or I'd so be on board!

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  2. my husband signed up too! we put in $100 from our savings account. We also know very little about stocks but he has taken on the task and I am very happy about it, because that's one thing i don't want to worry about. he's super excited about it!

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