Thursday, July 07, 2005

Another Small Step in Investing

So I looked at my direct deposit paycheck stub today, and realized that my meager cost of living increase has gone through. Before taxes, I will now make about $68 dollars more per month.

Very exciting, I know.

So I decided to take that money and do something with it. It's not much, but maybe I can turn it into more. Give myself a bigger raise, as it were. I already have a Sharebuilder account and decided to go through their "Portfolio Wizard" tool and see what it would recommend. I followed the steps and it recommended a couple of investments to make. Coincidentally these were both investments I had looked at already and was interested in making. So I set up $50 a month to go towards those investments.

It's not much, I realize. But now I have $250 per month that is being taken directly out of my check and placed into some sort of Money Market (Virtual Bank or ING) and Investments (Sharebuilder)

We'll see what happens.

4 comments:

savvy said...

It's not how much you make, but how much you keep! I got an equally meager raise this year, something like $50 per month. Instead of letting it slip through my fingers, I increased my bi-weekly payments on a loan by $25. That way my loan will be paid off sooner.

Anonymous said...

Spread over 12 months, that $68 is over $720 per year. That's close enough to an extra $1K a year. Congrats on opening an account with ShareBuilder, I had an account with them but closed the account due to a change in investing strategy. I deposit chunks of my left over paycheck into an investing account at another brokerage and make an IRA contribution every two months in order to max out the contribution by the end of the year. Use the raise to your advantage.

Anonymous said...

Congratulations on your new commitment. I was blog surfing today and ran across your site. I enjoyed my visit.

If I can help at all, just let me know.

Anonymous said...

I think what you did was fantastic! I quit smoking last year and have saved all of the money I used to spend on cigs; also, remember Bush's tax cut from, hmmm, 2002 or 2003? It turned out to be $5 more per paycheck (I get paid weekly) and I have saved that $5 consistently since that time. Every little bit helps!