Layout:
Home > $20 Challenge

$20 Challenge

May 13th, 2006 at 04:52 am

I've decided to join in on the $20 challenge. My first unusual action is joining HeliumKnowledge. I haven't taken part in any of the sites that pay you for writing. This will be my first experience with it. I'm hoping to make at least a little bit extra income by using it, we'll see how it goes.

I will probably put most, if not all, of my $20 challenge deposits into paying off debt since it does me more good to get rid of it than to earn interest on savings.

edit: Oh, another thing I did today that will count towards the challenge - I invested money in stocks for the first time ever. (Scary and exciting!)

I had signed up with Sharebuilder in order to qualify for a good chunk of money from one of my "get paid to..." sites. I deposited $15 at the time and another $10 this week, originally planning to earn money through the money market fund. Today I decided to put that $25 into 2 stocks. (I couldn't decide between them.)
One of them is almost 2 shares, the other is probably about a third of a share. A total of $17 dollars. The last $8 went towards Sharebuilder fees. Here's the thing though - I used their "Plan" link to make these buys. By doing that it should qualify me for $25 they agreed to give me thanks to a promo code I had.

"To receive the ShareBuilder $25 Promotion, all you need to do is make sure you've set up your ShareBuilder Plan and have a transaction before 02/05/2008"

If it does, then that makes $17 dollars worth of stock plus whatever my returns are on those stocks basically free since I will get another $25 put into my money market fund. and I will have $17+ to put towards my challenge, the way I see it.

4 Responses to “$20 Challenge”

  1. phd Says:
    1147539260

    Sharebuilder sounds like a great idea. Just make sure all your money doesn't get eaten up in their fees.

  2. wooleyduck Says:
    1147547344

    Yeah, I don't think I'll invest again until I have quite a bit to use to sort of counteract the fees. I wouldn't have this time had it not been for the $25 offer.
    I may later on use one of their less basic programs and probably save money on fees that way but that's much further down the road.

  3. baselle Says:
    1147568135

    Sharebuilder is great especially for keeping all your holdings in one spot and for being able to buy nearly any stock, but if you find yourself gravitating toward stocks that pay a dividend, look into dividend reinvestment programs (DRPs). Depending on the company stock you invest in, you can put in small amounts toward your position and reinvest the quarterly dividends for free.
    Text is www.directinvesting.com and Link is
    www.directinvesting.com to search for companies that DRP.

  4. wooleyduck Says:
    1147592497

    Hey, cool, thanks for the heads up.

Leave a Reply

(Note: If you were logged in, we could automatically fill in these fields for you.)
*
Will not be published.
   

* Please spell out the number 4.  [ Why? ]

vB Code: You can use these tags: [b] [i] [u] [url] [email]