re: Help a young buck become a savvy investor

quote:

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So I'm thinking about investing in stocks. Start small and take $100 a paycheck and put it towards an investing account. Get my feet wet, learn a little on my own, and plus it would be a better way to spend my money than on the random purchases I currently burn through. Is this smart or should I go through a personal investor? Also, what site should I use to buy stocks and such?

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If you are only going to be doing $100 per month, you'll get killed with trading fees if you buy individual stocks using most sites.

For what you are talking about, if you don't go with an index fund, you might want to look into loyal3.com. You can invest smaller amounts and its commission free (the catch is that your trades aren't real time and the selection is limited to stocks supported by the platform, although there are many good choices that are supported).

I have my "real" account elsewhere, but I started using Loyal3 sort of as an experiment on myself to see how much money I could save without really noticing it. I have about $150 a month being invested automatically, and then I probably do another $100 or so each month as one-time investments (for instance, anytime I don't have to pay for a meal I'll invest $10 or $25 instead).