Do It Yourself with Online Investing
These online investment and stock trading websites are pretty cool, I must say. Even if your company doesn’t offer a 401k, or your are self employed, you can open up a self directed retirement plan through most of them, which gives a lot of people the opportunity for tax breaks and savings that they wouldn’t otherwise have.
I’m sure stockbrokers aren’t too happy about these website’s popularity, but I for one am, since it allows me a lot of freedom in addition to the 401k plan that my job offers - and yes I do participate in that too.
But what the online investing does for me is it gives me the opporunity to educate myself about stocks and mutual funds, and I can then invest in them individually, whereas my job’s 401k somewhat limits my choices for diversity and income.
My online investing website of choice is Sharebuilder, but there are lots of other great and reputable websites out there that will allow you to let your money work for you, instead of you working for your money all the time. Some of the benefits and services these online investing sites offer are managing your buying and selling online, many times in real time, as long as the market is open.
They will allow you to (at a premium usually) put a price on your stocks that you want to sell them at, so you don’t lose money if that’s the way you want to go. Many of them offer free stock advice and education or training programs online - almost like quick tutorials to get you up to speed as an intro to their system and investing in general.
I’ll go over some more benefits of online investing programs next time, as I firmly believe it’s an opportunity that everyone should explore, regardless of whether you already participate in a retirement program at your place of employment.
