Jack's Cash has Moved!!

I decided to get serious about this blogging thing and now have a new website where my blog will be maintained. If you could all update your bookmarks to me to point to JacksCash that would be great.

Website: http://www.JacksCash.com
RSS Feed: http://feeds.feedburner.com/

Hopefully this isn't too much of an inconvenience for everyone but hopefully my new site will be much much better!!

See you at the new place.

Jack
Jack's Cash

Qualified for ShareBuilder Bonus!!

Well after making my purchase yesterday I got a confirmation email from sharebuilder that I qualified for their $50 bonus!  This has been a really good month for my net worth.

You have met the requirements of the iplanlife ShareBuilder promotion and will receive your $50 promotion within 4-6 weeks.

Promo Code: IPLANGIFT

If you have any questions, please contact Customer Care.

Thank you for selecting iplanlife ShareBuilder!

Sincerely,

The ShareBuilder Team

I'm a Shareholder!!

Well one day before I turn 8 months old I am officially a shareholder in the stock market. How exciting!! Not only that I own part of Exxon Mobile, General Electric, PFizer, Johnson & Johnson, Microsoft, Intel, CitiGroup, and Bank of America just to name a few.

Now hold on in my last post I told you I only had $250 to invest, how could I possibly own shares in all of the above companies with only a measly $250 to invest. Well you might have guess it, I invested in a mutual fund, and just not any kind of mutual fund....an index fund.

I invested in VTI which is a Vanguard EFT (Exchange Traded Fund) that tracks the performance of all the U.S . common stocks traded regularly on the NYSE, AMEX, or OTC markets. I actually own a small share of 1,300 of the largest stocks on the US stock exchanges. This means that I will come very close to matching the performance of the stock market as a whole (which has been roughly 10% a year over the last century), which is much better than my ING savings account or my Savings bonds. We'll see how things work out but I will likely move more of my money over time into the stock market as I am pretty much guaranteed superior returns.

ShareBuilder - Partial Shares of Stock

I still haven't decided what I will make my first investment in, but something cool that I didn't realize about ShareBuilder is that I can buy partial shares of stock initially. Now I have heard of Dividend Reinvestment Programs (DRIP) where they will use any dividends you get and reinvest them in more stock and they will allow you to purchase partial shares then. Sharebuilder however allows you to purchase partial shares from the start. This means a little guy like me could actually own shares of Berkshire Hathaway(BRK.B) even though its currently costs nearly $3000 just for one share. I could take my $250 from dad and purchase .0856 shares of Berkshire.....very cool!!

When you invest you actually invest in dollar amounts instead of actual shares (very much like mutual funds). I think this is a great way for people like myself to get started in the stock market. I sure am glad my Dad found that bonus promotion. Very shortly I'll actually own my own stock. I think even Warren Buffett would be jealous of me at this age :-)

Jack

Good News - Investment Account

Great news!! Out of nowhere my dad just opened up an investment account for me with Sharebuilder. Dad ran across a promotion where Sharebuilder will give you a $50 bonus for opening a new account with them.

Dad was already considering opening an account for me and sharebuilder is probably one of the more friendly brokerages out there for a small tike like me. They allow me to make trades for just $4 and have free dividend reinvestment. The catch with the $4 trades are that they only make trades once a week on Tuesdays so I am kind of at the mercy of market whims as far as purchase price. Also in order to sell a security it costs $15.95, but for people with me that will have a very long term buy and hold philosophy this is still pretty hard to beat.

Also dad can't turn down free money so I'm guaranteed the $50 after I make my first trade, and if dad had really wanted to he could have just put $50 in my account bought a stock and then when the $50 bonus got deposited withdrew it from the account and I essentially would have gotten $46 invested in the stock market for free. Fortunately for me I must have been good to Dad lately because he went ahead and threw another $250 in there for me to make my first investment with. Ideally I'd like to have a little more before I make my first investment as I'll be losing 1.6% of my value right away to the commission, but I'm not going to complain at this point. Hopefully once I get my $50 bonus I can convince the old man to give me some more $$$ so that I can invest the bonus money otherwise if I just go ahead and invest that right away again I will have only invested $300 and paid $8 to the broker which is 2.7% which is a little too high for my liking.

Anyway if you decide to take up this offer, here are the details.

IPLANGIFT SHAREBUILDER PROMOTION
Open a new ShareBuilder Account and get a $50 account bonus after your first investment. Use promotion code IPLANGIFT when prompted.**

ShareBuilder Features:
* No account or investment minimums
* Buy stock for $4* with automatic investing plans
* Invest in stocks and ETFs
* No inactivity fees
** You must open a new ShareBuilder Individual, Joint or Custodial Account. Limit one per customer. Please note that a $50 credit will post to your ShareBuilder account approximately 4 weeks after the first transaction has executed. Limit one per new account. Offer excludes IRA's and Education Savings Accounts (ESA's). ShareBuilder reserves the right to terminate this offer at any time and to refuse or recover any promotion award if ShareBuilder determines that it was obtained under wrongful or fraudulent circumstances, that inaccurate or incomplete information was provided in opening the account, or that any term of ShareBuilder's Account Agreement has been violated. Individuals who open brokerage accounts through ShareBuilder will be brokerage customers of ShareBuilder Securities Corporation. All inquiries about ShareBuilder must be directed to ShareBuilder Customer Care.

Things to do for January

Things are kind off to a slow start here. Not only did my networth only increase by $50.80 last month, $50 of that was a one time gift. So I really don't have a lot of cash flowing into the coffers as we speak.

Worst yet after all the detailed analysis of College Savings Plans that I did last month, I still was unable to get my parents to open up a 529 plan for my college savings. On top of that I think I have really only had one real visitor to my website. I see this as a big problem because well this website was created to help other people learn about financial matters that might be facing a young man such as myself and well I was kind of hoping to get enough traffic to the site to possibly make some money for my college fund by participating in some kind of advertising program. Needless to say getting the word out about my blog and making regular postings (at least 3 a week) will be my goals for this month. If I can convince the parents on the college savings plan that will be a bonus, but I might hold off on hitting them up for money until the big fat tax return comes in the mail, after-all I believe I earned $1500 of that refund for them anyways.

Anyway I'm off to do research on how to get more people to my blog. I'll post back some details when I get them.

Later,

Jack

Dec 2005 Net Worth Recap

Well December wasn't all that fruitful for me. No one took me up on my ING referrals and I did not have any adsense revenue. Things weren't completly hopeless though as I got $50 in cash for Christmas that was deposited into my savings account and I recieved $0.80 in interest from my ING bank account for the month of December. So here is my financial breakdown below.

$242.62 - ING Savings Account November Balance [$242.79]
$ 50.00 - Christmas Gift Deposit [292.79]
$ 0.80 - ING Interest Earned [293.59]
$25.30 - $50 Series EE Savings Bond [$318.89]
$25.30 - $50 Series EE Savings Bond [$344.19]

Total Net Worth = $344.19