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.