Debt Tips   

Investing

An important part of living a more debt free and financially responsible life is investing your money the best ways you can.

Join your company’s retirement plan

If you are working for a bigger company, chances are your employer provides a voluntary retirement plan. You especially want to do this if your employer offers a match. Saving through a retirement plan has many great benefits. Investing automatically and being able to defer taxes on the money you make is a great benefit. Enroll in a plan and deposit enough money to get the full match from your employer. Meaning, if your employer is offering a 50% match that is like earning 50% on your own money with no risk whatsoever. This is a great deal and a great incentive.

Stay away from load mutual funds

A load is a commission and there is no reason why you need to pay a commission here. If you are buying a mutual fund through a financial planner of any kind (except hourly paid planners), you are undoubtedly going to pay a load. Do your own researches, buy your own funds, and steer clear of these unnecessary commissions.

Directly purchase stocks, then DRIP by DRIP

You can purchase nearly one thousand different stocks by going direct to the company that issues them. While the fees charged fro doing this will vary from company to company, they are many times less than the fees you pay by going through a broker. DRIPs are dividend reinvestment plans. They allow you to reinvest quarterly stock dividends into additional shares of stock. There are normally o fees to do this either. To find out if the company you are interested in does this, call the company’s investment. To get this number, you can usually visit any online brokerage website and look up company info. You can even check out your public library and read through investment guides such as Value Line. Some websites even set up DRIP accounts for a small fee.

All in all, there are many ways to invest your money. Your employer’s retirement plan will provide the most risk free investment at no cost to you and contributing is as easy as automatic.

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