Extra Money

In my series about investing in dividend stocks I recommended opening an account with Zecco to take advantage of the 10 free trades a month they offer.  Since then they have announced a change in the requirements to receive the free trades.  At the beginning of March they are increasing the minimum level of assets needed to earn 10 free trades per month to $25,000. They are also adding a new way to get free trades. If you make at least 25 total trades per month you will qualify for 10 free stock trades per month.  Otherwise you will have to pay $4.50 per stock trade.  That is still a good deal but I wanted to make sure any of you that might be thinking of opening an account were aware of the change.

This is part five of a series on how to make extra money with stock dividends.  Right now we are on the subject of research to learn more about investing in dividend paying stocks.  In the last post I recommended reading some books on the subject from your library or bookstore.

Another way to do research is online.  There is a humongous amount of information relating to dividend stock investing available online.  For basic stock information I like to use either Google Finance or Yahoo Finance.  I haven’t used Morningstar but it was recommended by a commenter in my last post and I know it has a good reputation.  Now that we have some sites to do general research I will give you more information on conducting research in the next post.

This is part four of a series on how to make extra money with stock dividends.  So far we’ve covered how to choose, open, and fund a stock brokerage account.  The next step to cover is research.  Actually you should probably start your research before you open your brokerage account but if not you definitely need to do it before you buy any stocks.

There are many sources available to learn about investing in stocks that pay dividends.  My first suggestion is to go to your local library or bookstore and look for books on the subject.  Books that focus on stock investing in general will be somewhat helpful but books that focus on dividend investing will be the most helpful.  An excellent book on the subject is “The Ultimate Dividend Playbook” by Josh Peters but there are many other titles available.  We’ll spend more time on research in the next post.

This is the third post in a series on how to make extra money with stock dividends. This post will detail how to fund your stock brokerage account.

The funding process I am going to detail is based on my experience funding an account with Zecco.com.  I have opened other stock brokerage accounts in the past and found the funding process similar although there might be some variations depending on who you open your account with.

During the account opening process you will be asked how you would like to fund your account.  I chose ACH and recommend it as an easy, fast, and cheap way to fund your account.  To set up ACH you will need to enter your banking information.  After that Zecco will make a small deposit and withdrawal to your account.  Once you see these in your bank account go to Zecco and enter these amounts to verify your ACH.  You will then be able to transfer money from your bank account to your broker account.  You will then be able to trade as soon as your transfer clears but there are several more things you should do before you begin trading. Those will be detailed in the next few posts.

In my last post in this series on how to make extra money with stock dividends I discussed choosing a stock broker.  The broker I chose is Zecco so I am going to use them as an example of the process of opening an account with a stock broker.

To start you just need to go to Zecco.com and click on open an account.   First you will need to choose a username and password and then you will need to provide your personal information and financial information.  Then you will need to set your account settings.  Make sure you choose paperless statements and paperless trade confirmations.  Otherwise there is a charge for these and we want to keep our trading costs to a minimum. The opening process is straight forward and simple you shouldn’t encounter any problems.  In the next post in this series I will detail the funding process.

I received my quarterly dividend from GE today.  If you have been reading this blog than you know that I like dividend stocks as a source of extra money and a great way to receive passive income.

The dividend was thirty-one cents per share.  Since I am a small investor and do not own a lot of shares this didn’t add up to much.  It is nice to get some money out of the stock though since the share price has been tumbling.

The yield on GE stock is now 9.49% which is very high for a stock of this type.  My effective yield is lower since I bought GE at a higher price.  There is a lot of speculation that GE might cut its dividend so I would be cautious about buying it now.

I previously wrote a post on making extra money with stock dividends.  This post will start a series on how I started investing in dividend stocks.  Keep in mind that I am not a finance professional.  I am showing what I did as a reference to you not as advice on how you should invest in dividend stocks.

If you are going to invest in dividend paying stocks then you will most likely need an account at a stockbroker.  It is possible to invest in dividend paying stocks directly through the stock company but that is a more complicated way to invest and will require a separate post to explain.  To keep it simple lets just assume that you are opening an account with a stock broker.

There are many different brokers out there and I encourage you to research which one is best for you.  I went with Zecco because they have free stock trades as long as you have a $2500 balance in your account.  If you do not have $2500 to invest you probably should not be opening a stock brokerage account anyway.  I have been using Zecco since last October and have had no problems.

They do have a limit of 10 free trades a month but that isn’t a problem for me.  One possible drawback is that their dividend reinvestment plan on reinvests whole shares.  You could consider that a benefit though because it will make your taxes simpler.

I will give more information on the account opening process in the next post.

If you have a computer- and since you’re reading this you probably do - an interesting way to make money is to be a Gomez PEER.  I just learned about this program but it apparently has been around for a while.  The way the program works is that you install software on your computer which will run in the background of your PC, contributing its spare resources (such as otherwise wasted processing power, RAM, and bandwidth) to test the performance of Web sites.

This is passive income because once the program is installed you do not need to do any more work.  They have a maximum of $45 a month that you can earn.  From what I’ve heard you will likely only earn a couple bucks a month.  Although they do have a referral program also that could help increase your earnings.  I have not tried this program so I can’t say whether it is a good program or not.  If you have some feedback on this program please leave a comment.

A unique way to make a little extra money is by house sitting.  This usually does involve some work so I classify it as alternative income.  In addition you only make money when you are sitting the house so it is not passive income.

House sitting sounds like an ideal way to make extra money because you get to live somwhere rent-free plus make money.  In reality though house sitting is not that easy of a way to make money.  For one thing many people expect you to house sit for free, figuring that you’re living there free is compensation enough.  If you are lucky enough to get paid for house sitting it will oftern involve taking care of a pet.  That amounts to pet sitting which is a different way to make extra money.

There are many websites that offer house sitting jobs but many of them are just out to take your money.  I have not tried any of them so I can’t recommend which ones are legitimate.  In summary I would say that if you are lucky enough to find a house sitting job take advantage of it but I would not put too much time and effort into finding a house sitting job.

This is the third post of a series I am writing on how to make extra money with peer to peer lending.  In this post I will lead you through the process of funding a loan.

You should already know how to open and fund your account already.  What you need to do now is find a loan to fund so you can earn some interest on your money.  The P2P sites all allow you to search for loans based on various criteria.  The criteria I think is most important is the person’s credit grade.  I only lend to borrowers with the top or next to top credit grade.  These loans don’t earn as much interest as the loans to persons with poor credit but in my opinion this is more than offset by the lower risk.  After all a high interest rate isn’t very good if the borrower only makes a few payments and then defaults.  I have made 13 loans and haven’t had any defaults or late payments.  My money is loaned out at an average interest rate of over 10%.  There are not many investments available that pay this much. In my opinion this is a very good return on investment and I don’t think it is worth the risk to chase higher returns.

You now know the basics of P2P lending.  I would encourage you to visit the P2P sites and do some more research if you would like to become a lender.  If you have any questions about P2P lending please feel free to ask.