If you've never invested in stocks before, getting started can be an intimidating prospect. You may think you need a pile of cash to get started. After all, a single share of Tesla sells for $300 (at the time of this writing). You might only have $100 or $50 to invest. What can you do?
Enter Stockpile. A traditional broker will only allow you to purchase shares of stock in whole increments and often their commissions are high enough that it's not financially feasible to buy less than 10 or so shares of stock. Stockpile is a company that lets you purchase partial shares of stocks for a low commission - the lowest I've seen anywhere.
For example, if you wanted to own Tesla stock, but only had $30 to invest, with Stockpile you can buy one tenth of a share with your $30 plus an insanely low commission of $0.99! Sweet! Stockpile allows you to buy stock based on a dollar amount you have available, not multiples of a share price.
They also offer dividend reinvestment for free, so you can take advantage of compounding by plowing dividends right back into the stock.
Stockpile doesn't offer shares of every single stock in the market, but they do offer shares of more than 1,000 companies, including every stock in the S&P 500. You can check to see if they offer shares of a company you are interested in here.
Their Real Advantage - Gifting
But what is really exciting about Stockpile is their gift card program. Gift cards can be electronic or physical and they allow you to give someone a certain dollar amount of a company's stock. For example, if you want to give your graduating nephew $50 of Apple stock, you can buy them a gift card for that.But this is the cool part - if your nephew doesn't want to own stock in Apple, they can use that gift card to buy $50 worth of any other company stock Stockpile offers. Or, if your nephew isn't into stocks at all (how is this guy related to you?), he can exchange it for a $50 gift card to some other retailer, such as Amazon, for the full face value! This is one gift you know will be used!
The gift card recipient always gets the full face value of their gift card. If they use it to buy stock, they are not charged a commission - that is paid for when the giver purchased the card. If they exchange it for a gift card from another retailer, they get full credit. Gift cards also never expire.
Given the huge flexibility of their gift card program, I can't see any drawbacks to giving Stockpile gift cards!
Open An Account Today And Get $5!
If you are interested in opening an account, use this link and you'll get $5 worth of your choice of stock for free!You can fund your account by linking your bank account to your Stockpile account (this is free, but can take 3 to 5 business days) or by supplying a debit card number (costs vary from $0.25 to 2%, based on your bank, but Stockpile will tell you the fee before you are charged - and this provides instant funding business days between 7 AM and 8:30 PM Eastern).
Stockpile offers a great value. In addition to the crazy low commission, Stockpile does not charge a monthly fee to have an account. I don't see any downside to getting started with them!
This page may contain affiliate links. Please read my disclosure for more information.
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