When Stocks Keep Giving After You Have Sold Them

Over a year ago, I wrote this piece about how to go paperless. As a small aside in the post, I said:

(I have been involved in some class action lawsuits regarding stock purchases made years ago, so I felt I should keep all my old brokerage statements.) 

Class action lawsuits against companies are somewhat controversial. On the one hand, they do serve a valid purpose of holding companies accountable when they wrong a large number of people for damages that would be too small for any one individual to sue for. On the other hand, there are a lot of questionable lawyers that abuse the process and use class action suits as a way to generate income for their law firms.

No matter your position on them, they are here to stay and when one comes my way, I will take advantage of it.

Today, I reaped the benefits of my paperless lifestyle. I received notification of a class action lawsuit against THQ (who was actually an old employer of mine). To receive a claim from the lawsuit, you need to submit proof that you bought or sold THQ stock within a certain time period. That proof needed to be in the form of brokerage statements.

If I did not have electronic records, I wouldn't even bother tracking this information down. The time frame in question was between May, 2011 and February, 2012. I've got a lot of brokerage accounts. It probably would take me a couple of hours to go through paper copies looking for transactions involving THQ stock.

eStatements to the rescue!

Because I have gone paperless, all my statements are stored in .PDF files. Furthermore, Windows can read .PDF files and can index the contents. So I just navigated to my brokerage statements folder on my computer, typed "THQ" in the Search bar, and bam! I got a list of all my statements that contained THQ. Because I use a naming convention based on the date, I was able to easily find the three brokerage statements I needed for the class action suit.

I Was Just Paid $600 An Hour!

I printed them out, filled out the claim form, and mailed it in. Total time spent: about 30 minutes. Based on the claim form instructions, I should receive about $301 from the lawsuit. Not bad! And it's even better when you realize that I just made more money from stocks I sold over 5 years ago!

If you want to go all out with the class action lawsuits, you can visit www.classactionrebates.com for a list of hundreds of class actions lawsuits you might be a party to.

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Pie-Based Investing with M1 Finance

Pies are delicious and with the holidays approaching, I'm looking forward to the cornucopia of pies that my family seems to produce this time of year. Those pies do a great job expanding my waistline, but they don't do so well when it comes to expanding my financial accounts.

Financial Pies

 Enter M1 Finance. This innovative new way to invest combines the automation of robo-brokers with the flexibility and control of a traditional brokerage account.

The concept is simple. You define a pie chart showing how you want your investments allocated - say 20% in conservative investments, 20% in stock of one company, and 60% in a mutual fund - and M1 does the rest! Each time you make a deposit, which can be scheduled to occur on a regular basis, M1 will purchase equities in the proportion your pie directs. M1 even purchases fractional shares, so your money is always invested as quickly as possible. No waiting around until you accumulate enough to purchase a full share!

Don't know what your pie should look like? M1 offers professionally created and managed pies for a variety of investments styles and objectives.

Over time, some assets will outperform others and your pie may get out of balance. A simple click of  a button will rebalance your investments. If you are using a pre-defined pie, this is done automatically for you each quarter.

Of course, all this can be done on your phone or tablet with their easy to use app.

How Much Does It Cost?

M1's pricing structure beats a traditional brokerage any day. Rather than pay a commission on each trade, M1 charges a low flat fee based on how much money you have invested with them. Your first $1,000 is free. For balances between $1,000 and $100,000, the fee is only 0.25% per year. Accounts large than that get a lower fee of just 0.15%. Keep in mind this is for unlimited trades. Rebalance every day if you want.

As of December, 2017, M1 is completely free! Full details are in their blog post here, including how they plan to make money going forward. But this is now a great win for consumers!

Regular Investing Is The Key

Studies have shown that the best way to build wealth in the stock market is to make regular investments. M1's combination of regular, periodic deposits and fractional share purchases ensure that you are able to get invested quickly and often. Furthermore, regular, periodic investing is the basis of dollar cost averaging, another proven technique to help manage risk.

There are no setup fees and all accounts under $1,000 are free, so you have nothing to lose by trying them out! Click here to open an account.



Note: From time to time, I may recommend products or services. I may receive some form of compensation. See my disclosure page for full details.

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Goal Update: End of September 2017

At the end of each month, I post an update of my goals, including a brief discussion of any notable events that might have occurred during the month. The latest month's figures can always be found under the Featured menu in the menu bar at the top of the blog.

Last updated: End of September, 2017
Current value: $34,964
Change from last month: +$1,099
Percent of Goal:  32.15%

Note that the funds in this account are invested in stock, so there will be fluctuations in value that are outside my control. I never withdraw money from this account, so any dips are purely due to stock price changes.

Events Of Note Last Month:

I saw an increase of almost $1,100 this month. Net income from my online courses was $94.89. Income from my ebooks was $1.16. I also received $7.72 from a class action lawsuit settlement.

My cash-backed naked puts of Realty Income expired out of the money and I was able to keep the $266.70 premium I collected last month. I've got a limit order in to try selling some again for another 8% ROI and I need the price of the stock to drop a little bit before that order gets filled.

This month I also published my online SQL Servers courses at a new site: SkillShare.com! Their revenue model is a bit different from Udemy's model. At Udemy's, students purchase individual classes and the instructor gets a portion of the purchase price. At SkillShare, students can subscribe for as little as $8.25 per month and they get unlimited access to ALL the courses on the site - so far that's over 17,000 courses. Instructors are paid based on how many minutes of their courses have been viewed. It will be interesting to see how my income numbers compare between the two sites.

If you are interested in learning about many different topics, SkillShare looks to be a very cost-attractive way to go. They do offer free courses that do not require a monthly subscription, but if you would like to join, please use this link and I'll get a small kickback that will help me get my Tesla a little bit faster. (You don't have to take the class that link points to. Just use it to sign up and take any class you want, even if it's not one of mine.) My courses can be found at https://www.skillshare.com/user/shaunstuart.

Relocation Update

Escrow closed on our new house last week. We're waiting for new paint and carpet to be installed and then we will move in. Unfortunately, it looks like that won't be until near the end of October.

Net Worth Update 

Our net worth rebounded from last month, showing a gain of $20,880.That's pretty much exactly what our earnest money deposit was. If you recall, last month we paid it, but we didn't technically own the house yet, so it looked like a big debit to Mint. Now that we actually own the house, that amount is showing up as equity in the property.

Mint still can't access my 401(k) provider's website, so Mint is showing my 401(k) about $4,000 lower than it really is.

August 2017

September 2017

Our cash took a huge drop as we paid our down payment for the house. Our credit card total shot up because we've been charged for our new carpet. We've got money in the bank to cover that. I'm just waiting until I get my bill to pay it.

And yeah... We've got a half a million dollar mortgage. Welcome to Washington!

If you have any questions or suggestions for topics, please drop me a line in the comments section!

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