I Started Investing In Stocks with $80
Using The App, Robinhood
MIA (Missing In Action) on Medium
I have not published on Medium for about two weeks. Here’s what I’ve been up to:
- The usual: Working my 9–5.
- Caring for my kids, my second usual.
- Third and something new: I started investing in stocks.
Fair warning, I am not going to teach about investments. I am simply sharing what I’ve learned and my experience, thus far. If you’re interested in learning more about stock investments and have ZERO experience like me, please seek more creditable resources like I am, like YouTube and Google or ask a professional broker.
But if you want to live by curiously through me, here’s how my inexperienced, experience in stock investment is going:
Robinhood
Recently, I had been looking for ways to make some passive income and I discovered an app called Robinhood. I was skeptical and I had no idea what investing in stocks was about. I still don’t.
My husband had mentioned investments to me early this year and he started investing in stocks, but it never really peeked my interest because I thought in order to invest, I needed to have extra money laying around, which I do not.
What I Learned About The App
You don’t need to have a lot of money to start.
- You do not need to have hundreds and thousands of dollars to start investing. All you need is one dollar. Yes, $1.00 and a bank account.
- You can do this all on your mobile phone.
- When you sign up, you will be given a free dollar valued amount stock to a leading company. I received $5 to Apple, Inc., when I signed up. It’s $5 dollar more than I had before signing up so I’m ok with that.
- Yes, you’ll need to provide your personal information like social security number and house address. It’s for tax purposes. At least in the US. Sorry, you can’t get away without being subject to taxes in the United States, at least not for this.
- Once you link your bank account, any deposits you make will be available to you instantly for you to start buying stocks.
- When buying stocks, you do not have to buy a whole stock to benefit from. You can buy a portion or fraction of a stock. I added $10 to my $5 free stock for Apple and so I currently have 0.112 shares of stock. (See image below on Exhibit B).
- Here’s my current portfolio on Robinhood:
Exhibit A: My Portfolio. Here you see $87.47. The breakdown is as follow: $80 my own money, $5 free stock, and the remainder is what I’ve made so far from the companies I’ve bought from (fractions of a stock only).
“For me, any increase is good progress.”
Exhibit B: The companies I am invested in, some of which are my favorite like Starbucks and Amazon. They are in the red today, but I read somewhere that sometimes you want to invest in companies you have faith in. So I guess these two are it for me.
- If you’re wondering what the colors mean, green means gains and red means loss. I’ve also learned that the different shade of green and red have meanings too. Like if it’s dark green, it’s a massive gain and a light green is a minor gain. (Same meaning for the shades in red).
- There are a number of ways to help you decide which company to invest in. For me, I like to see the analyst ratings on the company. I’ve decided to go with anything over 70% on “buy” is good to buy. Just look at the pennies I’ve gain! It works for me.
- Obviously, if you want to make more money, you’ll need to take bigger risks and invest more money into the stocks and perhaps buy the stocks at its full price, instead of a fraction like how I am currently doing.
- This is a test run for me and I am not looking to make a whole lot of money, but I’ll take my small gains of pennies for now and see how I feel in the long run.
- I don’t know anything about trading or crypto currency. I’ve only explored buying stocks at this point.
- I’ve compared using Robinhood to Moomoo (another investment app), and I think Robinhood is simple and user friendly for beginners. I feel like Moomoo provides a lot more information, but because I am not experienced, the information is foreign to me. So I’ll continue to use Robinhood for the time being.
So that’s what I’ve learned so far about stock investment using Robinhood. I enjoy seeing my small gains. It motivates me to consider investing and learning more. If you are intrigued and ok with trying it out with only a few bucks, you can join me on Robinhood with my link and we’ll both pick our own free stock 🤝 https://join.robinhood.com/lorenac-e8dd25.
Disclaimer: Robinhood is not sponsoring my article here nor are they paying me extra money to write about my experience. This is solely what I wanted to share with those who may be curious to try it out.
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