How much money would I need to invest in the stock market?

Question

I want to invest to better my famlies life and so that if I die my wife and kids will be in good shape.

Answer 1

Mutual funds are made to order for you. There are a variety to choose from with minimum initial investments from about $250 upto about $2500. Subsequent investment amounts are much much less. $25 to $100.

There are many excellent mutual fund companies to choose from. For smaller savers American Funds is a good choice, but they do charge a 5.75% sales charge. For those capable of coming up with a larger initial investment there is Fidelity, T Rowe Price, Royce Funds, Vanguard, and many others also.

The trick is setting a goal to invest so much a month or a quarter, preferrably a month and doing it. Once you manage to have about $5000 invested in a particular fund, it is time to branch out and begin investing in a different fund with a different investment goal. Diversification provides less risk and better returns.

All of those companies are on the internet and many more besides.

Answer 2

There is no minimum amount. If you have 50 dollars lying around you can go out open a brokerage account and buy a couple of shares of some stock. However I'll throw in two caveats to this:

1) Unless you have a large amount of money sitting around (several thousand plus) make sure you open an account with a brokerage that doesn't have account maintenance fees, or otherwise charges you some sort of fee simply for keeping the account open. Paying a $50 fee to have a $100 account open doesn't make sense.

2) You do have to pay comissions to buy and sell stock. These are generally between $5-$15. Obviously it doesn't make a lot of sense to make a $50 investment when you have to pay $20 or $30 just to buy and sell the stock (but its not a significant expense when your investing, say $1000.)

A couple of brokers called Tradeking and Scottrade to my knowledge have low comissions and don't charge account maintenace fees.

I'd recommend buying shares of what are called exchange traded funds. These are basically mutual funds that trade on the stock market, and allow you to own a little stock in a lot of different companies, which eliminates the chance that you'll accidentally pick a bad stock. A couple of examples are the SPDR fund (ticker symbol SPY) and the iShares fund (ticker symbol IVV) both cost just under $140 a share and will allow you to own a little bit of stock in each of the biggest 500 companies in the US (they both track the S&P 500 index). I don't recommend buying individual stocks unless you find the stock market to be fascinating and have a lot of time to do research. Good luck.

Answer 3

Look into Hawaiian Electric ( HE ) as a good safe company to buy into. If you buy say 20 shares at around $27.00 per share, less than $600.00 you will have a good start. Don't forget you will pay to buy these shares. After you buy them the company will send you some papers you can fill out and than buy more stock from them. You can send $30.00 per month (or nothing) to $30,000 per year for just a few dollars. HE pay a decent dividends that you can reinvest. There are other companies that will do the same thing but you have to find them. I believe Chrysler is another one. I have found this is a good way to add to my savings.

Answer 4

I have an account with Scottrade. They have one of the lowest per trade fees ($7.00 ea.) and require a minimum investment of $500.00, also one of the lowest of the on-line brokerages. If you can't afford $500.00, stay out of the stock market. Go with a CD type savings or even a passbook savings account. Just add a little every payday and leave it along until you can afford to invest somewhere offering greater yields.

Answer 5

First of all buy some term insurance. That's what it is there for....to benefit your wife and family if, God forbid, something should happen to you. This will also cover any tax liabilities that may occur.

Then I would invest in mutual funds. This way you diversify your investments and can focus your selection of funds on a mix of growth and income funds.

Answer 6

Deposit 250 dollars a month for the next 30 years and they will be ok.

Or get a life insurance policy.

Answer 7

If I were you I'd invest around 5000.00, in various investments, you know spread it out and watch what money flips the best and go for it.

Answer 8

Buy Life Insurance.

Answer 9

read tips on investing ,stocks and mutual funds to help you better on this site

Answer 10

between 10-20.if you look in the right places.