Mr. Bruce and me looking at the Robinhood stock market together.

“Getting into stocks would be too difficult to learn and too much to follow so why should I waste my time?”

This is the question I used to ask myself whenever I heard anything to do with stocks or stock investing. It was like I was a 5 year old looking at a 1000 piece puzzle struggling to see if I could put it all together and make it work.

Once my son Bruce was born in February of 2019 I really didn’t see any time I would have to learn about any of it much less have any extra money for investing in stocks. I’m sure many of you reading this can relate on how expensive being a parent is sometimes lol.

I mean just this morning I was looking into new dad communities on Reddit and saw that there was a discussion on the best account to get for their child’s future college expenses. His daughter was 5 months old by the way, so it made me feel a little behind as a parent to be honest.

I’m sure to many of the parents out there investing seems like a waste of time in what little life you have, or “it’s the rich man’s game.”

I’m here to tell you that investing in stocks can be easy to learn about and best of all is that anyone can do it no matter the money situation.

I myself only started June of this year and have figured out things such as what dividends are, how buying a stock works through limit orders, in what ways dividends can be paid out, which companies pay said dividends and I plan to learn much more as time goes on.

Now I say this not to brag about what I’ve learned, but to let you know what I’m learning in case you want to do the same.

I’m gonna spill all that I know little by little in my blogs so that my fellow fathers can learn about investing in their own time. (Meaning when the baby allows it that is.)

I do want to state that I am in no way telling you what to buy or sell in the stock market. I am simply giving my opinion and forwarding information I see as valuable for the dads out there wanting more financially.

Now on to the important stuff!

What I am explaining in this post is mainly about dividends for now because I believe them to be an easy choice with great benefits and low risk. They’re basically a pumped-up savings account.

I have learned from books such as “Rich Dad Poor Dad” by Robert Kiyosaki that with any type of investing there will always be a risk, but it also taught me that there are ways to minimize that risk almost to zero with the right perspective and know-how.

So what are stocks?

Stocks are a way for a company to build revenue by offering the public a piece of their company by allowing you to buy shares of their company through the stock market.

In common stocks owning a share gives you certain voting rights with their board of executives but doesn’t guarantee dividend payouts from the company.

So what are dividends then?

A dividend is a sum of money paid regularly (usually quarterly) by a company to its shareholders out of its profits (or reserves).

This means that there are companies out there like AT&T, Tupperware and HP will pay you part of the company’s profit just for having a share of their stock! Awesome right!

Now I’m not saying that this method will get you on the front of Forbes magazine. As long as you continue to put into your portfolio your cash flow will grow.

To show you why I, as a stay at home dad, choose this route instead of a standard savings accounts let me lay some numbers on you.

Right now AT&T, one of the stocks I currently own, has stayed around $37 for October 2019 and the company pays a dividend of .51 quarterly to its stockholders this year.

That means that you would get .51×4=$2.04 for the year then divide it by the price of the stock, $2.04÷$37= .055.

So to put this clearly, you would put in your money and get about a 5.5% return on your investment. For every $100 you would get $5.50 added for the year of 2019.

This percent is better than almost any savings account out there just ask your bank lol.

Now not all dividend stocks pay this high a percentage, luckily there are other benefits:

-The stock’s possibility to rise so you can sell at a profit and buy back in when it lowers back down.

-Often times when the company grows and makes more profit it also gives higher dividends that year as a result. (The AT&T stock dividend has gone up a penny every year for the last 5 years.)

-Some trading platforms allow you to reinvest the dividend amount into the stock so that it can constantly grow for you.

-You’ll get to brag about being a stockholder to the other parents you know! 😁

Now if you’d like to check my information or look up stocks yourself I highly recommend nasdaq.com. It gives free up-to-date info and is really easy to look through.

I personally use the Robinhood trading platform since it’s easy to use on my computer and has an app for the phone.

They give you plenty of information on the stocks, allow you to learn about stock trading through their services, just added a new feature (cash management) that will give you interest on the money sitting in your portfolio (money that’s not currently invested in a stock) and alert me with important information about the stocks I follow.

They also have a referral program to get a free stock for you and the person you refer. Here’s my link for a freebie on the house https://invite.robinhood.com/tylerb5315

Like I said before I’ll be coming out with blog posts here and there explaining more on stocks in hopes that I can help other dads like me grow their portfolio little by little into something that can help out financially.

Remember even a $100 or so a month can grow into something substantial over time in the stock market. One of my favorite quotes is from the great Tony Robbins, “It’s never a lack of resources, but a lack of resourcefulness.”

Thank you for reading, we’re in this together my fellow fathers! 👊😎

P.S. If you have time, I do want feedback on this, please. If I make a mistake explaining something, or even better if you have anything you’d like me to cover for you let me know. I love doing research to help others.

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