Loyal3 Lunch

How many lunches?

If you haven't been following this series, I'm trying to break my habit of eating out at lunch for no good reason.  Each day I bring my lunch gives me $5.00 to invest in stock with Loyal3, an online commission-free broker. This report is covering two weeks, since I didn't write one last week.  Last week we didn't have much in the fridge at home as far as leftovers, and I was in a hurry, etc.  In any case, I only brought my lunch three times.  This week was better; I brought lunch every day.

Which Stock?

The market has taken a beating lately.  Last week I decided that I had good reasons for liking all the companies in which I had already invested; therefore I put more money into the one that had dropped the most from the time I bought it, Disney.  This week I looked at how my stocks had done since the beginning of last year, and bought the one that had dropped the biggest percentage, VF Corporation.  

Am I making money?

Like the vast majority of people, I lost money this week.

You can see my whole Loyal3 Lunch portfolio by clinking the link at the top of the page.

Comments: 

You note the highly technical analysis of why I pick these stocks.  I've been reading a bunch of investor blogs trying to get a handle on the lingo, and figure out what I should be looking for in all those numbers.  However, for me, this portfolio is a toy; instead of buying shoes I don't need I buy stock I don't need (and which I hope makes money for me).  I do not recommend that anyone use such an approach when investing large sums of money (whatever "large" is to you). 

Loyal3 Lunch: Week 1

I told you in my "Plugging a Leak" post that a big money-waster in my life was buying lunch for no good reason.  I'll be rushing in the morning and forget to grab something, or what is in the house doesn't appeal to me, or what I brought for lunch doesn't appeal to me, or (about the only "good" reason), friends suggest going out.  I decided that for every day that don't eat out (and avoid the junk food box in the office kitchen) I will put $5.00 into stock via Loyal3, a commission-free online broker.  I opened the account with $10.00 last week, which purchased 0.0865 shares of Walt Disney stock.  This week the only day I ate out was the day I went to Baton Rouge on business.  I could have brought a lunch, but I chose not to.  Therefore, this week's deposit into Loyal3 is $20.00.  I am going to purchase stock in AMC, the movie theater company.  They pay a dividend worth about 3% of the current value of the stock, and I am looking for dividend stocks.  Professional analysts give it a "buy" or "hold".  The price is on the low side as compared to earlier this  year.  I know AMCs theaters are popular here.

I plan to buy shares in between six and eight different companies in this portfolio.  Hopefully I'll makes some money along the way.  Do you have a leak in your wallet?  Could you re-direct a few dollars per week into the stock market via Loyal3.

*Part of Financially Savvy Saturdays on brokeGIRLrich, A Disease Called Debt and One More Broke Twenty-Something*

Plugging a Leak

I'll confess, my husband and I do not have a budget, and never have in a formal sense.  We have always lived below our means on the big things like houses and cars so we have not felt a need to watch the pennies carefully.  Still, I keep reading about the power of goal-setting, so I'm going to give it a try.  However, me telling my husband what he can spend at the grocery store this week will go over like a lead balloon (yes, he does the grocery shopping and groceries are one area where we could cut a lot).  So, what to do?  Well, one place I know I spend too much money is for lunches at work.  I often eat "out" (the lunch counter in my building) for no reason other than that I didn't think to grab something at home. Add that to the times I go out to be sociable, and I've found a real leak that can be plugged.

Now, what to do about it that won't make me feel deprived and will make me feel like I'm accomplishing something?  I've decided to open an account with Loyal3, an online stock broker about whom I wrote here.    Every week (the mimimum investment is $10.00) I am going to invest $5 per day that I did not eat out at lunch.  Every week I'm going to tell you how much I invested, and in what.  Hopefully, this will be a better use of my "lunch money" than the use I'm currently making of it.  Yes, it's kind of a game; I have other money that I will invest in other things and even if I never go out, this only comes to about $100 per month, but every month a large part of that $100 ends up sliding through my fingers; if this motivates me to save, that's a good thing.  It will also give me something about which to write.  You can follow this series by looking for Loyal3 Lunch on the keyword list on my sidebar, or to see the portofolio, look at my navigation bar.

To open the account I had to make a minimum investment of $10, so I invested it in Walt Disney.  Why Walt Disney?  Because I like going to Walt Disney World and know other people do too.  It is a well-run company that has a lot of loyal followers.  Is this a good time to buy their stock?  I don't know, I haven't investigated that.  My next purchase will be more carefully investigated and the reasons for the purchase more fully explained. 

Do you have a bad spending habit that you break and direct savings to investment?

*Part of Financially Savvy Saturdays on brokeGIRLrich, A Disease Called Debt and One More Broke Twenty-Something*