What to do with money in sharebuilder

[Deleted]

Now that ING direct is selling their US holdings, I need to decide what to do with my small amount of money in sharebuilder. I have about $90 in a S&P fund, I could cash it out, take the loss. Or move it to schwab but I would need to invest $100/month till I had $1000 in the account.
I have a $2059 EF ($2000 cash and $59 I bond), one month's expenses is about $1620. I also have $8500 that my DH got from his subsidized student loans which is sitting there earning interest till we pay it back in 3 years. My DH is a grad student and his job is extremely secure.

I save about $80/month and put $219.75 in my DH's Roth. We were planning to increase that to $400 in two months. I could use either the saving money or the Roth money to fund the schwab account.
Any opinions?

[Deleted]

Oh, my DH earns $1900/month and we rent the upper unit in our duplex for $525.

[resolution]

Is there anything that would attract you to Schwab other than avoiding a small loss on your account? I am thinking I would be willing to take a loss and then go to the broker of my choice (in my case is Vanguard) rather than end up with a higher fee company that would require me to change my investment plans. How much loss would you avoid by going to Schwab?

ETA not that I know anything bad about Schwab, just that avoiding a small loss may not be the best reason to pick them.

[Deleted]

I do not have the money to go to Vanguard, and if I do I want it in my Roth. I am looking for a company that won't charge me for having a small balance. I did some more checking and it looks like scottrade might be a better deal. It would require $500 not $1000, but I would have to get all $500 now instead of $100/month.

[midjd]

I keep our Roths and a small taxable account with Schwab, no complaints here.

[IPAfan]

I don't think its worth your time to do anything with the money if you've got $90 invested in the market. At 10% a year you're going to take 7 years to make 90 bucks. You can do the same with 10 hours of minimum wage work.

[resolution]

If I needed to choose between using savings money to fund it or Roth money to fund it, I would use the savings money and keep the Roth intact. If you run into an emergency and need more than is in savings, you can always tap the principle you put into the Roth. I would then divert the $80 per month back into the savings until it was back at the level I wanted and then start putting it into the investment account.

[Deleted]

Jun 17, 2011 15:08:03 GMT -5 IPAfan said:

I don't think its worth your time to do anything with the money if you've got $90 invested in the market. At 10% a year you're going to take 7 years to make 90 bucks. You can do the same with 10 hours of minimum wage work.

Beer, I do not understand. Why should I not move the $90 somewhere other than sharebuilder, just because it is a small amount?

[Deleted]

Why do you have to move it anywhere right now?

I have a Sharebuilder account that I admit I stopped funding after Phil pointed out that my monthly fees were eating up my "spectacular" gains with GE. But I still have the account, worth maybe $2300.

I am going to wait out the ING/Capital One thing. I talked to DH about it. I liked the small accounts, which really I guess are subaccounts at any other bank. I use them to deposit my vacation savings, my rebate savings, my Ebay earnings, the dog's savings account (she gets an allowance), etc.

My DH pointed out that Capital One bought ING because they had a successful business model. While they may make changes, it isn't automatic that they do so. So he suggested I adopt a wait-and-see attitude.

You might try the same.

[phil5185]

I have about $90 in a S&P fund, I could cash it out, take the loss.

Loss? Didn't the S&P nearly double in the last 24 months?
You could put it in Spyders (SPY), that way there is no minimum.

[jenpen]

I agree with southernusana that until you see whether the new parent company is going to make some changes you can't live with, there's no reason to rush to move your account. That said, I quit using ING a couple years ago when their savings rates dropped below what my credit union offers, and last month I transferred my Roth IRA from Sharebuilder to Fidelity (where my 403b is), and opened a new brokerage account there, too. If you do eventually decide to move out of Sharebuilder, you might consider a Fidelity brokerage account which offers commission-free trades of 30 iShares ETFs. For something similar to what you have now, for example, you might look at IVV, an S&P 500 index fund with an expense ratio of 0.09%. The only thing is, you can't buy partial shares as you can with Sharebuilder, so you'd need enough for one share -- currently $128.09.