Scottrade FRIP Purchases – April 2016

I have been making Scottrade FRIP purchases at the beginning of each quarter for a few quarters now. My last quarter purchases was little over $550.00. This quarter, my purchases ended up being higher at $677.08. The following are the FRIP purchases I made on 4/4/2016.

Scottrade FRIP Purchases – January 2016

I have been making Scottrade FRIP purchases at the beginning of each quarter for a few quarters now. My last quarter purchases was little over $660.00. This quarter, my purchases ended up being lower at $554.40. The following are the FRIP purchases I made on 1/4/2016.

Scottrade FRIP Purchases – October 2015

My last FRIP purchases were in July 2015 and I had mentioned earlier about my plan to do quarterly FRIP purchases going forward. My last quarter purchases was little over $660.00. This quarter, my purchases ended up being around the same amount at $669.37. The following are the FRIP purchases I made on 10/1/2015.

Scottrade FRIP Purchases – July 2015

My last FRIP purchases were in March 2015 and I had mentioned that I plan to do quarterly FRIP purchases going forward. My last quarter purchases totaled close to $620.00. This quarter, my purchases ended up being little over $660.00. The following are the FRIP purchases I made on 7/1/2015.

Scottrade FRIP Purchases – March 2015

A while back I had posted about DRIP vs FRIP and why I participate in the FRIP program in Scottrade. I started participating in FRIP early last year and my dividends have been accumulating in FRIP for all my 3 Scottrade accounts. My first set of FRIP purchases were in early December and I purchased PG, PM and BP. I invested close to $1,150 across these 3 stocks without paying any commission. I had also mentioned that I will be making FRIP purchases about twice a year.

But when I checked my FRIP balance early last week, it was little over $600 across my three accounts. So I decided to make my next set of FRIP purchases on Friday last week (3/6/2015). The following are the FRIP purchases I made on 3/6/2015. 

New trading account

Back in July, I had posted about my thoughts on opening another trading account in addition to the ones I currently hold at Scottrade. My aim was to open a new account specifically to lower the fees for smaller investments (less than $500). I looked at various options include Sharebuilder, Loyal3 and Motif Investing.

After much thought and scouring for deals, I decided to open a taxable trading account at Sharebuilder. Sharebuilder is a popular trading site especially among the regular readers of this blog. I was specially interested in their Advantage plan which offers a specific number of automatic trades for a fixed dollar amount per month. In fact, I got an even better pricing plan since Sharebuilder offers special pricing for Costco members. I got the following pricing option:

New Brokerage Account?

I have my trading accounts with Scottrade. I started out with a regular taxable trading account in 2009. Since then I have opened an IRA account for myself and my wife. So currently all stocks in my portfolio are spread across these three accounts.

I am really satisfied with Scottrade with respect to their fees. But I am always on the lookout for better options.

Scottrade – Flexible Reinvestment Plan (FRIP)

I had discussed about the advantages/disadvantages of DRIP (Dividend Reinvestment Plan) and why I don’t do DRIP.

All 3 of my brokerage accounts (Regular, IRA for myself and IRA for my spouse) are with Scottrade and I participate in their FRIP (Flexible Reinvestment Plan). I didn’t start using this until early this year, but wish I had started it earlier.

DRIP – Yes/No

A common dilemma for most of the long-term investors is whether to participate in DRIP (Dividend Re-Investment Plan).

For starters who are not familiar with DRIP: DRIP allows you to reinvest the dividends back onto the same stock automatically each time the dividend is paid out. So instead of getting cash, you get fractional shares based on the share price on the payment date. There are a couple of advantages with doing this: