Top 22 Warren Buffett Quotes the Internet Can’t Get Enough Of

February 9, 2021/5 Comments/in Business, Dividend Investing, Self Improvement /by Wallet Squirrel

Warren Buffett, CEO of Berkshire Hathaway, has a net worth of over $78.2 billion and is known as one of the greatest investors of all time. So when he speaks, people take note.

Here are some of the top 22 Warren Buffett Quotes the internet can’t get enough of.

Warren Buffett Quotes Infographic

Top 22 Warren Buffett Quotes The Internet Can’t Get Enough Of

Here are some of the top Warren Buffet quotes found on every list of Warren Buffet quotes around the internet. These quotes range in wisdom on investing to regular life. I try to live by these quotes on my own investment portfolio.

Warren Buffett Quotes

1. Rule #1: Never lose money. Rule #2: Never forget rule #1

One of my favorite Warren Buffet Quotes. The fastest way to grow your money is to never lose it in the first place. This applies from saving on your groceries to focusing on less risky stocks of well established companies.

2. It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it. If you think about that, you’ll do things differently

Think about the Wells Fargo or Equifax scandals. It takes years to build enough trust for someone to have brand loyalty. Warren Buffet quotes it takes 20 years, but it takes 5 minutes or less to destroy all that goodwill you’ve built. People are quick to revolt if you’ve done anything to betray their trust.

It is infinitely harder to build trust than destroy it.

3. Diversification is a protection against ignorance. It makes very little sense for those who know what they’re doing.

Multiple studies show that diversification in the stock market will help protect you against market falls. Or it could be summarized in the old proverb “Don’t put all your eggs in one basket”. Unless you have insider information that a stock is going do really well, maintain a diversified portfolio to protect you. No one knows what they’re doing all the time.

4. If you aren’t willing to own a stock for ten years, don’t even think about owning it for ten minutes. Put together a portfolio of companies whose aggregate earnings march upward over the years, and so also will the portfolio’s market value.

Unless you’re a day trader (I will never be), you should only be investing in the stock market with the intention to hold those stocks for a long time. You can do really well as a beginner if you’re buying stocks and not planning on selling till you retire. Those are where you get the best returns. Warren Buffett is infamously known for rarely selling stocks.

5. It’s far better to buy a wonderful company at a fair price than a fair company at a wonderful price.

When you buy a stock, you should think of it as owning a piece of that company. You should be looking at wonderful companies that have a competitive advantage in the industry. Those are the companies that will do well over the long run. You may find a wonderful price on a mediocre company, but really what are you getting? A mediocre company that will likely be edged out of the market by a better company.

Many of the famous Warren Buffett quotes are about investing in strong companies with a competitive advantage and strong brand loyalty rather than cheap companies where you think you can make a quick buck. Warren Buffett is never into buying a company for a quick buck.

6. Be fearful when others are greedy. Be greedy when others are fearful.

During the 2008 financial crisis when investors were all exiting the market, Warren Buffett invested in a few large companies even though their stock prices were falling. Those deals made Warren Buffett over $10 billion dollars when the market stabilized and it’s continuing to show dividends. When the market goes upside down during world events, politics, market forecasts, those are the times when everyone else is fearful, that Warren Buffet sees an advantage when the markets crash.

Think about it this way, the New York Stock Exchange has been around since 1817, it has always recovered. Chances are, minus a world apocalypse, that the market will always bounce back. Those who capitalize on those downturns are usually rewarded.

7. The difference between successful people and really successful people is that really successful people say no to almost everything.

One of my favorite Warren Buffett quotes because it has so many applications. You will see many opportunities in your life and you may want to jump on everyone, but it’s ok to be selective and say no. You’ll burn yourself out if you say “yes” to everything. This also applies to going out on a Saturday night with friends drinking. It’s ok to say “no” to save a few dollars or have a night to yourself to finish your article on Warren Buffett quotes. =)

This also applies to going out on a Saturday night with friends drinking. It’s ok to say “no” to save a few dollars or have a night to yourself to finish your article on Warren Buffett quotes. =)

8. Develop and build the habits you admire in others.

Remember all those times that your parents wanted you to hang out with those “good kids”. The habits of the people you surround yourself with rub off you on, consciously or unconsciously. When you find people like Warren Buffett, the Oracle of Omaha, who is one of the greatest investors of all time. You should find out what makes him so successful and learn those traits to improve yourself.

9. Passive investing will make you more money than active trading

Oh my goodness, fees are the WORST! Active trading requires more work and more fees, so more of your money will be paid to your broker. Yet studies have shown over and over that passive investing where you set your money and forget it are far more successful for growing wealth. I don’t plan to ever touch my stocks currently making dividends.

10. There seems to be some perverse human characteristic that likes to make easy things difficult.

Great quote, people always imagine things are more difficult than they really are. When I first considered starting investing, I thought there were so many hurdles and financial experts I would have to pay. Yet, when I finally decided I wanted to start investing in the stock market, I just downloaded the Robinhood App and started investing. It took 10 minutes to sign up and buy my first stock when I worried about investing in the stock market for over 5 years. Things are often more simple than you think they are.

11. Tell me who your heroes are and I’ll tell you who you’ll turn out to be.

This is similar to the Warren Buffett quote “Develop and build the habits you admire in others”. If you want to be an entrepreneur, start joining local meetups of entrepreneurs. You learn SO MUCH MORE when you surround yourself with the people you want to be like. You can learn A LOT in a book, but you’ll learn even more by surrounding yourself with people you admire.

12. We have long felt that the only value of stock forecasters is to make fortune-tellers look good.

No one can predict the stock market, no one. Not even Warren Buffett. Anyone who says they know exactly how the market works is trying to sell you something. You can lump stock forecasters being as accurate as the carnival fortune-tellers. You know the ones with 3 teeth, crystal ball and you’re going to die in 2083.

13. When we own portions of outstanding businesses with outstanding managements, our favorite holding period is forever.

If you invest in an outstanding company, even if the stock price goes up, why would you ever sell it? No matter when you sell it, outstanding companies will continually do better and better. Don’t sell until you absolutely have to, otherwise, you’ll just be losing money in the long run. Many of Warren Buffett Quotes are like this, they are all very Anti-Day Trader.

14. You don’t need to be a rocket scientist. Investing is not a game where the guy with the 160 IQ beats the guy with 130 IQ.

If you follow the basic principals of Warren Buffett and buy outstanding companies with strong competitive advantages like Apple (AAPL). You don’t have to be a genius. Just buy and hold forever, you literally don’t have to do anything until you sell.

Many Warren Buffett quotes are similar to this because he stresses that anyone can invest in the stock market. The simplest way is just to invest in index funds that follow the market. Set it and forget it. The market sees an average increase of 7% per year and that’s WAY better than a savings account.

15. I try to buy stock in businesses that are so wonderful that an idiot can run them. Because sooner or later, one will.

Look for companies to invest in that are so strong that they can weather any storm because soon enough they will have to. Think about Apple (AAPL), as long as they keep pushing out iPhones it doesn’t matter who runs the company, they’ll continue to do well. People were worried when Steve Jobs passed because they didn’t know the future of the company, but Tim Cook stepped in and maintained the same Apple legacy. As long as Tim Cook sticks to the secret Apple recipe, they’ll be in good shape.

16. Buy into a company because you want to own it, not because you want the stock to go up.

If you see a company that you think is going to do well or heard will do well, don’t buy it unless you’re willing to hold it for awhile. If something goes wrong and the stock dives, you’re stuck with a company you don’t believe in and will likely sell at a lower price to get rid of it, ruining the reason you bought it in the first place.

17. Wall Street is the only place that people ride to work in a Rolls Royce to get advice from those who take the subway.

This is just a funny Warren Buffet quote.

18. Charlie and I have not learned how to solve difficult business problems. What we have learned is to avoid them.

I’m sure Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger have learned how to solve difficult business problems, but the best way to navigate murky waters is to avoid them all together. The more problems your business can avoid, the better shape you’ll be. You can avoid a lot of problems from being proactive instead of reactive.

19. Long ago, Ben Graham taught me that “Price is what you pay; value is what you get.”

Ben Graham, Warren Buffett’s mentor had this popular quote. I always think about it simply. Price is what you buy a stock for and Value is what you sell that same stock for.

20. It’s better to hang out with people better than you. Pick out associates whose behavior is better than yours and you’ll drift in that direction.

If you can’t tell, Warren Buffett believes in surrounding yourself with the right people. He credits much of his success from surrounding himself with smart, good people.

21. If past history was all there was to the game, the richest people would be librarians.

When you analyze a stock based on its historical performance, it’s called technical analysis. Yet past performance does not necessarily mean future performance. Just because you know what the stock has done in the past doesn’t mean it’s going to follow that same trend.

22. You only have to do a very few things right in your life so long as you don’t do too many things wrong.

It’s ok to mess up, focus on learning from those mistakes for the next time. It just sounds cooler when Warren Buffett quotes it. Or you can take this as no matter how many mistakes you’ve made in the past, you always have a chance to do more good. It’s one of those life quotes that can go many ways.

Wallet Squirrel

Wallet Squirrel is a personal finance blog by best friends Andrew & Adam on how money works, building side-hustles, and the benefits of cleverly investing the profits. Featured on MSN Money, AOL Finance, and more!

www.walletsquirrel.com/

How to Find the Best High Dividend Stocks

November 24, 2020/0 Comments/in Dividend Investing, Personal Finance /by Wallet Squirrel

We often hear that Millennials are terrible investors because most Millennials entered the workforce during the 2008 financial crisis. Afterward, many hesitated to invest after seeing their families lose money, and those who often invested very conservatively. Many have avoided stocks, even the more conservative high dividend stocks.

Which begs the question – have Millennials changed their investment strategies? Let’s take a look.

With 20/20 hindsight, most people would agree that not investing during the turbulent 2008 financial crisis was a regret. Shortly after, we saw one of the greatest economic booms to the economy and those who invested made some of the greatest returns.

At this time, Millennials are facing their second economic recession with the 2020 pandemic (or third recession if we count the 2001 September 11th financial swing). Being recession veterans, they’re betting on a strong economic recovery.

Popular Millennial Stocks

This has been seen by Financial Brokerage Platforms like Robinhood, popular among Millennials. The platform gained 10 million users from 2016 to 2020 and added 3 million users during the pandemic.

By living through a strong economic recovery, Millennials show they are more comfortable with the stock market and purchasing stocks with their creative ways to make money.

The primary stocks that Millennials are purchasing are tech stocks (Tesla, Microsoft, Apple). As well as companies with strong brand awareness (Virgin Galactic, Amazon, Peloton) according to Robinhood’s list of 100 popular stocks.

Interestingly, some of these popular Millennial stocks offer dividends and create a rise in dividend investing. Dividend stocks traditionally offer stable returns and lower volatility, providing comfort to those Millennials with the 2008 financial crisis still fresh in their minds.

Millennials are gaining regular dividends, and additional portfolio growth as dividend stocks have outperformed their peers from 1990 to 2015 (source).

What Are Dividends

If you’re not familiar with dividends, here is a short recap.

Dividends are a portion of the company’s earnings that are distributed to shareholders. In addition to the value of a company’s stock going up, dividends are an additional payment sent to shareholders simply for owning the company.

Dividend payments are sent typically monthly, quarterly, or on an annual timeline, and determined by the company’s board of directors.

The types of companies that usually offer dividends are traditionally more established companies.

Dividend Investing Is a Growing Trend

Dividend Investing is a growing trend investment strategy involving owning primarily stocks that offer dividends. The idea is that by owning enough stocks that offer dividends, those dividend payments can eventually entirely replace your income for retirement.

Retirees may save up a large retirement nest egg, but they will eventually need to sell those stocks for money in retirement. Often using the rule of 4% to get the longest life out of their nest egg. All while hoping their nest egg doesn’t run out before they die.

The benefit of dividend investing is that there is no need to sell their stocks by retiring on the dividend income. The dividend payments from your stocks can cover all your expenses till the end of life. This helps ensure you have a consistent income stream in retirement and the ability to leave a sizeable inheritance for your heirs.

Take into consideration Warren Buffett, arguably one of the greatest investors who ever lived. He has a $200 billion portfolio through Berkshire Hathaway, consisting of 47 stocks. Two-thirds of those stocks have one thing in common – they provide dividends.

What Is The Average Dividend Yield

We established dividends are a portion of the company’s earnings distributed to shareholders, but how much do shareholders get?

Each company sets its own divided as a fixed dollar amount per share owned. However, the industry typically gauges dividend amounts as a dividend yield. This is the dividend compared to the current value of the stock. So while the dividend amount is typically pretty consistent dollar value, the dividend yield changes daily as the stock price changes.

In the S&P 500, which gauges 500 popular American companies. The average dividend yield of the S&P 500 is 2.00%. So, for every $100 you invest in the S&P 500, you will earn $2 annually in dividend payments.

What Are High Dividend Stocks?

High Dividend Stocks are typically stocks that offer a dividend yield greater than the average 2.00%.

Typically high dividend stocks come from companies with strong cash flow such as:

REITs (Real Estate Investment Trust)
Oil & Gas Companies
Telecommunication Companies
Utilities
Banks

High Dividend Stocks do have risks. Companies have been known to offer high dividends to attract investors. However, they may have trouble maintaining their high dividend yield in the long term, and their stock price may suffer. You should always be careful about these and do your research.

Popular High Dividend Stocks

Here are some popular high dividend stocks that have strong brand recognition and high dividend yields.

Bank High Dividend Stocks

Citigroup (C) – Dividend Yield 4.74%

Citigroup is one of the big four banks in the United States and JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, and Wells Fargo. They offer financial services such as consumer banking and credit, corporate and investment banking, and wealth management. Citigroup is referred to as too big to fail with a market cap of 90.7 billion. When a company is too big to fail, that’s a nice assurance that it’ll continue to keep up its dividend.

JPMorgan Chase (JPM) – Dividend Yield 3.55%

JPMorgan Chase is considered the largest bank in the United States and seventh-largest in the world by total assets. These amount to around $3.2 trillion. The JPMorgan brand is used for banking services, while the Chase brand is used for credit card services.

JPMorgan continues to have a healthy balance sheet and shows they’ll be able to maintain their high dividend stock even during a turbulent 2020.

Energy Company High Dividend Stocks

ExxonMobil (XOM) – Dividend Yield 10.19%

ExxonMobil is the third-largest publicly traded oil and gas company behind Chevron and Saudi Aramco. While oil prices have lately decreased and 2020 has not been kind to any stocks. ExxonMobil continues to maintain a high dividend stock for investors. Plus, there’s a comfort knowing the world will always need electricity.

Chevron (CVX) – Dividend Yield 7.07%

Chevron is another oil & gas company and recently overtook ExxonMobil for the world’s 2nd largest energy company. CVX has been a bit more conservative in its acquisitions and spending. Those choices have created a strong balance sheet for the company to maintain a great high dividend stock.

Edison (EIX) – Dividend Yield 4.53%

Edison is a utility company that generates, transmits, and distributes electricity in the United States, primarily in California. Utility companies like Edison have a fairly stable income stream as there is usually little competition, which helps them maintain high dividend yields.

DCP Midstream (DCP) – Dividend Yield 12.05%

DCP Midstream is also in the oil & gas industry, focusing primarily on transportation. They have 51,000 miles of natural gas pipelines and 44 natural gas processing plants in the united states, making it one of the larger midstream companies.

As they make a good portion of money transporting oil & gas, their revenue depends heavily on the oil price. Right now, oil is priced low, but as that changes, this high dividend stock has a potential upswing for growth.

Real Estate High Dividend Stocks

Realty Income Corporation (O)- Dividend Yield 4.64%

Realty Income is known as the monthly dividend company. Popular among dividend investors as they pay dividends every month. They are a real estate investment trust (REIT) that owns 6,541 properties in the United States, Puerto Rico, and the United Kingdom. They earn money through long-term leases on their properties, which uniquely positions them to weather most short-term economic swings.

Plus, their major tenants are Walgreens, 7-Eleven, Dollar General, FedEx, Dollar Tree. These companies aren’t easily going to get replaced by online eCommerce. If their stable cash flow wasn’t enticing enough, their high monthly dividend of 4.64% is pretty great.

Universal Health Realty Trust (UHT) – Divined Yield 5.01%

Universal Health Realty Trust is another REIT but focuses on hospitals, rehabilitation hospitals, free-standing emergency departments, sub-acute facilities, medical office buildings, and child care facilities. UHT earns money through long-term leases to these healthcare facilities located primarily in Arizona, Nevada, and Texas.

This stock has taken a beating during 2020. Healthcare facilities have had to put off higher-paying services as they adapt their facilities for COVID. Even with the recent stock price fall, it still offers an attractive dividend with growth as the economy improves.

Simon Property Group (SPG) – Dividend Yield 8.02%

Simon Property Group is another interesting REIT on this list. They are the second-largest real estate investment trust in the United States with a significant portfolio in malls, outlets, and large complexes with big-box retailers.

However, the rise of eCommerce has been brutal to Simon Property Group. Plus, 2020 has not been kind to in-person retail. Simon has many assets but needs a significant plan to navigate a future post-COVID and continue to compete with Amazon.

Iron Mountain (IRM) – Dividend Yield 8.99%

Another high-dividend stock on our list. Iron Mountain stores information. They store physical records as well as digital records for companies around the world. This includes 220,000 customers throughout North America, Europe, Latin America, Africa, and Asia.

With over 1,500 storage locations, including underground caves for added security, Iron Mountain is a great solution for companies needing secure offsite storage. Also, they’ve seen significant growth in digital storage. Their recurring revenue through storage services helps maintain their high dividend stock.

Telecommunication High Dividend Stocks

Verizon (VZ) – Dividend Yield 4.3%

Verizon is a well-known brand as they offer wireless telephone services to around 93 million people across the United States. Making it one of the largest phone services in the country. They primarily focus on wireless connectively, making about 70% of their revenue.

Also their Verizon Media Group, they earn revenue from their acquisitions of AOL and Yahoo. Verizon has a strong recurring revenue subscriber base making it a great high dividend stock.

AT&T (T) – Dividend Yield 7.61%

AT&T has been a staple in telecommunications for ages. Their wireless telephone services make about 40% of their revenue, but they’re a bit more diverse. They also have DirectTV, Warner Media (HBO, Warner Brothers, Turner cable networks, etc.).

This diversity has helped AT&T stay relevant, but companies like Netflix, Amazon Prime, and Disney + continue to bite off their network tv revenue.

CenturyLink (LUMN) – Dividend Yield 10.14%

CenturyLink is now Lumen Technologies. A recent name change occurred in September 2020. Lumen is one of the United States’ largest telecommunication companies offering internet services to businesses (75% of revenue) and individual consumers.

With 450,000 miles of fiber connecting people to the internet, Lumen has the infrastructure smaller companies can’t compete with. This helps maintain its market share and high-dividend payouts.

Cisco (CSCO) – Dividend Yield 3.59%

Cisco is not well known by individual consumers. Yet CSCO is one of the world’s largest hardware and software suppliers for networking solutions for businesses. They help companies build their own networks with routers, switches, video conferencing software, data centers, security, and more.

What’s great is that they sell the physical hardware companies need and the software as a subscription for recurring revenue to support that great high dividend stock.

Technology High Dividend Stocks

IBM (IBM) – Dividend Yield 5.18%

IBM is a hardware and software technology company that focuses on cloud computing, artificial intelligence, commerce, data & analytics, IT Infrastructure, security, and a wide range of digital products. They have been paying a dividend since 1916 and considered a solid dividend payer.

They’ve recently made acquisitions of companies like Red Hat to reduce their dividend growth for a bit. These acquisitions will still pay off in billions for the long-term and help maintain IBM’s significant high dividend stock.

Aerospace & Defense High Dividend Stocks

General Dynamics (GD) – Dividend Yield 3.08%

General Dynamics is the 5th largest US defense contractor and business jet manufacturer of Gulfstreams. Being a defense contractor, they receive military contracts that are less susceptible to market swings. They currently have $82.7 billion in backlog, including two US Navy submarines, Abrams tanks, and more.

As United States Defense spending continuing to rise, General Dynamics will continue to benefit as a reputable company in the defense field. For investors, this could be a great high dividend stock to hold on to for the long term.

Insurance High Dividend Stocks

MetLife (MET) – Dividend Yield 4.68%

MetLife is the largest life insurer in the United States and one of the world’s largest as they operate in 40 countries. They make money from premiums, investing income before insurance payouts, and retirement solutions such as annuities.

COVID will certainly have an impact on the insurance business. MetLife is better positioned than other life insurance agencies to weather the storm and maintain its high-dividend stock.

Disclosure: I personally hold O, IRM, VZ, DCP, CSCO. This article was written by myself, and it expresses my own opinions. I am not receiving compensation for it. Nor do I have any business relationship with any company whose stock is mentioned in this article. For a full list of my entire stock portfolio, visit Wallet Squirrel.

This article originally appeared on Your Money Geek and has been republished with permission.

Wallet Squirrel

www.walletsquirrel.com/

Robinhood App Review: I saved $420 in trading fees in 6 months

August 11, 2020/25 Comments/in Dividend Investing, Review, Robinhood App /by Wallet Squirrel

While I have recently updated this Robinhood App Review, it still holds true that the Robinhood App has saved me $420 in trading fees in my first 6 months of buying and selling stocks on the stock market.

However, our article is now updated to reflect 5-years later those savings have grown to over $1,631 in trading fees saved!

Since my initial review in 2015, the Robinhood App has grown into a wildly popular stock trading platform and their $0 trading fees have become industry standard. Companies such as Charles Schwab, Fidelity and more have all moved to $0 trading fees simply to compete with the Robinhood App now valued at $8.3 Billion (source). With all these companies reducing their fees, the average customer is the real winner, thank you Robinhood.

Nowadays with every brokerage platform offering free trades, Robinhood still holds a competitive advantage (especially with millennials) due to how simple it is to buy and sell stocks.

That’s what we’re going to look at today!

What is Robinhood?

Robinhood is a mobile app (plus now website interface) that allows anyone to buy and sell stocks on the stock market. Plus recently, users also have the opportunity to buy and sell cryptocurrency.

Robinhood offers $0 trading fees

Initially for this Robinhood App Review, Robinhood’s biggest claim to fame was that it had $0 trading fees. This was a big deal because at the time most brokerage accounts charged $7 – $10 per trade. Meaning if you wanted to buy 1 share of Apple (APPL) or 50 shares of Apple, most traditional brokerage accounts would charge you $7 – $10 in addition to the stock price for the privilege of purchasing that stock. Plus another $7-$10 whenever you sold it.

This obviously sucked because those fees would add up and drastically cut into your profits, especially for younger investors who could only by 1 share of stock at a time.

The Robinhood App wasn’t the first start-up to offer $0 trading fees, but they are one of the most well-known to have done it successfully. So much so, that it became industry standard. If you’re wondering if they don’t offer fees like other brokerages, how do they make money? I’ll explain below in a moment.

Incredibly Easy To Buy/Sell Stocks For Beginners

The target audience for Robinhood is the millennial investor, around the average age of 24 who recognizes the benefit of buying a stock like Amazon (AMZN) but intimidated by the often mysterious process of purchasing a single share of stock.

Robinhood wanted to make the process simple, easy, and fast, so they designed an elegant and intuitive process for buying stock. Simply find the stock ticker you want and hit “buy” and confirm with a swipe.

I have personally used other brokerage accounts in the past and grown headaches for the unnecessarily complex design and clunky software. Those experiences have produced a deserved fondness for the ease of Robinhood. Since then, many of my friends have switched to the app.

It’s worth noting that Robinhood has received some negative press over some individuals who have lost a significant amount of money on Robinhood because they say Robinhood makes it “Too Easy” to buy and sell stocks. While I feel terrible for those individuals, I can not fault Robinhood making such a successfully simple solution for people wishing to invest in their own financial future. We should encourage these simple solutions to complex problems, like the iPhone, Internet, and Indoor Plumbing all making our lives easier.

This ease-of-use has allowed me to build my own stock portfolio now worth over $10,000 that we track here on Wallet Squirrel.

How Robinhood Makes Money

If you ever want to understand a company, understand the way they make money. Nike and Gap use child labor to make a higher margin. I’m not here to judge, just a shining an example of why you should understand the fundamentals of how profits are made. For our Robinhood App Review, we have to look at the finances.

Robinhood makes money by:

Collecting Interest from the cash you have lying in your brokerage account that isn’t invested. For example, if you have $1,000 in your account and haven’t yet bought any stock. The Robinhood App gains interest off that $1,000 similar to how you would gain interest on a savings account. You won’t ever lose money sitting in your brokerage account, but it’ll simply be there gaining interest for Robinhood, so invest it! This is a pretty common practice for most brokerage accounts.
Robinhood Gold is an additional subscription ($5 monthly fee) that gives you additional research tools, larger instant deposits (typically any deposit up to $1,000 is instant, otherwise you need to wait 3 days) and margin investing. I typically don’t recommend this for beginners and use Yahoo Finance for all my investing research.
Rebates from Market Makers and Trading Venues this means when you buy certain stocks, ETFs (Electronic Traded Funds) and options. Robinhood sometimes recieves a rebate (money back) on the back end if they have a relationship with some of the companies they purchase stocks, ETFs or options from. It’s like getting a rebate on a cell phone, but instead of a discount, Robinhood gets to pocket that money. It doesn’t affect you, but it’s a nice little boost to Robinhood’s profit line.
Stock Loan Income meaning Robinhood Securities earns income from lending stocks purchased on margin to counterparties. This is more for advance users.
Cash Management is the debit/credit card that Robinhood started. It earns fees from your card like a typical bank would see.

All in all, these are a nice way to help Robinhood make a profit without charging you additional money. It’s pretty clever.

Robinhood App Review: My experience

I initially signed up for Robinhood because they have a great deal when you use this Robinhood App Referral Code, you will automatically receive one random share of stock. I am happy to say that our referral code won a free share of Apple (AAPL) now worth over $400. It’s worth signing up for the free money. One of our favorite ways to make money.

Signing up: Pretty simple. I downloaded the Robinhood App from the Google Play store on my android phone (also available for iPhones). You will fill out the same info you would open a bank account. You will have to give your social security number, so be warned, but this is the same info you’d give to any brokerage account. It just feels weird because you’re doing this all over the phone.

Once you register and sign in. You don’t have to use your email and password every time. You can set up a 4 digit pin for security or a fingerprint if you prefer for quick access.

Connect your bank account: Everything is electronic, so you need to connect your bank account. Both traditional brick & mortar banks, as well as virtual banks, will work. I connected both my Wells Fargo account and Ally bank account. Keep in mind, when you sign up, you won’t be able to trade right away. There is usually a 5 business day waiting period once you sign up. This is usually just for Robinhood to verify that your money (a few cents) can be sent to your bank and back.

Is it weird doing everything over an app? There is definitely an adjustment period where you need to get comfortable trading over the app. I’ve never traded over anything before this, but it turned out quite easy. There aren’t many buttons, so for our Robinhood App Review, it was pretty straight forward.

Search for your stock ticker
There is a large buy button, click it
There is a verify screen, where you must swipe up to verify. This removes people who accidentally double-tap from making mistakes.
Done.

Here is a look at what the Robinhood App looks like.

What I Like About the Robinhood App

In the past 5 years, I have done over 233 trades. Most of these are buying a single share of stock at a time because that’s all the money I have to invest.

For me personally, I buy stocks that offer dividends because this matches my dividend investing strategy. I like the idea that I can regularly earn money from a stock without ever selling it by collecting the dividends they produce for stock shareholders. This way I rarely worry about the stock market going up or down because I constantly am collecting dividend payments. Here are all the dividend stocks I own.

Since I did mention earlier it’s easy to buy stocks on Robinhood. Here’s an example.

I can receive a notification that Realty Income (Stock Ticker “O”) has decreased in value over 5% and immediately open the app, hit buy, select the number of shares I want and swipe to confirm. All within 10 seconds I can buy stocks whenever I feel with absolute ease. I’ve done this during work meetings, walking in the park, and eating out with friends.

All investing should be this easy and free to use.

What I Don’t Like About the Robinhood App

The biggest issue with Robinhood is the three business day wait period. If you transfer money to your Robinhood brokerage account on Monday, it won’t be available till Thursday. If you sell a stock, you won’t have that cash available to you till 3 business days. Yes it sucks, but I have more time than money. Easily worth $0, but worth sharing. Just wait till Robinhood Instant is revealed to everyone.
UPDATED 9/22/2017 – There is no more wait period for Robinhood Instant. It’s open to everyone, so no more 3 day wait period for your investments. This is awesome!
There is no website to access your stocks whatsoever. That means I can’t connect it to Mint (my money manager). Mint as consistently stated that since Robinhood doesn’t have a website, it can’t connect to the brokerage account. So my true financial worth isn’t provided. This does kind of suck.
UPDATED 11/1/2017 – Robinhood now has a website interface so you can check your stocks on your computer. Plus it now integrates with Mint, one of my favorite apps.
There is no in-depth analytics to analyze stock values. It gives the basic info, but I usually use Yahoo Finance to do my research and just use the Robinhood App for pulling the trigger. With so many great analyzing tools on the web, this isn’t the biggest loss.
UPDATED 9/29/2016 – Robinhood launched Robinhood Gold with additional research tools however, it cost $5/mo. I still prefer using Yahoo Finance. It’s free and a great tool!
I would be remiss if I didn’t mention the recent glitch Robinhood had. I once woke to find that Robinhood glitched out and didn’t display my portfolio value. In total shock, I absolutely froze from fear. My balance went from $6,604.54 to $8.14 (which was my available cash). I immediately noticed that I still had all my stock positions, but it simply wasn’t totaling correctly. I knew since it was displaying my available cash instead of the portfolio value, this was a glitch and pulled the wrong info. Customer service was promptly reached and they fixed the issue in a couple of hours.
UPDATED 8/11/2020 – This hasn’t happened since.

Notice how all those negative comments have been fixed over time from the original Robinhood App Review?

Robinhood is constantly growing and improving. They still have a start-up mindset by listening to customer’s feedback while being large enough to have an $8.3 billion evaluation. I use this app daily and simply haven’t found a better investing solution.

Would I Recommend the Robinhood App, Yes.

In my experience for this Robinhood App Review, this is simply the best brokerage solution I’ve ever used.

It’s a well-established brokerage, backed by Google Ventures and a member of the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) and the Securities Investor Protection Corporation (SIPC), which protects securities customers of its members up to $500,000 (including $250,000 for claims for cash).

That last part is taken from their website.

Back in 2015, I predicted that Robinhood would powerfully impact the market and force other brokerage firms to lower their prices. That absolutely came true and Robinhood continues to take market share from traditional firms because they have an elegant solution to investing, much how Tesla took over the car industry because they had a better user experience (yes you can invest in Tesla).

Robinhood Referral Code to Start with A Free Share of Stock!

I will continue to use the Robinhood App myself, my friends have started using it, and I’m happy to chat with anyone about my experience.

It’s simply great when people realize how easy it is to start investing themselves!

Robinhood App Review - Free Share of Apple (AAPL) Stock on Sign Up

How great is Robinhood that when you signup, you get a free random share of stock? We won a free share of Apple (AAPL) with the referral code.

Wallet Squirrel

www.walletsquirrel.com/

3 Reasons Why Monthly Dividend Stocks Are Better than Quarterly

July 28, 2020/6 Comments/in Dividend Investing, Robinhood App /by Wallet Squirrel

Starting to get into dividend investing? Here are 3 reasons you should be looking at monthly dividend stocks rather than quarterly. Earn some extra passive income through dividend investing.

Here on Wallet Squirrel, every day we are finding new ways to earn money and investing those profits to build an online stock portfolio. Our stock portfolio is exclusively made of dividend stocks, so in the future, we can live off the income produced by those dividends. As investors, we have some preferences on why monthly dividend stocks are better than quarterly.

All Hail Dividends

If you’re curious about what dividends are, our best summation is that they are a portion of a company’s profits that are distributed to shareholders regularly.

If you want to know more, check out our What Are Dividends article. There are a lot of companies that produce dividends (why I love them), but receiving dividends monthly is pretty awesome!

Why Monthly Dividends Stocks are Awesome!

Monthly Dividend Stocks are way easier to budget for – If you’re waiting quarterly for those dividend checks, you’re forced to budget that income for the next several months. A lump sum you have to let sit in your bank account tempting you to spend it. No matter your willpower, you’ll always be thinking “I’d be willing to eat Ramen Noodles for the next month if I bought a boat right now”. You’ll be the most sodium-rich sea captain. You’re better than that.
Better Compound Interest – If you’re receiving dividends every month, you can use that to reinvest in more stocks and have those dividends grow more by the time your other quarterly stocks arrive. Simply, the faster you reinvest those dividends, the faster they’ll compound interest. For Example, if you owned 1,000 shares of a $10 stock at a 5% annual dividend. At the end of the year, you’ll have earned 5% at $500. However, if you received monthly dividends, you could reinvest those dividends each month and have earned 5.12% at $511.62. This is assuming you have a DRIP campaign set up. However it’s obviously more, and that’s only one year.
It’s enjoyable seeing regular income – There is something incredibly satisfying as an investor seeing their investments create monthly income. It feels like you’re earning extra as your stock price fluctuates, you’re still seeing income being produced. You can reinvest or spend that monthly income but it gives you extra cash each month to play with.

What Type of Companies Produce Monthly Dividends?

You’ll mostly find monthly dividend companies limited to Real Estate Investment Trust, Business Development Companies and sometimes Master Limited Partnerships.

Real Estate Investment Trust – is essentially a company that owns multiple properties and generates income based on those properties. They can specialize in different real estate niches such as commercial property, apartments, office buildings, hospitals, etc. Each REIT usually has a specific focus and most produce dividends.
Business Development Companies – are organizations that invest in small to medium-sized companies to help them grow in pivotal stages of their development. Their income is made up of their investments in companies.
Master Limited Partnerships – are organizations that generate predictable income streams based on production/processing/storage and transportation of depletable natural resources.

Are you invested in any monthly dividend stocks? Tell me about them.

Wallet Squirrel

www.walletsquirrel.com/

After the recent oil crash, Andrew bought 85 more shares of DCP stock. He has made over $500 since this purchase. Check out what made him take this risk.

I Bought 85 Shares Of DCP With The Recent Oil Crash and Made $500

May 12, 2020/4 Comments/in Business, Dividend Investing, Stock Watch List /by Wallet Squirrel

After the recent oil crash, Andrew bought 85 more shares of DCP stock. He has made over $500 since this purchase. Check out what made him take this risk. #stockmarket #personalfinance #investing #investingtips Typically I spend $100 every 2 weeks on buying a couple of shares of stock. These are usually in companies I already own, but with the recent oil crash, I branched out and bought some shares of DCP Midstream (stock ticker DCP).

Who is DCP Midstream

DCP Midstream is in the oil & gas industry, specifically involved in the transporting, trading, and storing natural gas and natural gas liquids. They own and operate approximately 44 natural gas processing plants and 51,000 miles of natural gas pipeline. Their headquarters is in Denver, Colorado, and they primarily operate in the United States.

FYI – Natural gas is a colorless and odorless gas used in residential, commercial, and industrial applications, often for heating your buildings. It is also used for electric power generation. Natural Gas is often referred to as Earth’s Cleanest Fossil Fuel.

Not My First Time Buying DCP

I have bought shares of DCP in the past. In fact, it was one of the first stocks I ever bought. The reason being it was a company I was familiar with my last job where I did field inspections for oil companies. I often saw their pipelines and like billboards, it became ingrained in my brain.

However immediately after I bought shares of their company, I ended up selling all my shares because while I was familiar with the name, I was less familiar with the company. HINT – You should always know about how a company works if you ever want to invest in them.

I Bought It Again

While COVID-19 was tanking the market with the downgrade of a number of market predictions, at the same time, oil was hitting a real low point. Honestly, it seemed kind of odd to me because we all need oil regardless of the economy, it powers our homes, generates electricity, and pretty much keeps the world moving. It would be great to be 100% electric, but we’re not there, so we need oil & gas.

I have kept DCP on my watchlist for the longest time. When I last looked at it back in 2013, the stock was at $28.10. Then when I looked again during this recent period (March 18), the stock dipped to $2.48. That seemed crazy low to me. So I took a bit of gamble, but knowing that we still needed oil & gas, I bought some shares when it was low:

March 18th – I bought 30 shares at $2.48
March 18th – I bought 20 shares at $2.32 (it dipped more, so I bought more)
March 18th – I bought 5 shares at $2.79 (I forgot I had some extra money in my account)
March 30th – I bought 30 shares at $3.23 (because it was still low)

That’s at a total of $$231.20 I invested in DCP

I will add, that while I liked the price I did look at DCP on Yahoo Finance and it showed no major red flags. While I have gotten used to looking at all the key data, I still always look at the “Recommendation Rating” on the right sidebar to see what other analysts recommend. All looked good.

Am I Happy With My Purchase

I always buy for the long term and always stocks with dividends. This company is no different. I’ll continue to watch DCP, but I feel like I got this stock for a steal. Since that bottom, the stock is now at $8.40.

My initial investment of $231.20 is now worth $714

I will admit, it was a bit more of a gamble than I usually do, so that’s why I only invested a little over $200. I think risks are ok if you’re willing to lose all your money. However, I am happy to ride the waves of DCP and see what happens!

Wallet Squirrel

www.walletsquirrel.com/

Betterment Review: Everything You Need to Know About How Betterment Makes Investing Easy

January 8, 2018/6 Comments/in Dividend Investing /by Adam

Today let’s talk about investing. Specifically, we are going to talk about the super easy to use Betterment application. This Betterment review will show you just how easy it is to start investing.

I jumped on the Betterment bandwagon a couple years ago because I do not have that much time to research the stock market.

This is why Betterment is the best and easiest way to invest for anyone who does not have the time or knowledge to research the stock market. The financial experts (more to come later) over at Betterment take all of the hard work out of the equation for you.

For me, I personally look at Betterment as a glorified savings account for a variety of different financial goals.

These goals could include saving up for a vacation, an emergency fund, or a house remodeling project.

The money I have put away here was used for our mortgage down payment and saving up for a vacation to Maine this past summer. We still keep an emergency fund and vacation fund within Betterment.

To be upfront with you for this Betterment review, I am showing you screenshots of our Vacation account which currently has zero dollars in it. This is the account that we put money away into to save for vacations. Since we were so aggressive at paying off our car, learn how we did it here. We have actually just restarted our savings for a vacation this month.

Who is Betterment

Alright, let’s start this Betterment review by taking a look at who Betterment really is.

Based in New York City, Betterment was created by Jon Stein in 2008 who wanted to improve the way we invest, “by combining proven investment strategies with technology that drives down costs.” The way the company earns money (more detail later) keeps them from being, “incentivized to recommend certain funds, and we don’t have our own investment products to sell.” This means they will look out for what is really yours. (Betterment)

Overall the company is said to manage $10 billion in assets! That is pretty impressive for a company that is just reaching their 10 year anniversary.

Betterment offers many services such as financial planning, retirement, trusts, access to financial experts, and so much more. Really you can get all of your financial needs satisfied here.

Using their technology, Betterment claims that you will “earn 2.66% more per year than a typical investor.” (Betterment). Whether this claim is true or not, I do not know. It is very enticing though!

Why I like Betterment

Here are the main reasons as to why I choose to use Betterment instead of other services.

Interface: It does not get much easier than using the mobile Betterment application. Here I can see how my accounts (will talk about these next) are performing, easily add more money to those accounts, or adjust how aggressive those accounts are. The clean interface will also quickly tell you if you are on track with that particular account’s goals or not.

Basically, it is a way for the application to kindly yell at you that you are slacking financially.

They also have a very clean online interface (you will see examples later) as well. For me, I mostly use the mobile application because it does everything I need on the fly.

I wanted to have examples in our Betterment review of the mobile application but because of their security policy, the application denies the screenshot request.

Customizable: While talking about how clean the interface is, I kept mentioning accounts. You are asking yourself what the heck those are! Within your Betterment, you can have multiple accounts. These accounts are different investing goals you might have. You might have an account with different goals such as retirement, house down payment, or even that new car.

With each account, you can customize the portfolio’s allocation by adjusting the ratio of bonds vs stocks.

I love this because some accounts you will want to have more aggressive portfolios compared to others. I made our house down payment account more conservative by setting it to invest in more bonds. While I made our vacation fund more aggressive by setting it to invest in more stocks.

Dividends: Another cool feature that I liked was that Betterment takes the dividends your stocks earn and reinvests them automatically for you. I know Andrew loves this idea based on his love for dividend stocks.

It is always fun to receive the notifications from Betterment saying that I earned a dividend and they are putting them to work for me.

When Wouldn’t I use Betterment

Now it is time to change gears in this Betterment review to see when I would not want to use the service. These points are not to negatively reflect on the service but rather to show if you should be using the Robinhood application instead.

Control: Wanting more control as to what stocks your money goes into instead? Then Betterment is not the service for you. Betterment limits your control on purpose as they want to simplify the investing process as much as possible. Plus, as I mentioned earlier, their technology that makes the proper recommendations are said to make 2.66% more per year, so Betterment is wanting you to use their technology.

Robinhood would be a better option for you if you want to put in the research to pick each individual stock yourself.

Time: If you have more time and passion to research your stocks then I would probably use Robinhood instead. Personally, I love to research companies and their stocks. This was a passion that started back when I was around 15 years old.

Between a one-year-old, Wallet Squirrel, and other passions I just do not have the time to do the research.

This is why I decided to go with Betterment. Andrew is a bachelor so he has the time to put in the research. This is why he uses Robinhood.

Cost: Betterment does cost you some money. They base their fee on your overall account balance. There is a 0.25% annual fee for the basic service which will cost you $25 a year if you have $10,000 in your account. Betterment also offers a Premium service that is 0.40% annually which would cost you $400 a year if you have $100,000 in your account (Their minimum balance for the Premium service).

The Premium service sounds pretty awesome as you get unlimited access to a personally picked CFP professional.

To put this into perspective, let’s take a general look at what a CFP can cost. Some CFP professionals will charge based on an annual fee like Betterment while others change by the hour. Since this is a Betterment review looks compare that way. A CFP professional can charge anywhere between 2% to 0.50% annually depending on how large your portfolio is. Based on these numbers, you can see that Betterment is a cheaper option.

How To Get Started

Head over to Betterment (yes, that is an affiliate link) to get started by clicking the Get Started link in the top right-hand corner. They will walk you through a series of questions to make sure you get the account set up right.