How I Invest!

While we leave our 401k accounts to the pros, we invest in individual stocks in our brokerage account, our traditional IRA and our Roth IRA. This amounts to about $17,000 of which we use to buy individual stocks.

How do I pick which stocks to buy? I don't. I used to love doing tons of research into individual stocks, but I honestly just don't have the time anymore. But I didn't want to give up on the fun of following individual stocks. So a couple years ago I signed up with the famous Jim Cramer at his Action Alerts Plus service. A few years ago when I signed up (before his TV show 'Mad Money' on CNBC), he provided some great recommendations and I made some good money, so I was hooked.



So now, any stock I buy is one that is recommended through his service. It provides me the fun of following individual stocks, but with minimal effort. PLEASE keep in mind that you can lose money and he has provided a couple of recommendations that have lost money, but overall, I am in positive territory.

His portfolio holds 25 stocks. I don't have enough funds to hold all of those, so I generally own only about 5 to 7 of his recommendations. His service costs about $400 per year, but for me, it has been worth every penny. I have never done an analysis of how much return I have earned, but I know it is enough for me to be happy that I'm not spending hours doing research.

I'll post more later on exactly how I use his service.