Monthly Goal Update: Setting up “Play Money” Account

I’m a bit late, but here were my goals & sub-goals for last month, and here is my current status:

1) I did some research into ETFs, but not a whole lot. I examined possible areas of interest such as chasing high-dividend earning companies and real estate investment trusts (REITs). Definitely more to be learnt out there.

I did buy 100 shares of DDD @ $4.80 per share. At $480, it is less than 1% of my net worth, and it is a company that I’ve wanted to own a piece of for a while. We’ll see how it goes!

2) After more thought, I’ve decided not to keep my Ameritrade account open simply to take advantage of real-time quotes, as I can get them for free from my $100 bonus Fidelity account as well as other places online. The account is emptied and closed. One less thing to keep track of.

3) I do plan on making more stock trades in the future in my “Play Money”, but I didn’t want to clutter this blog with all the stock trades. So, I am experimenting and starting up another blog, called MMBPM, or MyMoneyBlog Play Money at Blogger. I’m going to keep it very simple, mainly to help me keep track of things. I’ll keep the research and update the performance periodically here.

4) Done, my wife’s Roth IRA is finally all set up at Vanguard. $7k for 2004/2005 invested into their Target Retirement 2045 Fund (VTIVX). It’s a bit more aggressive than my choice of VTTHX, which I feel is good.

Now to set this month’s goals…