Cash The Checks

About a year ago, I wanted to get into the stock market so I opened up a ShareBuilder account. I had no idea what I was doing and still to this day, I still have no clue. I bought $20 worth of stock in Google and $20 in Target as an experiment. I was going to track the progress and then just cash-out. If I ever found it real interesting, I’d invest more money in more stocks and become more active in it.

Here’s what my account looks like after a year and a $40 initial investment

There’s a whopping $40.85 in it. Okay so the experiment is over, I don’t have enough time to keep track of my stocks, and it was a valuable expierience. So it’s time to cash out or withdraw my money…

Whoops, here’s the catch. I can only cash out that $0.10 that was paid to me in “dividends”. I have to “sell” my stocks first. Okay so let me go and sell my stock. I go to sell my $17+ in Target stock and there’s a $15.95 fee to do this! I go to sell my Google stock and there’s antoher $15.95 fee! So by my calculations if I want my $40.85 in my account, I need to pay ShareBuilder $30.90 first, leaving me with only $8.95.

So here are my options at this point..

• leave the $40.85 in my account.
• sell the stocks and withdraw what’s left – $8.95

One option leaves me with nothing in my pocket, the other with $8.95. However with the first option, I don’t give Share Builder the satisfaction of getting $30.90 from me.

What to do, what to do..