Sharebuilder update

I peeked into my Sharebuilder.com (formerly Netstock) account this morning. Since the account was started in my early college years, I had setup a dollar cost averaging plan for a few large-cap stocks I liked and yielded dividends. Due to some tight financial situations then, I stopped the plan and only turned it on whenever I had a spare $60.00 (the cost of my plan's investment including fees) lying around. So even though I started my account fairly early, the value is quite low for its age.

Since my finances have been settling a bit from a year ago, I started funded this account again a several months back. I have an automatic deposit going into my account on the first and fifteen of the month that totals $20.00 a month. I go in every so often to see if I hit the $60.00 mark so I can invest in some more partial stocks. Anyway, this morning I realize I was above $80.00 and went in to turn on my plan for a one-time transaction. While there, I noticed that there was an option to set it to automatically turn on every time I have enough funds. Seeing how it is always nice to have savings and investments be automatic, I opted for that instead. Now I won't have to worry about my money just sitting in my account and can relax with the fact that Sharebuilder will take care of it.

In terms of what stocks to pick, I don't really have enough money in the account to actually warrant a need to track the market and trade when needed. So I plan on sticking with the few large caps I have and let it grow a bit. The dividends are set to reinvest automatically too, but we're talking cents here. If and when it gets big enough that I can try to "play" the market a bit, then I'll monitor the market more than I am now and see what I can do. The large caps I'm investing in are pretty stable. In terms of more aggressive investing, I have my 401k doing that for me there. Five percent of my gross income at my regular nine-to-fiver is being put away in some funds I've selected.