After spending a month in the Chicago and spending majority of my savings on hotels, food, and a little entertainment and not able to find a place to live in enough time while working for $13/hr, I have come back to the Seattle area. Renting a room and working saving for a place here. Initially want to at least have 3 months worth of current rent saved up in a savings account before considering the next step. Included with that as well will be 3 months of expenses, fixed and variable. Going to wait till October to see where that’s at, having 20% of my paycheck being sent to my Barclay’s savings account. Waiting till October should be able to allow it to build with the percent contribution plus the 1.15% interest.

In the meantime, I will add to my Schwab brokerage, especially now that they offer a form of fractional shares. How I found out it works is that $5 is the minimum to buy a slice of a particular company that is qualified for the fractional share program that they offer. Allowed is the ability to select up to 10 at a time, making the minimum $50, maxing out at about $7,000. Needless to say, I just have 10 stocks that I used $50 to buy. Once I buy all on the table that I set up to guide me, than create a share quantity baseline to help me have a goal and to start building my account by adding more like bonds, treasuries, and CD’s with Schwab and/or Capital One bank since that with Capital One’s CD’s don’t require a minimum and would make it easier to pay off my credit card when I use it.

So far, I’ve combined a list of places I’ve worked with dividend paying stocks, businesses with HQ’s in the Pacific North-West, and suggestions by a youtuber Joseph Hogue. Since I couldn’t put more than 40 on each watchlist, I ended up making two and clicked on the header that made each list go according to price of each stock, low price to high price, then I printed. Opening a word document, I then proceeded to create categories of <$10, $10 – $50 , $50 – $100, and $100 – $1,000. With only a portion of my current paycheck going to the account I’d be making the transactions, this seemed like the best plan. In each price category, I’d use the higher end to determine how much I’d spend on buying stock. An example, in the $10 – $50 category, I used $50 as the amount I’d spend on each stock. So far, the range has been 1 quantity to 3 quantity. This has gotten me to about an average of $10/month currently, with the third month of each calendar quarter being the highest payout.

With Schwab currently being commission free, I’m able to buy a lot more than I used to, but quantity still be limited by the price. And with Schwab’s automated investment account, I can then then transfer the minimum amount required ($5,000) at the moment that it’s met, though I wish the minimum was slightly lower.

<$10

1. HL
2. GE
3. F

$10 – $50

1. GAIN
2. ET
3. AGNC
4. DCP
5. T
6. SBR
7. MAIN
8. HRL
9. FFNW
10. UMPQ
11. SCHN
12. RANJY
13. KR
14. HFWA
15. TSBK
16. WY
17. GBX
18. BCC
19. JWN
20. COLB
21. WAFD
22. SFBC
23. PCH
24. AVA

$50 – $100

1. FLIR
2. FSBW
3. BANR
4. POR
5. ECOL
6. ALK
7. FTV
8. PCAR
9. POPE
10. EXPD
11. SBUX
12. BBSI
13. NKE
14. COLM
15. LTC
16. KO
17. VZ
18. EFA
19. EMR
20. XOM
21. VTR
22. IJR
23. O
24. BND
25. VNQ
26. GPC

$100 – $1,000

1. DVY
2. LOW
3. AGG
4. EXR
5. VIG
6. JNJ
7. MMM
8. AAPL
9. SPY
10. IDA
11. UPS
12. WMT
13. LAD
14. EXPE
15. MSFT
16. MSI
17. COST
18. BA

Figure 1 Current Income Level With Crossed Out Stocks

Figure 2 Current Level of Total Amount Invested.