Don’t Let Idle Money Waste Away

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Do you have idle money just sitting around being lazy?

I am sure you probably have a couple dollars here or there just sitting stagnant in a bank account somewhere. Or a brokerage account? What about PayPal?

I recently went through most of my checking, savings, and brokerage accounts to see if I could find any loose change. I was looking for money that wasn’t part of our monthly budget. Not part of our normal savings that pays for things like our mortgage. Money that was outside of our emergency fund.

I was looking for money that I had possibly forgotten about. Abandoned savings accounts. Old brokerage accounts that may have been left inactive. One of the several PayPal accounts I have used in the past.

Why I am going through this process now? Because I am obsessed with feeding my investment challenge account. I am looking for extra money sources anywhere I can find them.

One of these sources is the collection of accounts I have opened up over the years. I am doing a little house cleaning of accounts. Think of it like looking for spare change under your couch.

Putting My Money to Work – Now

Since all of my investment challenge account dollars are going to buy established blue chip dividend stocks – I want to put as much money to work as soon as possible.

As long as I am not compromising our monthly budget and emergency fund, I want our money to be active.

The problem with letting this money just sit around is that it isn’t working hard for us. It is lazy money.

I don’t want lazy money. I want as many of my hard earned dollars busy working for me building new sources of income while I sleep.

I want this money to be working for me day and night. 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year.

Investment Challenge Account +$300

Guess what? By going through the process of looking for loose change, my investment challenge account just got $300 richer this week! Yeah!

After doing a monthly check up of one of my brokerage accounts, I found a balance of over $300 just sitting in one of my accounts. This shouldn’t have come as any surprise to me. This money was sitting in my account waiting to be invested.

I always knew the money was there, just never found the motivation to really do anything with it.

My plan had always been to add to this balance and then use it on a lump sum investment in a dividend stock. I certainly wasn’t going to use $300 alone to invest in a stock with a $10 commission. So, I let this money sit inactive earning about .12 cents a year in interest for me.

Zero Commission Investing

Now that there are new brokerage firms that offer zero commission trades, I feel a lot better investing this money. One option is to invest in partial shares of a select group of dividends stocks (MSFT, KRFT, etc.) through LOYAL3.

The other option is to buy whole shares of any US blue chip dividend stocks through Robinhood. Either way, I feel good knowing this extra $300 will be working hard for me now instead of earning pennies as lazy money.

Do you have lazy money sitting around that you can put to use? Even if it is not used to invest, you could use the extra cash to bump up something like your emergency fund.

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