I assume you're asking how to do it?

1. Cut your expenses. Develop a real taste for Kraft dinner and stop eating lobster completely.

2. Earn more money - work more hours (perhaps a 2nd job), or earn more money per hour - the ideal situation would be to work more hours and earn more money for each hour.

3. Part of cutting your expenses, reduce the taxes you pay as much as possible. Contribute to an RRSP, make a few donations to charities (anything at $10 or over gets you a receipt which can be used to reduce your tax owing.


Cheers!

Scott

With regards to passive dividend/stock income, in order to receive dividends from stocks, you need to purchase the stocks which are usually sold in blocks of 100 shares. If each stock costs you $10.00 * 100 = $1,000 plus the commissions. This $1,000 asset will then hopefully pay out a dividend of say, $.02 per share (.02 * 100 shares =) $2.00 a month.

That assumes that the dividend is paid monthly rather than quarterly. You've tired up $1,000 for a passive income of $2 a month. Granted you still have the stocks which are (hopefully) worth what you paid but if you sell, you lose the dividend.

This type of passive income is only worthwhile if you can buy significant numbers of shares, say 10,000 shares or if you can find a stock which pays a dividend of something like $2 each share. In both of those situations, you need a significant amount of capital upfront to purchase the stock(s).

Most students aren't in a position to afford these amounts.

With regards to web pages, if I understand the situation correctly, you earn money if people click on links to various services and products in your web page. Speaking for myself only, I NEVER click on these things. I actually HATE them with a passion as it distracts me from the site itself. That said, if you earn something like $.02 each time and you have a large number of people visiting, that might work for some people. I'd really like to hear if people have been successful with this method of "fundraising."

Cheers!

Scott

Buying 100 share blocks is the most cost effective method. Shares are sold in odd lots, but the commissions on these are higher (I assume due to the administrative hassles ).

As for the amount of the dividend, companies with profits have three options. They can pay out the profit to their shareholders in the form of dividends, pay down debt, or invest in merchandise, research and development, etc. Most companies do some combination of the three. The dividend per share can be any amount, I only picked $.02 because it seemed more realistic to me that students would only be able to afford the low cost stocks that don't necessarily have huge dividends (yet!).

I've got some Enerplus shares, 67. I got these stocks when I was 12 and it was called Westrock. These shares are worth whatever the market says they are today and they pay a dividend of $.42 each on a month basis for $28.14 a month. If I went up to 500 shares, this would only be .42 * 500 = $210 a month. A 1000 shares? 1000 * .42 =$420.

Buying that many more shares would be a huge cost, probably $30,000 or thereabouts (hey, it's going produce an income of $400 plus a month - of course it'll cost money!). That's a huge chunk of cash to just have sitting around that I could put into ONE investment. What happens if the stock loses its value or the government changes the income trust rules again?

Also, my mortgage is $100 a week, hydro is $150 a month, water is about $25 a month and property taxes are $75 a month. 400 + 150 = 550 + 100 = $650.

I'd need 1600 shares of Enerplus to get $672. I could use the funds to purchase that stock to pay down the mortgage and eliminate the $100 a week drain on my finances. Or I could probably pay for the entire degree from that pile of cash.

Of course, you might find a stock that pays a higher dividend or that's selling cheaply and then it rockets to the moon.

Cheers!

Scott

I don't think there's any situation where buying stocks makes sense for the investment of saving up for a laptop. (Investing in stocks for other reasons and buying a laptop with your "winnings" is different).

And even with the discount brokerages, you are still going to want to buy a chunk of shares at a time. And while they may offer a $5 flat rate for trades, it may require you to be making a lot of trades or have a sizeable account balance. It's $20 per trade on E-trade Canada if you are making less than 30 trades per quarter or have less than $50,000 in assets with them. (their lowest rate is $6.99). I don't want to claim they are the cheapest out there, but provide me an example of a place that offers $5 trades with minimal account balances and low or no activity requirements?


If you want to save up for a laptop, get yourself a savings account that actually pays interest (ING is one), plunk a set amount of money in per week / paycheque, and don't spend it.

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It's a laptop... it's sits on your lap. Make sense?

Cut your expenses and save up money by having it automatically deducted every week/pay cheque/month or something along those lines. That way you don't even have the money in your account to be spent and you can live around it.

The Automatic Millionaire - one of the best books I've read in regards to saving money and finances. Take a look

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Accepted to Carleton University, Honours Bachelor of Arts in Law

David Bach.

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-Stringer

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stock_market

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-Stringer

If he had enough money to invest in the stock market, he'd obviously have enough for a laptop. I'd stick with advice given by Scott Wignall