How to buy Apple Stock

How to buy shares of Apple, even if you have a small amount of mon­ey just to get start­ed:

1. Get $5 ready — that’s all you need to get start­ed.

   Yep, you no longer need lots of mon­ey to get start­ed invest­ing.

2. Head to Stockpile (or down­load the app for iOS or Android)

   This is not an affil­i­ate link, I don’t earn any­thing from this rec­om­men­da­tion. I use stock­pile myself and as a cus­to­di­an for my chil­dren.
   
   Stockpile sup­ports frac­tion­al shares, which means you don’t need to buy a whole share. You can invest what you can afford and still par­tic­i­pate in a pop­u­lar com­pa­ny like Apple that has a high share price.
   
   Don’t con­fuse high share price with “expen­sive”. To deter­mine if some­thing is expen­sive is dif­fer­ent because it relates to how many share exists (what per­cent­age of the com­pa­ny you are buy­ing when you buy a share) and the val­ue of the com­pa­ny (which is any­one’s guess any­ways).
   
   Before frac­tion­al share pur­chas­ing, you’d need to invest as much as the price of a share just to get start­ed. Now, with Stockpile, you can buy as lit­tle as $5 of Apple stock to get start­ed.

3. Create an account

   Pretty straight­for­ward, you can check it out with out invest­ing just by cre­at­ing an account.

4. Connect your bank account

   Don’t use a cred­it card, the fees/commissions are too high.
   
   Some would argue that even the $0.99 com­mis­sion is too high, espe­cial­ly if you’re invest­ing just a small amount. I’d argue that if you’re just get­ting start­ed, the $0.99 is more like spend­ing on learn­ing some­thing, and over time you’ll learn so much from just get­ting start­ed — way more than read­ing tons of books (even mine!).

5. Schedule a pur­chase

   Stockpile is for investors, not traders. They pur­chase once at the end of the day so when you click “buy” you’re actu­al­ly sched­ul­ing the pur­chase for the close of mar­ket on that day. I do it all the time.
   
   Once you do, you’ll get an email the next day telling you that the trade is com­plete (con­grat­u­la­tions!) and you can check online to see for your­self.

6. Bonus #1: Reinvest div­i­dends

   Reinvesting div­i­dends com­pounds them over time. It’s a great prac­tice for small investors think­ing long-term.
   
   In Stockpile, head to your account set­tings, and make sure the switch is turned on as shown in this image from my account:
   
   One Stockpile lim­i­ta­tion is that this set­ting is for your account, so any com­pa­ny you own that pays a div­i­dend will be rein­vest­ed or none of them will. There’s no way do make this deci­sion on a stock-by-stock basis using the web­site or app (I think you can email sup­port and they can do it man­u­al­ly). This real­ly isn’t a big lim­i­ta­tion in my opin­ion.

7. Bonus #2: Setup a month­ly recur­ring pur­chase

   If you can, set­up a month­ly recur­ring pur­chase so that you accu­mu­late more stock over time. Remember, each time you accu­mu­late more stock, your div­i­dend pay­check gets big­ger too (who does­n’t like a raise?).

8. Bonus #3: Setup a cus­to­di­al account for a minor

   Stockpile has made the cus­to­di­al process real­ly sim­ple for teach­ing chil­dren about invest­ing. I use it for my kids, and it’s so much eas­i­er than how it used to be using tra­di­tion­al bro­ker­age com­pa­nies. Plus, cus­to­di­al accounts have the same $5 min­i­mum to get start­ed as do reg­u­lar accounts, where­as before Stockpile a min­i­mum of $250 was com­mon.
   
   Some peo­ple will argue that it’s not worth doing this because it’s not tax deductible, set­up a col­lege sav­ings account. They’re half-right. You should set­up a col­lege sav­ings account. However, putting aside a lit­tle mon­ey in Stockpile to teach chil­dren about invest­ing is an impor­tant invest­ment in finan­cial edu­ca­tion that they won’t get if you “just” do a col­lege sav­ings account. It’s an invest­ment that will, wait for it, pay divi­dends long into the future.