At Yahoo Answers I gave free advice about the stock market to a young lady who asked for it.

Mutual funds are ridiculous. Why share your retirement income with professional idiots? 

After much research buy only the best Dividend Aristocrats. Look it up if you don't know what that is. 

Best broker: Charles Schwab 

Best place for research: Seeking Alpha 

Hold on to those shares for the rest of your life, never caring if the stock market crashes because you are only interested in the dividends. 

Reinvest the dividends, which you can do for free at Charles Schwab. 

Keep track of your dividend income for income tax which by the way will not be very much tax or no tax at all. 

Keep track of when you bought shares or when dividends were reinvested, in case you ever need to sell those shares (which you don't want to do) so you can pay the correct capital gains tax (tax is not very much or nothing). 

Be careful. This is not a game. 

The dividend aristocrats will give you a raise every year. Every time you buy shares and/or reinvest dividends you are giving yourself a raise. 

The idea is a growing dividend income you can depend on for the rest of your life. If you stick with it, living frugally and buying every chance you get, you will be able to retire long before you're old enough to collect Social Security. 

If you ever get fired (it can happen to anyone) then you can live off your dividend income and whatever you can get from the government until you get another job. The idea is never sell your shares no matter what. 

Pay attention to the company's credit rating. Google moody's and name of stock to get it. If the credit rating is weak don't buy it. One of my favorite investments is JNJ (stock symbol, look it up). They increase the dividend a lot every year and they have the best credit rating possible. It's a company you can own for the rest of your life without having to worry about it. 

Be diversified. There's a lot of excellent dividend aristocrats out there. 

Charles Schwab charges $8.95 per trade. It's always $8.95 whether you buy just one share or a million shares. As I said before automatic reinvestment of dividends is always free. 

With Charles Schwab I have both a brokerage account and a checking account, so it's easy for me to transfer money between the 2 accounts. The checking account is totally free, they don't nickel and dime you like most banks. To withdraw cash you get an ATM card. At the end of the month they refund all ATM fees so you can use any ATM in the world for free. To make deposits you can use direct deposit or mail them a check. They provide free envelopes, no postage necessary. I use a credit card for everything I buy (I recommend Chase) and I pay the whole thing once a month online and the money comes from my Schwab checking account. 

If you decide to not reinvest the dividends the cash goes into your brokerage account, which you can leave there or transfer to your checking account (Schwab or any other bank). If you sell shares (don't sell) the proceeds go into your brokerage account. 

At Charles Schwab you can do everything without ever talking to a human. However if you have a question just call them. They love answering dumb questions. They take good care of their customers. 

Buying shares, hoping to make capital gains, is called gambling. Sometimes it works but you are more likely to get wiped out. Don't do it. 

Since you have an extra $800 a month to invest, at the same time you can also reinvest the dividend income for that month (companies usually pay a dividend every 3 months). So instead of the free automatic reinvestment of dividends, you can just add the dividend to your $800. The $8.95 fee will pay for the whole thing of course. By the way $8.95 a trade is a good deal. 

One more thing: Never trust anyone about what stocks to buy because they are almost always wrong no matter how experienced they are. Always do your own research and make your own decisions. Hint: If some people say buy and other people say don't buy it, the people who say "don't buy it" are probably right.

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