I buy stocks for no commissions using Robinhood. Robinhood has an iOS and Android app, and recently unveiled a web interface. Unfortunately, Robinhood does not link with Personal Capital, but you can add your shares manually. They’ve lowered the barrier to entry when buying individual securities. It used to be that you’d pay $7+ per trade, so you’d only buy $1,000 or more of stocks at a time. Now, you can buy stocks with no fees!

I’ve got over $3,600 in my Robinhood account, and until recently was putting more money in every week. Now, I just re-invest my dividends and put more towards my taxable brokerage account in Vanguard. Most of my shares are in Orchid Island Capital (ORC) and General Electric (GE). ORC is a Real Estate Investment Trust (REIT) which gives monthly dividends.

Both ORC and GE have done pretty terrible since I’ve bought them, and both have cut their dividends pretty significantly. I’ve lost a large chunk of money on GE, which is in its worst period ever. I work at GE, and I don’t think it’ll be this cheap forever, so I’m banking on a large return at some point in my lifetime - I’m in no hurry to sell. My main goal is to receive dividends from all my my stocks. I earn about $300/yr in dividends right now, and that’s only going up. At some point, dividends will be a larger part of my total income.

If you want to try it out, use my referral code. If you do, you’ll get a free stock, and I’ll get a free share when you buy your first stock. These shares can be worth from $3 to $150. My girlfriend signed up and got a share of HP (HPQ) worth about $19 at the time. Most of the free shares I’ve earned have been worth about $6.

When you’re trading on Robinhood, I highly recommend doing a limit buy or limit sell. This way you specify the most you’d pay for a stock, or the least you’d sell your stock for. Some people put in many limit buys for low prices, and many limit sells for high prices. That way, if a stock happens to get pretty high, it’ll automatically sell. This could be awesome if you’re just trying to flip stocks, but it might go up even higher than your limit sell is set at.

Robinhood has recently added cryptocurrencies and options to their repertoire of services, though I haven’t delved into either. You can buy and sell Bitcoin, Ethereum, along with tons of other crypto, and also buy and sell options of stocks. I don’t quite understand options, other than that you can make or lose a lot of money very quickly. I’ll stick with the tried and true dividend stocks. I have a little bit of crypto, but I bought it before Robinhood released that feature.