Start-Up Club Advice
| HelpRegister |
Start-Up Club Advice Hey there! This is the first time I have embarked on the Club Cafe experience but it looks to be useful. I have a scenerio that I would like to see if others have been through it and any advice you all may have. We have a small club that we have started, (8-10 members), and we are stuggling to find ways to keep expenses down. We love Bivio and obviously need it; we have switched to FolioInvesting as our Broker, which has helped. Just curious what other start-up's have done to reduce expenses and increase returns. Many of us are novice investors and lets just say the portfolio isn't looking to hot. Any helpful tips or insights would be appreciated. Thanks, e Hi Ed, Welcome to club cafe! Thank you for joining us! It's a beautiful day here so I think I'm going to try something new and declare this your lucky day. Since it's your lucky day I'm going to credit your club account with $50 bivio bucks which you will be able to use when it's time to renew your bivio subscription. You and everyone else always can earn $50 bivio bucks for your club if you refer a new club and they start up a bivio subscription. All they need to do is enter your club ID when they subscribe. You can find your club ID in the upper right side of your screen when you are logged in. Other than that, I think you have your club expenses about as low as you can get them. There is no other club accounting program that offers the services we do at anything near the price we charge. Your club really shouldn't have much in the way of ongoing expenses. They may seem large when you first start in proportion to the amount your members are contributing but at least the free trades from Folio let you get started investing without having to take large positions in any single stock. Your performance will be about developing your expertise in putting together a portfolio that will beat the returns of the market as a whole. As you're learning, you're bound to make some mistakes. That's one of the benefits of learning as part of a club. You can spread out and share the learning costs with others. A big part of learning to invest is making real investments. Hang in there and keep studying and learning new things and trying to apply them. There is lots of free investing information and training available from brokers and all over the web. Many public libraries have Valueline and Morningstar reports available. Some even allow you to access them online from home. If you are available this evening you might find it interesting to attend the Dashboard Diagnostics session being put on by ManifestInvesting. Mark Robertson will be reviewing a club portfolio and making suggestions for improvement. You can register to join us at www.bivio.com/club_cafe You might get some ideas you can apply to your own club. The webinar is free and bivio club members have an opportunity to subscribe to ManifestInvesting for the ultra low rate of $49. You really can't get expenses much lower than that! -- Laurie Frederiksen Invest with your friends! www.bivio.com Follow us on twitter! www.twitter.com/bivio Hi Ed,
Welcome aboard. I'm not sure what expenses you are trying to reduce. If your club is already up and running, then you are past your start-up costs, so the only expenses would be your club accounting and your broker fees. Laurie has graciously offered to help with next year's accounting expenses, so your biggest expense now will be the broker.
One thing you might want to review is the amount of your trading fee as a percentage of the total trade. The rule of thumb is 2%. In other words, you want to keep your broker's fee around 2% of the amount you are spending. My club uses Firstrade.com. They charge $6.95. So we try to spend a minimum of $300 when we make a trade. That keeps the $6.95 fee in the 2% range of the total $300. Trading fees, if not kept in check, can keep a purchase in the red for months.
Another expense I would advise you to avoid is paying for member expenses out of your general funds. Let everyone pay their own memberships, subscriptions and supplies, etc. That leaves more money to invest.
Give your club 18-24 months to turn a profit. It can take that long for some new clubs to get off the ground. Especially in this turbulent market. And since investing is a long-term endeavor, your members need only be patient and stay the course!
Good luck to you,
Lynn Ostrem, President
Crow River Investment Club
How do I stop getting daily "club_cafe" emails from all the various people
sending them out? I have no connection or interest in them and never signed up
to receive them. Thanks for the help.
Hi Robert, If you'd rather not receive all the club cafe emails and you don't want to use it to ask questions yourself, you can leave the list by logging in to bivio, going to www.bivio.com/club_cafe/mail and selecting the Leave button you will see at the top of the list. If you'd like to keep up with what's happening on the list without receiving daily emails, you might consider signing up and following us on twitter. www.twitter.com/bivio -- Laurie Frederiksen Invest with your friends! www.bivio.com Follow us on twitter! www.twitter.com/bivio Thank you for the great insight. We just need to keep learning and making smarter investment decisions! |
|
||||||