Centsable Stewardship: Investing

*Disclaimer: I am not a financial expert, so you may want to consult your financial advisor on anything I suggest to you in the following information. Also any refering sites I have mentioned in the following excerpt, I am not being compensated in anyway from these sites. All opinions are 100% mine.*

Often as women we don't really look much deeper past our personal finances and the obvious ways of investing our money. Such as in saving accounts at the bank, or perhaps CDs, or Money Markets. These are all great ways to invest our money, better than shoving it under a mattress. At least when you use the every day known investments you are still receiving some interest back on your money. (Whereas, if you stock it under your mattress you would actually be losing the original value).

I think the thought of investing can be quite scary at times, or at least overwhelming. We see the 'Walstreet Guys' on TV waving their hands around, yelling, climbing all over one another. It's actually a bit easier than you would think.

I have invested a little money over time and have come to enjoy playing with the stocks. It was a bit droopey a year or two ago when the markets crashed and you heard how everyone lost money in the markets, and they had. We did too. I remembering reading an article during that time on Warren Buffet and what he was planning to do with his money that was already in the market. He had stated that he was leaving it where it was, and that during that time was the time to really invest since stocks were so cheap. Although sadly, no one really had anything to their names to invest.

In Matthew 25: 14-30 is the parable of the talents, this is probably one of my favorite bible stories because it holds so many meanings. I think for our sake it's pretty safe to interpret this pretty literally. The first servant the master gives 5 talents (or monies). The servant goes off and actually invests those talents (or monies). When he returns to his master, the servant shows that not only was he faithful in returning the 5 original talents - he had doubled those 5 talents into 10. Because of the servant's faithfulness in the few talents he was given, the master was able to entrust the servant with many more to care for(or invest).

Going off this parable of investing with the few, I thought it would be appropriate to discuss Penny Stocks. What are Penny Stocks you ask.... pretty much what the sound like. They are stocks that cost only a few pennies or a couple dollars. They are very cheap to invest into and if you learn how to invest in them properly and take some minor risks you can make some descent returns on your money.

For instance let's say you purchase some stock that costs $.05/share. You purchase say $100 worth of shares, that's 5000 shares. If this stock were to double to $.10/share, you would make an extra $100. If the stock where to go up to $1.00/share, you would have made an extra $4,900, not a bad return on investment.

Now I don't want to mislead you and think this is a 'get-quick-rich-scheme', because it's not. Instead it's a good way to start dappling in the open markets and begin to get a feel and become more comfortable with investing in stock markets.

Start small, with even $10, and go from there. Read up and ask around.