My Path to Getting Rich

This is my blog about my journey to financial freedom.

Saturday, February 10, 2007

A CD i wouldn't get again.

During my first deployment to Iraq, I figured I should do something with the extra money that I was making for going to war. Although it wasn’t much, any extra pay in the military is good. After paying some bills and I realized that I hadn’t saved much money at all. This is when I decided to take on the first and one of the most basic ideas of investing, CD’s. A certificate of deposit is similar to a savings account that you can get through your local bank or credit union that earns interest. You really can’t go too wrong with these because there is minimal risk. The down fall is thought that you don’t earn very much. I had Security Service Credit Union, which may I add is horrible!! I think their name should be Security Service Fee Credit Union. Anyway, through them I was able to transfer money from my checking account to the CD. It was pretty simple and I was able to watch the interest I accrued at the end of the month. Like I said, I didn’t know anything about investing and I figured that this is simple and I was making money. Well, I was making more like cents. It had a poor return rate of about 4%, but usually you can decide the maturity and that determines the rate you get. Regardless of the term period you get though, unless you have millions to put in these things, don’t bet your retirement on them. It is a good way to start but if you have bigger plans, dreams and wealth you should pass. What you are doing is basically giving the bank money at a low rate so they can lend it to your neighbor for double the rate. Some banks have “rate-climbers”, but even then you are only going to get about the national average. I stayed with the CD until it was mature and then I withdrew. Here is where I made a mistake that I regret. Not knowing too much about investing, I figured that it was a waste of time because I didn’t make very much off of it. So guess what I did? If you said, “Spent it” you are absolutely correct. So one thing that I have learned about investing is that I won’t stick to it unless I see good results. So if you didn’t know anything about CDs I hope I was able to shed some light on them today.

1 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Good words.

November 10, 2008 at 2:23 PM  

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