You may have seen the term “dividend” thrown around when looking at stocks to invest your hard-earned cash into. But what exactly is a dividend? Without going into too much detail, it’s a payment (in the form of cash or shares) from some of the earnings to shareholders, as declared by the board of directors.
The UK currency is the British pound sterling. This is abbreviated by GBP throughout the financial world, but you may come across another term, GBX. The latter is actually used more frequently with listed companies on the London Stock Exchange, but what exactly is it?
I was searching around to look at the competition for my investment tracking spreadsheet, seeing what I could add to further enhance the feature list, and I noticed something awful. I discovered a few spreadsheets that are outright scams. And I’m not just talking about those that steal other people’s work and lock it behind a paywall, I mean there are even some that state they will have access to your investment tracking spreadsheet. What?!
Stock is essentially a security that indicates the ownership of a company. Also known as equity, holding shares of a stock enables the owner access to assets, profits, and votes equal to how much of a stock is held. The more stock a party holds of a company, the more they’re entitled to.
The markets are turning red. You’ve enjoyed countless months of safe passage into the lands of green gains, but now your portfolio is starting to slide. What do you do? Sell everything and hope that the markets will recover within the next few years? Not at all! Here’s what you need to do when the markets inevitably crash.
There are a few tools out there that allow you to manage and track your investment portfolio as well as earned dividends. My dividend tracker spreadsheet is but one example, using Google Sheets. But not everyone wants a spreadsheet to keep tabs on their investments, which is where a service like Digrin comes into play. I’m going to compare my tracker to Digrin.
Cryptocurrencies may be a joke to you, but there’s no escaping the fact millions of people are actively trading digital currencies and even governments are starting to take note. If you’re accumulating some Bitcoin or are using digital currencies to store some wealth, I’ve added the ability to track cryptocurrencies in the Dividend Tracker.
When receiving a dividend, it’s considered a form of income. Even though you may have already paid some form of tax on the money you invest in a company, you will still have to pay tax when earning dividends. If you hold shares outside of a stocks and shares ISA, you will need to pay tax and this guide will run you through everything for the UK.
You’ve probably seen some of those amazing spreadsheets experienced investors use to keep tabs on how their portfolios are performing. Interestingly, even if you’re not familiar with Google Sheets, it’s really easy to create your own. And if you don’t quite have the spare time, you can always use my dividend tracker.
I don’t enjoy using the same old “invest only what you can afford to lose” since that brands investing with the same brush as gambling. To me, investing in the stock market is not gambling, not unless you attempt to do active trading to make a buck in quick turnarounds. Still, you should only invest what you can afford to lock away in a vault.