I've read that about Tradeking...the initial paperwork can be daunting. I am planning on doing everything by mail which should eliminate the digitizing problems that can occur during faxing.

I'm setting my account up as a revocable living trust...so this should be interesting

Thanks for the feedback.

Beckles said:Don't most brokerages that offer DRIP allow fractional shares for dividend reivestments? Both BofA and Sharebhuilder allow this also, I use it on my accounts with both of them.
Well...last time I looked, there were fees involved with Schwab, etc. The deep discounters offer reinvestment but it has to be in whole share multiples I think. Fractional shares less than 1 would not qualify.

Sharebuilder charges a monthly subscription fee as I recall which isn't something I would be interested in paying. And BOA requires a $25K in assets with them to get free trades, which I'm not interested in either. I didn't know they offered dividend reinvestment, though.

BD929 said:Beckles said:Don't most brokerages that offer DRIP allow fractional shares for dividend reivestments? Both BofA and Sharebhuilder allow this also, I use it on my accounts with both of them.
Well...last time I looked, there were fees involved with Schwab, etc. The deep discounters offer reinvestment but it has to be in whole share multiples I think. Fractional shares less than 1 would not qualify.

Sharebuilder charges a monthly subscription fee as I recall which isn't something I would be interested in paying. And BOA requires a $25K in assets with them to get free trades, which I'm not interested in either. I didn't know they offered dividend reinvestment, though.I was only pointing out that I don't think it's as rare as you made it sound in your original post since the two brokers I use most both offer it, and they're not exactly small time names.

Sharebuilder has subscription fees if you want "window" trades each month, but you don't have to have a subscription, you could open up a no fee account and put your stocks in there and never pay a penny and they'll reinvest the dividends for you. They also have decent offers for opening accounts, such as through Costco so you could actually get paid just for doing this.

TradeKing's not free either, so I don't get your comment that you don't qualify for free BofA trades. BofA's regular trades would be a bit pricier that TradeKing I think, but I think it's worth pointing out I think they have a nice site, and their dividend reinvestment works really well (they actually reinvest the dividend three days in advance of the dividend payment date in anticipation of the dividend arriving on the settlement date, maybe other brokers do this too, but I was pleasantly surprised when I realized BofA was doing this).

All that being said, I really don't know how either would work with the revocable trust you mentioned, so TradeKing may be best suited for that anyway.

(I'm a believer in DRIP too and am finishing up transferring some of my wife's assets out of Scottrade to Sharebuilder specifically because of this issue, they don't offer DRIP at all.)

I use tradeking. I have had DRIP on my account and recently took it off. It was very easy. I just did the instant messaging option that is available. Took about 5 min for both initiation and termination of DRIP. Also I didn't have any problems setting up my account. I did not do a trust, however. For $50 you can have your wife or friend start an account then refer you for a $50 referal fee.