A few months ago I signed up for a Freetrade account, and I have to say that it's one of the best things I have seen in investing since the start of live dealing via the internet.
The truly awesome thing about the service is that you can buy shares for zero charges, that's right ZERO CHARGES
You can now buy one share in a company and just pay the price for the share (plus any stamp duty), which allows you to put small amounts per month into your account, but you don't then have to wait for the funds to accumulate to make it worthwhile buying shares.
You could therefore deposit £20 per month into your account, and each month you could then buy shares in any company with a price below £19.90 per share. For example if you were doing that today, and you wanted to invest in Glaxo, you would have been able to buy one share and it would have cost you £17.70 (if I use the closing price) + 9 pence stamp duty. You could then do the same next month and so on. If you didn't just want to buy shares in one company, you could buy a different company each month, so in the second month you could buy two shares in say National Grid for £9.46 each (again using todays closing price) + 5 pence stamp duty, for a total of £19.02.
Using Freetrade would be a fantastic way of someone "dipping their toe in the water" to try out investing, and as both the above companies pay dividends, they would see that the stock market isn't just about making big capital gains, but that you can increase your money through dividends. Of course, once you have received dividends, you can use the money received to buy more shares without the dealing charges eating up the cash from a small number of shares.
I think this app would also be a great way for parents or grandparents to use small monthly payments to create a learning experience for their children / grandchildren so that they see early on in life the benefits of investing over the long term, and how compound interest works. As they get to see the dividends increasing each year and being re-invested they would see how the value can start to snowball over time. They could then take this learning (and the accumulated money) in to adulthood, and set aside a more significant sum of money each month from their salary to build up a retirement fund.
As you can invest in shares on the American stock market, you could buy shares in companies like Disney, McDonalds, Coca Cola and Nike as these are companies the kids will have heard of so they are more likely to be interested rather than if you used companies like Glaxo and National Grid. As shares on the US market tend to be more expensive, it may not be possible to buy a share each month, but I believe they are planning to allow purchase of fractions of US shares, so you might buy half a Coca Cola share in month one a tenth of a McDonalds share in month two, a fifth of a Disney share in month three, and then go back round these companies until you have a few whole shares.
As an encouragement to new customers, they do run a referral programme, where if you join and fund an account you get a free share at a value between £3 to £200. I am occasionally able to do referrals, so if you would like to use Freetrade, please let me know and if I am able to refer you I will be happy to do so, as I also get a free share. If I am unable to refer at that time, I can provide an alternative contact who is always able to make referrals.
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