How to Buy DRIPS

If you want to start buying DRIPS immediately, you have come to the right place. Most companies you can just visit there website, and conduct a search on their site for dividend reinvestment programs. You may need to search for (DRIP, DRP, DSP), some companies may call it different names but its all the same thing.

There are many sites out there that will sell you them but usually they will have a fee or some sort of commission. I suggest sticking with the company website.

After you search on the website of the company you would like to buy from and click on it, then there will be a long explaination of every detail and all the ins and outs of that certain companies DRIP. They usually aren't all exactly the same so you should at least skim to make sure you agree with everything thats on there. Then you will have to accept the terms and conditions.

After you complete that section, it will ask if you would like the form where you fill in your personal information mailed to you or if you would like to complete it online. (You can also just print out the form and mail it in). The down side to mailing it is that you will, one have to wait for the mail to come in, and two you will have to write out a check and pay for postage.

If you opt to complete the form online, most companies will offer that you can pay by debit, credit, or just give them an account number. If you give them you bank account # and information you will have to wait about 2 business days so they can make deposits of about 10-20 cents into your account. Then you will have to login to the companies website again and state the amounts that were deposited into your account.

There is usually a minimum balance for a purchase of a DRIP, the DRIPs I bought were a minimum perchase of $250(they can range from $100 to whatever the companies want it to be). The companies set a minimum because it costs money to keep track of all of the accounts and they don't want to pay people to manage accounts of $10.

After a few days you will receive a letter in the mail stating how much stock was perchased with your initial deposit. Usually, this letter will include an envelop in which the company wants you to mail a check back to buy more stock. This is not required, you could just let your initial deposit build upon itself forever.

When it comes time to sell the stock, for whatever reason, there will be a small fee for selling the stock(usually about 2%). That is because they waived the fee to buy the stock in the first place.

When you sell the stock they will either send you a check via mail, or make a deposit to the bank account from which you bought the stock.