I’m In A Couple That Knows The Meaning Of Romance

Some young couples buy their first piece of furniture together, or buy land to build a house. Sean and I have gone an even more romantic route and bought stock together as our first jointly owned item.

I’ve long wanted to enter the stock market game. But buying stock in some small unknown company or just a company I couldn’t get excited about never seemed interesting to me. Yet that was precisely what I could afford.

I’ve talked about wanting to “own Google” frequently enough. At work, we use a lot of their software and I like that they are a company who treats their workers well. (I also think they are going to figure out television on the internet before anyone else but that’s just my hunch.)

When I inquired at dinner one night whether one could buy half a share of stock (GOOG was approaching $600 at that point), Sean offered to go in on it with me. We submitted money to eTrade and waited while it cleared. (Unlike their Superbowl commercials that promised instant stock purchasing, there is a nine business day waiting period on new funds.)

Meanwhile, Sean became interested in a company called Luminex that he likes and uses a lot at work.

As of two days ago, we are proud owners of 1 share of Google and 4 shares of Luminex (Sean has less expensive taste in stock than I do). We have a romantic dinner wager on which stock will do better, which we will evaluate six months from now.

And while I’ve always felt cheated that I couldn’t play the stock market game in high school economics class, I get to play it now.

Of course Google tanked and Luminex slightly tanked yesterday. I’ve decided for personal sanity reasons to take the little stock graphs that update every 15 minutes off my Google homepage. While I’d love to think I’m going to get rich off GOOG, I think this will just be a fun way to hopefully grow my money in the long run and allow me to learn more about markets firsthand.

I’d love to know how you’ve played the stock market game and how much you enjoyed or didn’t enjoy it.

Image from: http://btr.michaelkwan.com/2007/10/09/google-stock-breaks-600-will-anything-stunt-its-growth/

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