I chose because it is one of the few brokerage firms that allow you to open an with very little money.  In fact you can open an account with no money at all.  I opened my account with just five dollars a few years ago.  And now I have... well lets just say I have a little more than five dollars now.  They do not charge an inactive accounts fee either.

Sharebuilder allow you to purchase stocks by quantity or dollar amount.  Purchasing stock by dollar amount allows you to buy partial shares.  For instance, Google which is trading for $409.88 per share at the time of this publication.  Most of us can't afford to buy one share for that price.  But with dollar amount you can buy just one  dollars worth of the share.  Yep, you heard right ONE dollar.  And with automatic investing you can buy any dollar amount of the share over a period of time. 

In my case it took me almost a year to own just one share of Google.  Below are links to stocks that I own and stocks that I am watching.

They obviously don't just deal in stocks.  They also deal in ETF's and mutual funds, IRA's, and so on. 

One of the most important things that I have found, is doing the research. It's time consuming and arduous.  But it is well worth it.  One of the best sites I have found for layman research is at MSN Money.  Everything is broken down for you in layman terms, and they have profiles on so many companies.

Morningstar.com is another very useful site.  Almost any question you may have about investing will be answered here, again in layman's terms.

 Please don't be fooled by the amount of stock that I own. It's the quantity of each stock that matters, and I ain't telling y'all that.

Stocks I own.

Stocks in my wish list. (I should have these by the end of next weeK)