Company stock purchase plan

[corn18]

Do you have an option to buy every 6 months or are you locked in once you sign up?

We had a plan where we had payroll deductions for 2 years and after that were given the option to buy stocks at 15% less than the price from 2 years ago so you could easily see if you were going to make money or not and act accordingly. For a 5% gain I would not risk it if it were me. Its just too much risk for such a small amount of gain.

They do a payroll deduction every paycheck and the money just accumulates until they buy. Then they buy twice a year (end of June, end of Dec). You can sell the day after they buy so unless the stock drops 5% in a day, you will make 5% immediately. 5% ROI with almost nil downside risk is a good investment right now. It used to be 15% but they stopped that in 2008.

I guess there is an opportunity cost of them holding your money for 6 months vs. earning higher potential returns in the stock market. But I like the diversification. I am fully exposed to stocks and bonds in my 401k. I have cash in a savings account. This is a nice 5% ROI and liquid enough to feed my annual irregular expense fund (plus some extra). It does take 6 months to get fully loaded and producing funds but once the pipeline is fully charged, there's a 6 month float built into my irregular expense funding. I like that, too.

Tom

[LivingAlmostLarge]

With the debt payoff you'll have more float as well in the monthly budget.