If you follow my blog you may know that I own a few accounts and each account has its own purpose and investing strategy. Just to review then and put them into perspective:

TD Account – This is my corporate (business) account. I use this account for trading options and proceeds are used to purchase dividend growth stocks as reserves. I treat this trading as a business and I am now in an accumulation phase. I expect to become a full time trader in 5 years.

ROTH IRA account – This account is obviously my retirement account. I originally started this account to compete with my employer 401k account (due to my negligence, I must admit I wasn’t able to beat my 401k account’s results). I use this account for investing only and I invest into dividend growth stocks. No trading whatsoever.

Scottrade account – I love their FRIP program so much that I decided to apply it and use it. I invested a small amount of money and use FRIP only to reinvest dividends into a different stock to build a portfolio. It is a test of a snowball which I plan to use as evidence that accumulation works.

401k account – This is a must if you have an employer sponsored 401k account. Of course, you still want to have good investment choices in the plan, otherwise it doesn’t make much sense to invest. I started my 401k, but our plan was terrible, so I used it only for the employer’s match. This was also a reason why I started my own IRA account and deposited money in there rather than here. Now we have a Vanguard plan and that’s totally different story.

Increasing contributions to 401k by 1%

When our company switched plans I decided to catch up on my plan and contribute more. I increased my contributions from 3% to 6% last year.

This year I am increasing my contribution by 1% to 7% and I plan increasing my contributions by 1% every year. Thus next year, I will increase it again by 1% to a total 8% and so on.

What do you think? Is it worth doing it or invest in a different account?

Happy investing!