> With drips increasing in popularity, can they be far behind?
Hi, Vicki. I don't speak from as long a perspective as many people here probably do, but my experience kinda tells me that the DRPs are finding that their administrative costs can be defrayed by having shareholders pay part of the charges, and the trend to me looks to be going the other way from fee/cost reductions, unfortunately. I guess my confusion stems from the fact that many companies will begin a DRP hoping that it will inculcate long-term shareholder relationships. My quandary, then is if this is true, why would they then turn around and "nickel and dime" them to death? I guess what they should say is "long-term *LARGE* shareholders", because to someone with 10,000 shares, 35 bucks is a drop in the bucket.
Another option for IRAs and DRIPs is a `custodial' IRA. Several trust companies (First Trust and Resource Trust in Denver come to mind) offer these, where they simply act as custodians for your funds and assets, and they direct money to whoever _you_ want to buy through. Both these banks offer DRIP IRAs, and I suppose you can have other types/classes of assets in your conventional IRA also. We looked at both of these a year or two ago, but decided against opening IRAs with them because even though there would be no brokerage commissions, just like our other DRIP investments, the setup, annual and termination fees seemed to me to outweigh that benefit.
Who knows what the future may bring?
Best regards,
Rick |
