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How To Give Stock As A Gift With Stockpile

This post may contain affiliate links and/or codes. You won’t pay anything extra, but I might make a commission.

Looking to give a gift that has real value? Read on to find out how easy it is to give stock with Stockpile! You don’t even need to open an account or get the recipient’s personal information.

Stockpile logoHow, exactly, do you give stock as a gift to another person? There’s a very easy way to give stock as a gift (even just a fraction of a share!), and there are no hoops to jump through. Using a website called Stockpile, you can give gifts of stock to children or adults without needing the receiver’s social security number or any other personal information that you used to need in order to gift stock. In fact, if you don’t want to, you don’t even have to choose the stock! Let me explain how it works, why stock purchased this way makes such a fantastic gift, and how my readers can get $5 of free stock.

E-gifts

If you go to the Stockpile website and hover over “Buy” at the top of the page, you’ll see some buying choices. If you want to give an e-gift (delivered by email), go ahead and click on that. You’ll see that there are more than 1,000 companies and ETFs (Exchange Traded Funds) to choose from, including every stock found in the S&P 500. If you already have a company in mind, you can just search for it and see if it’s available through Stockpile, or you can browse around by category.

Choosing a stock

Let’s say you want to buy a gift for someone who absolutely loves Converse sneakers. If you search “Converse” you’ll see that Nike is the stock to buy, since it owns Converse.

How To Give Stock As A Gift With Stockpile - Converse

Going in the other direction, if you search “Disney” you’ll see all of the different brands that Disney owns. Your child is a huge Marvel Comics fan? Disney is the stock to buy!

How To Give Stock As A Gift With Stockpile - Disney

If you click on a stock you can see how much one share is worth and how it has performed over different periods of time, see news about the company, and other info, all in one handy place.

How To Give Stock As A Gift With Stockpile - Disney stock info

Here’s where things get really interesting for the gift giver. Let’s say you want to buy someone some Google stock (which is now called Alphabet). At the time I wrote this, Alphabet Class A stock was trading at over $900 a share. What if you only want to give a $50 gift? You can give $50 worth of Alphabet stock! You can pick a dollar amount for any stock on Stockpile, it doesn’t matter how much each share is worth! The recipient will get a fraction of a share.

[bctt tweet=”Giving stock as a gift–even to a child–is super easy with @Stockpile!” username=”AmyOztan”]

If a stock is trading at $100 a share and you give a gift of $50, the recipient will get one-half of a share. If a stock is trading a $25 and you give a $100 gift, the recipient will get four shares. And this is real stock! It will earn dividends, and its worth will go up and down with the market.

Once you pick a stock (or stocks) you choose the dollar amount of the gift. You can choose multiple stocks for one gift, each with a different dollar amount.

How To Give Stock As A Gift With Stockpile - gift amounts

You do not need an account

In order to give a gift from Stockpile, you do not have to open an account. You can simply purchase the gift using a guest checkout, because you’re not actually buying stock at that point (it’s a gift card that’s redeemable for stock). You enter the recipient’s name and email address, your name, and when you want the e-gift to be sent.

How To Give Stock As A Gift With Stockpile - your gift basketGift cards

You can buy physical gift cards for some of the most popular stocks, like Apple, Google, Tesla, and Amazon.How To Give Stock As A Gift With Stockpile - Tesla gift card

There are also cards that list a category of stocks available on Stockpile, such as gaming stocks, fashion stocks, or sports stocks. Or you can just buy a generic card for a desired dollar amount, with no stock or category listed, of $25, $50, or $100.

Some gift card bundles even come with a free investing guide for newbies, perfect for a kid (or adult!) who’s never invested before.

How To Give Stock As A Gift With Stockpile - gift card pack

What if they don’t like your choice?

What happens if you pick a stock that the recipient doesn’t actually want? They can redeem the gift towards any other stock on Stockpile that they like better, without any extra fees.

And if they just don’t want stock? They can trade your gift in for a store gift card. This way, they aren’t forced into an investment.

[bctt tweet=”Giving stock as a gift is super easy with @Stockpile! Find out how you can get $5 worth of stock.” username=”AmyOztan”]

No expiration date

Stockpile gifts don’t have an expiration date, so the person you’re giving the gift to can redeem them at any time. You’re giving them an amount of money to spend – they don’t own the actual stock until they redeem their gift. So if they want to wait and see if their desired stock price goes down to get more shares for their money, they can! (Stocks redeemed before 3pm—or sometimes a little earlier on major holidays—are purchased using that day’s closing price.)

Fees

At checkout you will see a “gifting fee.” You’re paying the credit card processing fees and trading fees so that the recipient can use the entire amount of the gift towards stock. If you give them $50, they get $50 of stock – no surprises.

After they’ve redeemed their gift, the recipient can buy more stock (with their own money, of course), or sell their stock. The fee for them is 99-cents per transaction, which is a lot less than I pay at my brokerage! They can also transfer in other stocks that they already own – there’s no fee for that. There are no monthly minimums or account maintenance fees.

Giving stock to kids

Kids under 18 can have their own account on Stockpile so long as an adult is on the account with them. It’s called a custodial account, and any adult can set it up (a parent, grandparent, aunt, etc.). Kids can get their own log in to check up on how their stocks are doing. They can also set up a transaction to buy or sell stock that goes to the adult for approval before it is executed. When the child turns 18, she can take over the account outright.

Buying stock for yourself

You can also buy stock for yourself. The process is very similar to buying an e-gift for someone else, with two noticeable exceptions. First, when you choose a dollar amount for a stock you’ll be able to see right away an estimate of how many shares (or fractions of a share) you’ll be getting (it’s an estimate because trades go through later using the end-of-day price). Second, if you don’t already have a Stockpile account, you’ll be opening one during the checkout process, something you don’t have to do if you’re buying a gift for someone else.

The perfect gift

A gift of stock is the perfect gift because it’s not a “thing.” It won’t clutter up the recipient’s house, and it won’t get thrown out. Plus, if it’s for a first-time investor, you’ve gotten them started with a brokerage account that will allow them to buy more stock for only 99-cents per transaction!

Birthdays, graduations, weddings, these are all great occasions for giving a gift of stock! Your wife spends all day on Facebook? Get her some Facebook stock! Your grandson is obsessed with Nerf? Get him some Hasbro stock! Your mom loves to travel? Get her some jetBlue stock! What are you waiting for? My readers get $5 of free stock by clicking here!

Have you ever wanted to give stock as a gift? It used to be complicated, but Stockpile has made it easy - even if you're giving stock to a child! This makes such a great birthday or graduation present, and is a fun way to introduce someone to investing, with real stock! Read my post to find out how you can buy stock for yourself or someone else, for as little as a dollar, with the ability to buy, sell, and earn dividends.

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