The last couple of years haven't been wonderful financially so I've had a trading account for many years but haven't had the funds to justify owning shares.

This year we're now in a better place and the EF is sitting in my trading cash account which earns next to no interest. Seriously we get about $0.30 a month! I like having the cash there though because it is a separate bank to all our other accounts and it is a hassle to withdraw funds so there is less temptation to withdraw all the time.

I decided to split it up into a mini EF and a maxi EF. The mini EF has $2000 plus $518 Phuket money plus $810 for the two weeks we are on holidays to cover B's salary (which is the spending money he provides us). The maxi EF is the $1221 shares purchased today. The idea is next year that the mini EF gets $1k so there will be $3k cash available and the balance goes to the maxi EF.

I bought 1050 Maxitrans shares for $635 including brokerage. It's been so long since I've bought that the minimum trade has gone up from $500 to $600! Maxitrans cost $0.585 per share. They are a local company who I invested in last time at $0.60 and sold for $1.40. I think they're good and I guess I'm being a loyal customer coming back for seconds!

The other shares I bought were 50 QBE insurance. I dealt with them recently for work and they were so efficient that I thought if there was any company I'd want to own a part of it would be them! Their figures checked out ok (by my unprofessional standards of course!), so I bought and hope to buy more

I feel like things are falling into place now, and am glad to have our money somewhere we can get a return better than $0.30 a month!!