In early 2007, I began work at an investment advisory firm. They publish several newsletters which give commentary on stock market conditions and recommend certain stocks. I had never been too interested in finances or investing, though I did always enjoy activities like paying my bills or updating my most recent credit card transactions in Quicken (oddly enough). I graduated with a degree in computer science, so I actually wasn’t hired to do anything financial at the company. Yet my daily tasks had me repeatedly interacting with these newsletters, and my interest began to grow.

My interest piqued, I began to look up information on the basics of personal finance and investing. The internet helped immensely, but it also complicated things, as there was a seemingly endless list of pages dedicated to this subject. I soon found that not only did people disagree about nearly every aspect of it, but that there were seemingly thousands of different aspects to disagree about!

Having just finished my formal education a month earlier, I considered myself officially starting my financial life, as paying thousands of dollars a month for tuition made it difficult to have any finances at all. Before this point, the term “savings” referred to a few hundred dollars that would grow in a 1.5% interest savings account at the local bank, before being ransacked in order to pay for a broken windshield or dentist’s appointment. Since I had barely had a few hundred dollars to put into this savings account, let alone hundreds of thousands of dollars to invest in the stock market, I wasn’t very interested in the subject.

I did make one interesting discovery during this time that helped spur my interest (no pun intended). I read a story about how online bank accounts were growing in popularity, specifically in regards to accounts that were offering as high as 5% interest. I was a bit hesitant at first; as much as I used the internet for various transactions, the thought of putting my savings away in a bank which didn’t even have a physical location was a bit frightening. So I did some research, and saw these banks mentioned places like CNN.com and the New York Times, and began to feel a bit more confident about transferring my money to an online bank.

This is how I made my first step towards saving money, by opening an account at Emigrant Direct and transferring $500 I had made playing the online poker casinos. I let the money hang there in the account for a few months before presenting the idea to my wife of moving nearly all of our money market account, earning a paltry 2.2% interest rate at PNC Bank, to Emigrant Direct. Not only was I making more than twice as much interest, but I didn’t have to worry about minimum balance fees or a limited number of transactions per month!

Seeing how easy it was for me to double the interest I made from my cash savings made me wonder what kind of results I would see if I really started researching personal finance and investing.