Did quite a bit yesterday. Although no one thing was hard, I did start to feel unsure of my actions. I put that aside and thought (this is where others would quit) and applied for the £25000 loan. I've still not heard anything from E-trade and will chase them today, want my account live so I can start losing money and gain experience.

I called Halifax and asked what was going on with my Sharebuilder account, we managed to kick it into life and I had no idea what to do. So I invested £100 in barclays and £100 in Marks and Spencer. Apparently they are the hot investments at the moment according to the Halifax page and I WANTED A PIECE OF THAT PIE. This is how it works:

I have to move money into my 'fund' of which I can then invest. I can only do this on certain dates, this is setup so Halifax do everything in big chunks and can therefore offer the service with less commission on trades... So I've got £200 going in on the 17th of this month.

The same rule applies for buying shares but the dates are different from those you can put money into your 'fund'. So I'm buying the shares on the 21st of this month... nice. I'm being charged 0.50p for the Barclays deal and 0.50p for the Marks and Sparks deal, total of a quid. Now it's early days but over time I'll together a plan which looks at what my target is, and how close/far away from that target I am. For now, let's KISS (Keep it Simple, Stupid)