When I was a pre-teen my great grandmother passed away and kindly left several family member stocks as part of her will. I was left around 10K in stocks and so was my mother. Over the years we've cashed them in for certain things (I used some of mine to buy a car) and my mom put them into something called a “drip” (???) The stocks are with GE, my great-grandfather worked with them and apparently got the stocks as a perk of his job over time. He passed before I was born, and my great-grandma didn't even know how much money she had until she was in her 80's!
Neither my mom nor I are familiar with stocks, but I'm finally ready to learn. She's down to about $5,000 (I don't think she's ever cashed them in, but they've fallen with time) and I'm down to about $3,000. We don't usually make any money off the stocks, though recently I got $100 check from them which is more than I think I've ever made from the last 15 years combined. (Also, if it matters, my mom's recent check was less than mine despite having more in the stocks – so confusing.)
These stocks feel like such an obscure thing, I don't know how to actually look at what we have, how to transfer them, anything. I know there has to be an app or a website, something I can use to do this but I don't even know where to start. They were given to me at such a young age and so long ago, my mom just has letters and paperwork and told me she literally calls a phone number to ask how much she has every once in a while.
Can anyone help with providing direction for how to basically put these stocks and the power of managing them into my hands more directly? I need to bring these stocks into the 21st century as a start, and then I can do more investigating and research about better companies to invest in.
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