Does it cost money to invest?

Question

say im using a middle man to invest like scottrade.com how much would they charge me? thank you

Answer 1

Scottrade is an online discount broker, not a middleman.  That's about as cheap as it gets.  How much you paying per trade?  $7?  

You cannot buy stocks except through a broker, whether it's full service (using a person which costs more), or an online discount broker (you do the trade online yourself).

You could buy mutual funds through an advisor, but then you'd be paying trailer fees, back & front end loads, and management expense fees (MERs) which are generally anywhere from 1-3% of your investment.  That adds up to hundreds or thousands of dollars depending on how much is invested.