Managing Plan Schedule

The Automatic Investment Plan lets you set up your investment schedule in either of these ways:

• You can either establish your own Tuesday investment schedule or invest when funds are available in your account.

By establishing your own investment schedule, you can invest weekly, once per month, twice a month, or just make a one-time investment. Find out more about creating your own investment schedule.

If you want to set your plan to execute whenever you have enough cash in your ShareBuilder account, just select invest when the funds are available. By choosing this method, your plan only invests if you have enough funds to cover your plan's instructions.

Tip: Learn more about how to have your plan invest when the funds are available.

To set your own investment schedule, please follow the steps below:

1. Navigate to Trade > Automatic Investing (sign in required).
2. Click Edit next to Frequency.
3. Select the On my investment schedule radio button.
4. Pick your Investment Frequency from one of the following:
   • Weekly
   • Monthly
   • Twice a month
   • One-time
5. If you select Monthly, Twice a month or One-time, you'll also need to choose an Investment Day:
   • Investment days are always Tuesdays, excluding holidays
   • If you select Monthly or One-time, you can choose from the first four Tuesdays of a month
   • If you select Twice a Month, you can choose between the first and third Tuesdays of each month or the second and fourth Tuesdays
6. Click the Save button.

Tip: Changes to your Automatic Investment Plan must be done by 5:00 PM ET on the business day before an investment Tuesday (generally, Monday at 5:00 PM ET). Otherwise, any updates you made to the plan won't happen for the current week.

Basically, when you have enough funds in your cash balance, and your plan is set to invest when the funds are available, your automatic investments will purchase on the next investment Tuesday.

See examples

If you've already set up your Automatic Investment Plan, changing the funding source to invest when the funds are available is only a couple of clicks away.

Edit Current Plan

1. Navigate to Trade > Automatic Investing (sign in required).
2. Next, locate 'Frequency' and click the Edit link.
   • Select the When funds are available radio button.
   • Click Save.

If funds post in your cash balance after the 5:00 ET Monday deadline, that's going to be okay. We just need enough funds to hit your ShareBuilder account before the market opens on Tuesday in order to execute your plan.

Tip: Please keep in mind that proceeds from the sale of stock will add to your cash balance. This might execute your plan if you don't switch it off before the 5:00 PM ET Monday deadline.

For whatever reason, calendar makers didn't build a lot of market holidays or other types of regularly scheduled holidays on Tuesdays. This makes it the best day for us to schedule and run the Automatic Investment Plan.

If you don't like to wait for Tuesday to come around in order to make an investment, you can always Trade any day of the week the market is open by placing online market and limit orders – which costs just a bit more.

If your investment plan is set to invest "weekly", then your plan will invest every Tuesday of the month. This includes all months with a fifth Tuesday.

Currently, the only way to have your plan execute on the fifth Tuesday of the month is to set your plan to invest weekly or invest when the funds are available (as long as enough funds are available in the cash balance).

Tip: Changes to your Automatic Investment Plan must be done by 5:00 PM ET on the business day before an investment Tuesday (generally, Monday at 5:00 PM ET). Otherwise, any updates you made to the plan won't happen for the current week.

With the Automatic Investment Plan, you can set up a one-time investment or invest on a recurring basis. The plan is flexible to fit your needs.

To set your plan to make a one-time investment, please follow the instructions below:

1. Navigate to Trade > Automatic Investing (sign in required).
2. Click the Edit link next to Frequency.
3. Select One-Time for the Investment Frequency.
4. Choose your Investment Day.
5. Click Save and you're all done.

Tip: Changes to your Automatic Investment Plan must be done by 5:00 PM ET on the business day before an investment Tuesday (generally, Monday at 5:00 PM ET). Otherwise, any updates you made to the plan won't happen for the current week.

Switching off your plan won't affect any open orders. To view any orders that may be open on your account, go to Trade > Order Status (sign in required).

Alternatively, if you do not have the funds in your ShareBuilder account right now, but want to keep your plan switched on and invest when the funds are available in your account, you can do that too. Just set up a deposit whenever the mood strikes your fancy

• Electronic Funds Deposits
• A direct deposit from your paycheck (direct deposit)
• Mail in a check or money order/faq]
• Wire funds transfer

Here's some basic facts you'll want to know about the Automatic Investment Plan and how often it occurs:

• The plan only executes on Tuesdays.
• You can set your plan to execute one time, or on a recurring basis. Your choices are: weekly, monthly, twice a month, or one time.

If you'd like to change the frequency of your Automatic Investment Plan (so that your investments occur less often), please follow the instructions below:

1. Navigate to Trade > Automatic Investing (sign in required).
2. Next to Frequency, click the Edit link.
3. Select your Investment Frequency and Investment Day (if monthly, twice a month, or one-time).
4. Click Save.

Tip: If you chose a one-time investment, the plan automatically switches off after it executes. If you'd like to invest in the future, you can turn it back on.

Tip (part two): Changes to your Automatic Investment Plan must be done by 5:00 PM ET on the business day before an investment Tuesday (generally, Monday at 5:00 PM ET). Otherwise, any updates you made to the plan won't happen for the current week.

If the Holiday falls on a Monday or Tuesday the timing of your Automatic Investment Plan processing will change a little bit.

If Monday is a market holiday, we'll create your Automatic Investment Plan order on the previous Friday (starting at 5:00 PM ET) and then execute the order on Tuesday as usual.

If Tuesday is a market holiday, we'll create your Automatic Investment Plan order on Monday (starting at 5:00 PM ET) and then execute the order on Wednesday.

To view a list of all market holidays for the current year, see our Holiday and Trading Calendar.