One of the newest ways to invest for your future retirement is investing but often the younger generation complain it is too difficult due to mounting credit card bills, student loans, and car payments. Millenials have a lot debt they accumulated through college and just living life and raising kids.
However one of the key lessons we try to emphasize on finance on this site is the idea of automating your life. There are now apps out there that can automatically help you put away any loose change that you may have.
Here are a few micro investing apps to help you.
Microinvesting apps usually takes small amounts of change and help you get started investing but they also might have lower initial investment levels and trading costs.
Acorns – This one rounds up your purchases to the nearest dollar and invest the change. It also has monthly deposit options and just needs a $5 minimum to invest.
Stash – This has a large selection of investment options starting at $5 to start with no commissions or fees for trading.
Qapital – This is also a saving app similar to Acorns. You can set predetermined amounts to be moved into this account. It also allows you to set a certain amount to save every time you buy a particular item. There are no minimum deposits or account fees.
Motif – This one lets you invest based on particular social or political agendas but it does have a large minimum of around $300
Digit – This is also a savings app based on the event triggers in Qapital. Whereas let’s say you decide to get some food from the gas station then it would allow you to transfer some moneys out to be saved. It also analyzes your spending patterns, balances, and bills. There is no investment account but it can pay a small amount of interest. It does have an account fee of $2.99 a month though.
Loyal3 – This lets you buy fractional shares of well know stocks. It is not very expensive with a cost of 410 but there are no index funds or ETFs.
Clink – This is more of a piggy bank app with additional portfolio fund options.
Some additional ones include:
Betterment that has no initial costs and a low annual fee for account balances below $10k. There may be some continual automatic investment options and different taxable or nontaxable account options.
Robin Hood has no initial cost or investments for certain people and offers in some cases a way to get free stocks for helping to sign up other people.
WiseBanyan is supposed to be the world’s first free financial advisor and also has $1 minimum investments.
StockPile lets you open accounts for about $5 and invest in many stocks. Not only that, you have options to invest in ETFs for 99 cents and don’t have to purchase full shares.
The good thing about these apps is they help you take immediate action even if it is a small amount. Studies have shown that little actions taken consistently overtime can create big changes.
Additional tips:
- Once you start make sure you stay at it.
- Think of investing for the long haul helps you set your accounts and not fiddle with it too much. You can in essence set it and leave it alone but every now and then may want to make sure you’re on the way to your goal.
- Don’t use it as your only means of investing. Eventually you will want to and need to make bigger investments to produce larger results and larger profitability.
- Use microinvesting to help you start formulating discipline.
- Make sure you have your basic financial house in order before devoting all your time and energy. Consider weighing the needs of paying down your debt, setting up a rainy day emergency fund.
- Don’t make things too difficult. Find a strategy and start. Do a little research also.
- Check out options at work.
- Try to get your 401k matches.
- Make it fun and see it a an opportunity to build your wealth.
See also: https://learn.stashinvest.com/micro-investing
Do you use micro-investing apps? What is your favorite investment product or app and why?
