These Apps Make It So Easy To Invest, Even A Caveman Could Do It

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I’ll be the first to admit that my financial literacy doesn’t have a great track record. I spent my early 20’s amassing debt from both credit cards and student loans (I’m almost done paying off the credit card debt, yay!), and I had little to no savings ever. Unfortunately, I recently realized I’m past the age where I can blame my lack of financial knowledge on the public school system or my parents. 

My biggest New Year’s resolution this year was to get my finances under control. And not just to the point where they’re manageable and I have a good grasp on them, but I also wanted to start building a strong financial future. I used Mint to create a monthly budget and track my spending. I also realized that it makes no sense to just save extra money somewhere where it won’t grow, so my next step? Investing.

And that’s where I got stuck. Like, super stuck.

I don’t know what it is about investing and the stock market that I just don’t get, but I genuinely just don’t get it. At all. And the worst thing about that is that I’ve genuinely tried to get it – I’ve watched YouTube videos, dove into Reddit forums, and read articles that assured me they’d been dumbed down enough for someone with even a Neanderthal comprehension. Still didn’t work.

Lucky for me (and for you, if the above resonates), we live in an era of apps for everything – including apps that make investing easy. Here are the best apps that’ll do the hard work of investing for you. And yes, even I was able to figure out how to get these going.

Stash

According to their website, Stash is a personal finance app that simplifies investing, making it easy and affordable for people to build wealth and achieve their financial goals. 

The app lets you invest, bank, and save, all in one place. Users can invest with unlimited trades and there are no investment minimums or add-on trading commission fees. If you don’t know what any of that means, basically, they do the hard work for you.

I use Stash for investing and retirement. They automatically take out a certain amount of money on a specified schedule (all of which is customized by you) and apply it to either investment or retirement (also customized by you). 

DOWNLOAD THE STASH APP

Acorns

The Acorns app is geared toward people who are new to saving and investing — it’s an automatic savings and micro-investing app for beginners.

“Let’s say you’re filling up on gas and your card is charged $24.34. The app will round up the charge to the next dollar and invest the difference ($0.66) for you,” says CreditDonkey. 

I honestly love this roundup feature. When I first started using Acorns I wasn’t investing much (I used their “moderate” portfolio), but that plus the roundups feature and investing just $5/week gave me a few hundred bucks one day when I really, really needed it. 

Acorn offers two different subscription tiers for personal financial needs.

Acorns Personal – $3/month: Includes a personal financial wellness system, with all-in-one investment, retirement, and checking, a metal debit card, and financial advice. 

Acorns Family – $5/month: Investment accounts for unlimited kids per family, personal investment, retirement, and checking accounts, bonus investments, and financial advice. 

DOWNLOAD THE ACORNS APP

Robinhood

Robinhood lets users trade stocks commission-free and has no account minimums — the app lets you trade stocks, ETFs, options, and cryptocurrency 100% commission-free.

With Robinhood it’s completely free to buy and trade stocks, options, and more. All trading is commission-free with no account minimums or maintenance fees. They’ll even give you a free stock in a company like Apple, Sprint, or Ford.

DOWNLOAD THE ROBINHOOD APP

Charles Schwab

The Charles Schwab investment app has the educational resources beginners will need to navigate investing, with sophisticated user tools and $0 commissions. 

Business Insider rated it as one of the best brokerage apps for beginners for its all-around trading and automated investing. 

DOWNLOAD THE CHARLES SCHWAB APP

TD Ameritrade

With TD Ameritrade’s app, users not only can trade commission-free online, but get access to all its platforms and products with no deposit minimums, trading minimums, or hidden fees.

Nerdwallet says, “TD Ameritrade meets the needs of both active traders and beginner investors with quality trading platforms, $0 commissions on online stock, options and ETF trades and a large selection of mutual funds.”

DOWNLOAD THE TD AMERITRADE APP

Betterment

The Betterment app custom-builds its portfolios with low-cost, diversified ETFs. They’ll recommend one for you and automatically adjust your portfolio as new and better funds become available.

Once users make a deposit, it automatically invests in the market — holding accounts or manual steps. In addition, its algorithms continually monitor and manage portfolios at a fraction of the cost of a traditional advisor. 

DOWNLOAD THE BETTERMENT APP

Does your financial plan include investing through one of these apps? Tell us below! 

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