Thanks to innovative technology, companies like Acorns Investments allow consumers to invest in the stock market without having a ton of money. Investing apps have made investing in the stock market as easy as a simple click on your smart phone app to invest $5.
Here is my detailed Acorns Investing review for anyone considering giving them a try, or simply want to know more about the company. Acorns is more than just an investing app, it offers free money to its users in a way never been done before by other investing companies.
Acorns Investing Review Snapshot
Product: Investing app that allows users to invest their spare change in a diversified portfolio customized to each user.
Features: By linking your bank account to your Acorns account, Acorns automatically “round(s) up” each of your purchases to the next whole dollar and invests the spare change for you.
Benefits: Allows you to invest in the stock market without noticing your budget tightening, and automates the process for you so your investing is consistent.
Competitive Advantage: By shopping at major retailers who have partnered with Acorns using Acorns “Found Money” feature, the respective retailer(s) will deposit a percentage of your purchase, or a set dollar amount for free into your Acorns account.
Price: $1 per month for accounts under $5,000, and 0.25% per year for accounts over $5,000.
♦ Click here to open your Acorns Investing account and start growing your money today! ♦
What Is Acorns Investing?
Acorns is a modern investing app that allows its users to invest their spare change into the stock market. By linking your bank account to your Acorns brokerage account, Acorns will round up all your purchases to the next whole dollar and invest the difference for you.
Upon opening your account, Acorns will ask a series of questions to determine an investment portfolio that fits your investing objectives. Once your account is open, your investing is set on autopilot and before you know it, you've got an extra chunk of change in the stock market!
Unique Features & Benefits of Acorns Investing
As briefly described above, Acorns has some unique features that are worth noting. Their main feature being their “Round-up's” makes Acorns the only company offering a user the ability to invest their spare change. But Round-Ups aren't the only unique feature offered by Acorns. Below are explanations of Acorns Later accounts, and Acorns Spend accounts, each adding convenient benefits to investors.
What are Acorns “Round-up's?”
Acorns uses the term “Round-up's” when referring to rounding up your daily expenses to the next dollar. Each purchase you make every day will be “rounded up” (thus the term “round-up's”) to the next whole dollar. The difference is then invested into your Acorns account and diversified among the different funds customized to your investment objectives.
Here's an example. Lets say you make a stop each morning at your local gas station on the way to work to pick up your “guilty-pleasure” drink to wake you up. Your purchase costs you $2.15. In this case, Acorns would round your purchase up to $3.00 even, and take that additional $0.85 and invest it into your diversified investment portfolio.
On average, if you make 3 purchases each day, you could expect to have invested $2.55 per day ($0.85 x 3 = $2.55), give or take for example. Over time, that adds up! In just a few months of using Acorns, I've accumulated over $500+ in my account plus the investment return.
Why are round up's more advantageous than just automatically investing a larger amount once per month into your account? Because round up's are multiple small incremental amounts that add up to one larger amount. This makes investing feel less expensive in terms of budget.
Should you choose to, you can also turn on the round up's multiplier. If you want to invest more money, you can select to have Acorns round up your money and invest a multiple of the amount rounded up. You can choose to double, triple or 10x your roundups.
What is Acorns “Found Money?”
Have you ever used or heard of cashback websites like Ebates or Ibotta? Well Acorns has taken the same idea and added it to their investment platform. Acorns version of this is called Found Money. Here's how it works.
Acorns has partnered with many of the largest retail stores in the US, allowing Acorns users who want to shop at those partner retailers the ability to get cashback for shopping at those stores.
For example, one of Acorns Found Money large retailers is Amazon. When an Acorns customer wants to purchase one of the select Amazon products like an Amazon Kindle, Amazon will deposit a percentage of your purchase into your Acorns investment account. That's free money!
Other companies like Life Lock, an ID theft insurance policy, offers Acorns customers a $25 deposit into your investment account once you sign up with their ID theft insurance policy.
Just by being a customer of Acorns, you get access to tons of unique discounts and offers that aren't available to anyone else. Not only do you get to invest your spare change, but you get access to free money deposited into your investment account as well.
Here is an in app screen recording of the Acorns Found Money retail partners.
What is Acorns Later?
One of the biggest reasons people invest in the stock market is to save for retirement. That's why Acorns gives its users to their Acorns Later account, a simple Roth IRA that allows you to set up recurring investments into an IRA to save for retirement.
You can start by investing with as little as $5. Just set your investment dollar amount, how often you want to have it automatically invested, and then watch it grow. You can have recurring investments for your Acorns Later account set up to be daily, weekly or monthly. You also have the option to make one time investments should you choose to.
With an Acorns Later account, you can have all your investments in one easy to manage location together with your individual Acorns brokerage account.
Acorns charges an additional $1 per month for accounts under $5,000 and 0.25% per year for accounts over $5,000 when opening up an Acorns Later account.
What is Acorns Spend?
Perhaps the most exciting feature of Acorns is their new feature called Acorns Spend. Acorns Spend is simply a checking account and debit card, with the features of Acorns round up's and found money.
With the Acorns Round up's, your money is technically held aside until it reaches a balance of $5 before it's invested into your investment portfolio. With Acorns Spend, your round up's happen automatically in real time.
Another exciting feature that the Acorns Spend account offers, is the ability to shop at the Found Money partner retailers both online and offline in store purchases.
Upon launching the Acorns Spend account, they sold out of their first 100,000 accounts in under 4 days time!
Acorns is changing the future of investing
Acorns set out to make it easier for everyone to invest in the stock market. Starting in 2012, after just a few years they have helped over 3,000,000+ (three million) people invest in the stock market and growing (as of this writing).
They took it a step further and allowed their customers to also begin investing for retirement without the need of large minimum investment amounts.
Now by offering their Acorns Spend account, they are making it even easier for everyone to invest in the stock market automatically.
==> Haven't yet opened up an Acorns account? Get started here! It takes 5 minutes to complete.
I was not familiar with Acorn.I found your review intriguing.However there some details that I would like to know.1) What are the operating costs of Acorn?Are these costs prorated and deducted from the individual accounts?2)How would I know the value of my account?Are there periodic statements?3)How is the performance of the portfolio reported?4) Are there brokerage fees?
5) If I need to cash out ,i.e. for an emergency,how does it work? are there penalties?
If you could address these concerns in your review it would help me to make a decision on this investment vehicle.
Hi Carlos. Great questions. Here are my responses:
1) Only cost is $1 per month for accounts under $5,000 and 0.25% per year for accounts over $5,000 balance. Costs are deducted from your account balance.
2) The value of your account is given to you like any other brokerage/investment account and that is through your online account login and quarterly statements. You can login at any time and see your account value at any given time.
3) The portfolio performance is also stated in quarterly statements as well as when you log into your account. You can view your performance stated in % returns and dollar amount returns under the “performance” tab on the account menu when logged in.
4) Only fees are stated in bullet point #1 above ^^
5) Should you decide to withdraw your money, you simply log into your account and submit a withdrawal request. The funds are then transferred to your linked bank account which usually takes 2-3 days due to investment rules and regulations, as well as transaction processing time.
I hope that helps! Best of luck!
Hello,
The investing program seemed really interesting to me, as I don’t think it is is important how much you invest, but it it important to do it for future growth.
Does this program work only is the US or anywhere in the world? For example, if I am from Albania can I use it?
Another question would be: is there a fee for investing transactions if you do this multiple times a day?
As of right now, Acorns is only available in the US and Australia. The only fees acorns charges is their $1 per month fee, nothing more. Best of luck!
Great Review! Acorns is a great and simple app that my friends and I use. As it converts your loose change into the app, it can quickly build up a good little investment savings. They make it nice and easy to find the right stock to invest in too. I enjoy using this app, 5 stars.
I agree. Thanks, Clancy!
Aren’t fees of .25% of balances over $5,000 pretty expensive???
Hi Gary,
Great question and great point! The fee’s in my opinion are all relative to your investing objective and what you get for the fees paid. In the case of Acorns, sure, 0.25% is expensive in comparison to other options like ETF’s and Mutual Funds, or even other similar services. The question I ask myself is, do the other options that have lower fees automate the process and structure my portfolio based on my personal risk tolerance or do I have to do that myself? With Acorns, you get the convenience of a pre-built investment portfolio along with the convenience of having your daily purchases rounded up and invested for you automatically. Both services aren’t offered everywhere, and as a result Acorns might say that justifies a slightly higher fee. But if that’s not worth it to you, I totally agree that there are other options available that may require more hands on investing but at a cheaper price. That’s my opinion, i’m sure others may agree or disagree so the answer is different for everyone depending on who you talk to. Thanks, Gary.