Learn To Invest & Save With Acorns

My husband told me about an app that helps those who want to begin investing their money in an easy way and I thought I'd share. I've been using it for a week and I'm a fan. Acorns is an app that allows you to invest spare change from your purchases.

They first ask you a series of questions about your financial status so they can match you with the appropriate investment portfolio (ex. large company stocks, emerging market stocks, real estate stocks, etc.) and investment strategy (ex. conservative, moderate, aggressive, etc). You start your account off with seed money (I chose $20, but you can invest as little or as much as you'd like). Then you link a bank account where you tend to make the most purchases as it uses that data to show you the "round-up" amount that can be invested in your portfolio. Then you make the decision as to what purchase round-up amounts you'd like to invest. They also have an automatic round-up option where the app will invest all spare change for you, which I had on for one day and decided to turn it off as I like to manually make that decision....and depending on your spending habits, can add up quickly :)

So after a week, I definitely can say this is a Tiff Pick. I like that the app makes all investment strategy and diversification decisions based on your goals. Acorns also monitors your investment program so you don't have to. You decide how much you want to invest and can withdraw your money anytime without any fees. There is a monthly fee of $1 for accounts under $5k or a .25%/ yr fee for accounts above $5k. From a security perspective, Acorns works to protect your information, prevent unauthorized account access, and notify you of unusual activity. After a week of use, I'm at a gain of $.04. Not enough to retire, but definitely moving in a good direction.