Easy Investing Apps For Beginners

Great Idea Rough Start

I had first invested through a promotion and was impressed with the app, features, accessibility, along with information and guidance for personal investment goals. I ran into an error the first few weeks where two deductions were made from the Stash system on my account, and a paper came in the mail to inform me my mailbox was full and not receiving mail when it was? So i called C/S: my email was verified and the deductions reversed. One week later, I had a notice to re-connect a bank account, and was offered a $30 promo to do it. First of all, I saw my checking account was still connected, but I made multiple attempts to connect with other accounts with Plaid and manually, to no success, and ultimately I had thought it was a temporary issue, I checked website status, everything was running according to the website. I gave it a couple days, then I had a notice that I needed to reconnect a checking account by midnight to get a now increased promotion of $40. I went at the account connecting process again and was given a message to contact Stash customer service. When I called, I spent nearly 20 minutes with a C/S Rep that was friendly enough but had no idea of the situation with which I presented, nor a hint of what was going on. I just hung up. I don’t have time for a broken system that would not only require me to invest money but my time as well. I hope the bugs get ironed out and that this review will be helpful.

Acorns Best App For Saving

Acorns remains one of the most popular of the new breed of savings apps, because of how easy it is to use. You really dont have to pay much attention once youve set it up.

Why we like it:

• Link a debit or credit card to your account, and Acorns will round up the total on purchases to the next dollar and invest that difference into one of a few ETF portfolios.
• The cost is a modest $3 per month for Acorns Personal, which includes the investment account, an individual retirement account , a metal debit card and more. Youll be able to open one of three IRA versions: the traditional, Roth or a SEP, and can roll over an existing 401 or IRA.
• This tier offers an FDIC-protected checking account, too, with no additional fees, fee-free access to thousands of ATMs and early access to direct deposits.
• Acorns chooses your portfolio based on the targeted time until your retirement , becoming more conservative as you near that age something to consider when choosing the app.
• For a total of $5 per month, you can add Acorns Family, which includes the features of the first tier as well as investment accounts for children.

Who is it best for? You like getting automatic investments while youre spending without worrying about it. You like retirement investing without the hassle.

Minimum balance required: $0 for savings account

Fees: $3 or $5 per month depending on the service tier

How Much Do Investing Apps Cost

Price is a big factor when choosing an investment app, so it’s crucial you know what you’re paying for. After all, any costs or fees you aren’t aware of can eat away at your investment earnings over time.

Many investment apps are free to download and offer zero-commission trades, which means that investors aren’t charged for the broker executing the trade.

Investing in mutual funds or ETFs, however, will likely require paying management fees or expense ratios.

According to Investopedia, investors should expect a “reasonable” expense ratio for an actively managed portfolio to be between 0.5% to 0.75%. For passive or index funds, the typical ratio is lower at about 0.2% and can be as low as 0.02% or even less in some cases. These are benchmarks that you can use when shopping around for an investment app.

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Bonus: Apps For Experienced Investors

Here are more solid choices for traders who want to become more involved with their investing. These apps charge an industry standard per-trade fee.

This typically allows for extra features like market insights, research, and predicted future analytics, which knowledgeable traders will likely appreciate.

Fidelity

• Dashboard includes news, research, insights
• Integrates with Fidelity banking services

TD Ameritrade

• Charges $0 per trade fee for ETFs and stocks
• No minimum opening balance
• Gives users access to thinkorswim trading platform, which offers advanced tools and research with no minimum investment required
• Gives users access to 24/7 customer support

Risk Tolerance And Diversification

All investments have some level of risk and the market is volatile, it moves up and down over time. It’s important for you to understand your personal risk tolerance. This means gauging how comfortable you are with risk or how much volatility you can handle.

When investing, a good rule of thumb is not to put all of your eggs in one basket. Instead, diversify. By spreading your dollars across various investments, you can reduce investment risk. This is why the investments we outline below use mutual funds or exchange-traded funds for the most part, which allows investors to purchase baskets of securities instead of individual stocks and bonds.

» Ready to start investing? Learn how to open a brokerage account

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Webull: Investing & Trading All Commission Free

Webull is one of the best investing apps for beginners and pro members. Here, trading Stocks, ETFs, and options are available at zero commission. This mobile app for investment has zero minimum deposit requirements.

Essential Features of This Investment Mobile App

-> Free stocks for a limited time can be availed on this iOS and Android mobile app for investment.

-> A 3-month complimentary subscription is available when signing up with this mobile app.

-> Simple voice prompts like buy, sell or search is available with this mobile app to place trades.

Available Platforms To Download:Android and iOS

App Downloading Cost: Free

Play Store Rating: 4.4

App Store Rating: 4.7

There are many cashless payment methods available. If you want to learn more about them you can visit our blog: Different Types of Cashless Payments & Its Major Benefits: Moving Towards a Cashless Society.

Before You Get Started:

Its important to remember that no investment strategy be it through an app or with an advisor is risk-proof. Be sure to think about your risk tolerance, otherwise known as an investors ability to withstand the potential of losing money on an investment.

Generally, the longer your investment timeline, the more risk you can take on, Davis says. For example, a young investor who has a retirement fund that they plan to contribute to for 30 years could allocate most of their portfolio toward stocks, because theyll have plenty of time to ride through any downturns and take advantage of the recovery.

To minimize your chances of losing money when investing, Davis recommends working with a financial planner to create a straightforward investment plan that you can actually stick to. Calling on a financial adviser can bring you immense peace of mind when setting up a long-term investment strategy, he says. Whether youre searching for a one-off financial plan to get you started confidently, or looking for an advisor to guide you along the way, financial planners can help you improve your spending and saving habits while looking after your assets.

If you arent interested in consulting with a financial advisor, Davis says investors can use sell limit orders, which automatically trigger a sale at a specified price, to protect themselves from sudden spikes in stock prices. This also takes the emotional influence out of investing, he explains.

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What Are Investment Platforms

Investment platforms are online services that allow you to buy and hold shares, bonds and funds in one place.

These services can include making it easy to invest in stocks and shares ISAs or mutual funds.

Many of the platforms let investors choose a ready-made portfolio that matches their risk appetite.

Over the past decade, old-fashioned stockbrokers have started to face competition from a new generation of investment platforms. This is because platform focus on providing low-cost and straightforward access to investing for people who have little or no experience.

If you want to know more about investing, read our Beginners guide to investing.

Some platforms offer automated guidance on which options might be most suitable for you, which is sometimes called robo-advice. This does not actually count as financial advice its just support to help you make the best decision for your needs.

However, some of these platforms do also offer access to personal financial advisers in return for an extra fee.

You also use these platforms to invest for retirement: see our guide to pensions for more.

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How Much Should A Brokerage Account Cost

Brokerage accounts should be free! The best brokerages charge no recurring fees and have no minimum balance or activity requirements to avoid a monthly service fee.

In addition, most brokerages have dropped fees for stock and ETF trades, so you shouldn’t pay any commissions for those types of trades.

Invstr Best App For Education

Invstr is what you get when you mix learning, real-life investing and community into an app thats designed to give beginning investors a way to get into stocks, especially if you like games. The app combines a fantasy stock game, where you can assist in managing a virtual portfolio, with access to investors thoughts on stocks and other investments.

Why we like it:

• The fantasy game gives you $1 million in virtual money, and you can use the apps social network and news feed to source ideas. The months top performers win real cash, too.
• If you want to turn some of those fantasy picks into real-life stakes, you can buy fractional shares and whole shares commission-free in the app.
• The app will even give new users $30 worth of Bitcoin when they open and fund an account with $100. Invstr has also started offering commission-free trading in cryptocurrencies.

Who is it best for? You want to learn from an investing community, hear why they like certain stocks and play a fun fantasy game.

Minimum balance required: $0

Fees: $0, $3.99 for Invstr Pro. Can trade stocks, crypto and ETFs commission-free with a $5 minimum investment.

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How To Pick The Best Investment App For Beginners

There’s no one-size-fits-all investment app that is perfect for all beginners. This is why we’ve included several top picks on our list — all of these investing apps offer different features and investment choices.

The best way to narrow the list down to the best investment app for you is to determine what features and investments matter to you the most.

While this isn’t an exhaustive list, here are some questions to ask yourself:

Sofi Invest Great Overall Investment App

Pros

SoFi Invest is part of the broader SoFi financial institution, which originally covered student loans but now provides banking, lending, and investment services all from a single mobile hub. As a result, its a great investment app choice if you already use SoFis services for any other financial endeavors.

Its also a particularly good choice if youre a beginner. In the app, youll find a plethora of investment educational materials you can use to become a better stock trader over time. Speaking of stocks, SoFi allows you to invest in stocks, ETFs, and cryptocurrencies, so theres a decent spread of asset options available to sate more experienced investors as well.

But SoFi is an even better choice for beginners since it lets you start off with so-called fractional shares, called Stock Bits. These are lower risk but work the same way as regular stocks: a perfect way to learn the rules of the stock market game without risking too much. Check out our SoFi review to learn more.

Beyond these aspects, SoFi requires a low $1 minimum investment and offers a managed portfolio product if you want some professional help running your account from one of their financial experts. This product comes with no added investment management fees, too. They dont offer bonds or mutual funds, unfortunately, so its not the best choice if youre saving up for retirement.

SoFi Invest Fees

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Stash: Education For Beginners

Stash lets you invest with no minimum, and monthly fees vary from $1 to $9 depending on account type. The beginner account allows you to invest in fractional shares of an individual stock, bond or ETF the $3 per month growth account allows for IRAs and the big Stash+ offering provides monthly market research and allows for custodial investment accounts for kids.

Its Auto-Stash feature lets you schedule regular investments, and, like Acorns, it allows you to round up purchases and invest the spare change.

Stash recommends investments to you based on the profile you build at sign-up. Its also one of the best investment apps if you want to get digestible educational content to boost your trading knowledge.

Plus, it offers personalized guidance, challenges and quizzes. It even has a podcast.

Acorns: For The Beginner Who Wants Automated Investing

Acorns is an easy-to-use app geared for those who want to get started in investing and saving, even with just $5 to get started, and then be hands off.

“Acorns is very popular,” says O’Shea. “It will do all the work of managing your portfolio.”

In addition to the option of funding the account with as little as $5, Acorns offers the option of Round Ups using the spare change you have after a purchase to invest in exchange-traded funds , and doing this automatically from the checking or credit card account linked to your Acorns account.

For example, if you buy groceries for $9.50 and you pay for them with the account linked to Acorns, the app will round up the amount to $10 and what would have been change of 50 cents is invested in the portfolio.

Or if you link it to a checking account that has automatic payments to your phone bill of $99.83, it will round up 17 cents that is added to your account.

Another unique feature is its “Found Money” a partnership with more than 350 brands that acts like a cash back option on a credit card. For example, for every Walmart purchase, they will invest 1 percent of the total into your Acorns account.

Acorns charges a fee of $1 a month for its basic spare change investment option and up to $5 a month for its Acorn Family option of unlimited investment accounts for you and your children, a checking account and other services.

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More About The Best Investing Apps

The star ratings above represent the provider’s overall score across a variety of categories. Below, we’ve included more detail about how we rated these providers specifically for their mobile apps. Our mobile app analysis heavily weighs factors like customer experience , account fees and customer support.

How Does Stash Work

Stash can give you everything you need to build wealth for the long-term. Heres how Stash works.

Legal | Privacy Policy

Crypto is relatively new and can be volatile. Investments are Delaware Statutory Trusts and offer indirect exposure to Crypto.

A “Smart Portfolio” is a Discretionary Managed account whereby Stash has full authority to manage. “Smart” is only available in Growth and/or premium .

Clients may incur ancillary fees charged by Stash and/or its custodian that are not included in the monthly subscription fee.

This is not an endorsement or a statement of satisfaction by any Stash client.

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How We Determined The Winners

For beginners, it’s important to choose an investment app that combines low costs with the features you care about most. Whether you’re looking to build a passive portfolio of funds, an active portfolio of stocks, or any other investment strategy, there’s a brokerage and investment app designed to meet your needs.

To make our selections, we focused on costs and fees, app features, types of accounts available, investment products available, and beginner-friendly features to manage your investment account on the go.