Investing For Beginners: Best Apps To Get Started Today In 2024
If you're looking to get started with investing—this is square one.
Investing can be intimidating for beginners. It feels like there’s so much to learn, and you don’t know where to start. Unfortunately, that lack of confidence prevents many people from taking action. Luckily some easy-to-use apps make investing simple for beginners. Here, we’ll look at the best investment apps for beginners that can help you to reach your financial goals without overwhelming you.
Acorns
Acorns helps users to get started with investing by simply setting aside some spare change. Acorns will round up the purchase to the next dollar and invest the difference when you purchase with your debit or credit card.
While roundups are the primary feature, Acorns has much more to offer as well. You can set up automated recurring investments to help your account grow faster, earn money from 350+ top brands when you shop through the app, and earn bonus investments based on your shopping.
Why Acorns is Perfect for Beginners
One of the most common excuses for not investing is simply not having any room in the budget. Many people who aren’t investing feel like they don’t have enough money to invest. Acorn helps overcome this challenge through the roundup feature, which allows anyone to start investing with minimal impact on the budget.
Acorns also makes investing simple by removing the need to make complicated decisions that might intimidate beginners. When you set up your account, Acorns will ask you a few questions to determine your financial goals and your tolerance for risk. Based on your responses, Acorns will match you with a diversified portfolio built by experts.
You don’t need to decide what to invest in. Instead, all you need to do is deposit money, and Acorns will invest it automatically for you. Acorns will also automatically rebalance your portfolio for you, as needed.
For those looking to improve their financial literacy, Acorns also offers a wealth of information and content on money-related topics.\
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Stash
Stash is an investment app that offers banking and a debit card that allows you to earn stock based on your purchases. Instead of earning cash back or travel points as you might get from a rewards credit card, you’ll earn stock in your favorite companies.
Investment options include stocks and exchange-traded funds (ETFs). Stash will analyze your portfolio and make investment recommendations personalized for you. To grow your portfolio faster, you can set up automated investments to transfer from your bank account to your investment account.
Why Stash is Perfect for Beginners
It’s possible to get started with as little as $5, and you can purchase fractional shares of your favorite stocks and ETFs. That means, if you don’t have enough money to buy an entire share of Amazon, Google, or another company, you can purchase a fractional share for just a few dollars.
The Stash banking account is ideal for beginners because it requires no minimum balance and comes with no overdraft fees. You can analyze your spending habits and create a budget to help you manage your money better. If your employer pays by direct deposit, you can access your money up to two days earlier.
The stock-back debit card is great for new investors because it allows you to build your portfolio automatically. Hopefully, you’re adding to your investment account consistently on your own, but the stock-back card serves as a supplement to grow your portfolio faster.
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Robinhood
Robinhood is a top-rated app for trading stocks, ETFs, options, and cryptocurrency. While many online brokerages now offer commission-free trades, Robinhood was the pioneer that forced the rest of the industry to adapt.
Why Robinhood is Perfect for Beginners
Robinhood makes it possible to start investing with as little as $1. Like Stash, Robinhood supports fractional shares so that you can invest in any company or ETF regardless of the current share price.
The user interface is clean and straightforward, designed to be user-friendly for beginner investors. Robinhood doesn’t offer as many advanced features as some online brokerages or investing apps, which helps to keep it simple to use.
Since Robinhood supports fractional shares and offers commission-free trades, you can create a diversified portfolio without investing a large amount of money. Simply invest small amounts in several different stocks or ETFs and spread your money around.
For those interested in buying cryptocurrency like Bitcoin, Robinhood offers one of the easiest ways to do it.
M1 Finance
M1 Finance provides customizable automated investing. Your "pie" will determine the specific investments in your portfolio. If your investment account is the entire pie, the specific investments are the different slices of the pie. Users can choose from more than 80 expertly-created pies designed for different goals and various types of investors. You can also create your own pie and determine the percentages you want to invest in different stocks or funds.
When you deposit money into your M1 Finance account, it’s automatically invested according to your pie. You can also rebalance your portfolio at any time.
Although M1 Finance will automate the work for you, you’ll also have the option to place trades manually at any time.
Why M1 Finance is Perfect for Beginners
M1 Finance offers some of the same benefits as a robo advisor, but without the management fees. Beginners will probably want to select one of the pies offered by M1 Finance. After that, all you need to do is add money to your account, and M1 Finance will handle the rest.
Features include investing in fractional shares, commission-free trades of stocks and ETFs, and automated contributions.
Final Thoughts
There are many investment apps out there, but not all of them are ideally suited for beginners. The four apps covered here are the best investing apps for beginners because they’re easy to use, allow you to get started with very little money, and are designed to help you grow your portfolio and increase your net worth with time. If you’re looking to invest but not sure how to start, check out these apps. Also using great websites to help you undersand the market better would be smart. Our suggestion is Seeking alpha!