Blogging for Change

Best Stock & Investment Apps for Beginners

by Jackie Lam on
10/21/2021
in Personal Finance , Budgeting and Building Savings
Woman using an investment app on her phone.

The following is presented for educational purposes only. For specific investing advice, connect with a qualified financial advisor.

If you’ve been diligently focused on repaying your debt (big kudos to you, by the way), investing probably sinks to the bottom of your list of financial priorities. After all, when you’ve got bills to handle and a credit card balance to pay off, saving for your future oftentimes takes a back seat.

Sure, investing is a powerful way for your money to grow, but it can certainly be intimidating. There’s so much to learn, not to mention you’ll need to free up some funds. And that’s certainly a tall order when you’re already feeling squeezed.

But with the slew of existing apps to help you with your finances, it’s easy to get started. The beauty? There are a handful geared for beginner investors who don’t have a lot of spare cash.

We’ll go over our favorite apps to get started investing:

Acorns

If you don’t have a ton of money to invest with, Acorns is a great app to help you take the plunge. How it works is it rounds up transactions from your linked bank and credit card accounts, and invests the change. For instance, if you spent $4.50 at a coffee shop, it’ll round up to $5 and invest the $0.50. Besides investing from your round-ups, you can bolster your contributions by auto-saving on the regular.

After answering a series of questions, Acorns will recommend one of five portfolios, which range from conservative to aggressive. These portfolios are made of ETFs, which are funds that bundle securities—stocks, bonds, commodities.

Fees: Acorns offers a flat $3 per month for a single user. You can also open a family account (great if you have kids and want to help them start saving their own money), which is $5 per month.

Stash

Stash features pre-made portfolios with ETFs based on your interests (i.e., Clean & Green, Corporate Cannabis, Destination Recreation, etc.), or comfort level with risk (i.e., conservative mix, aggressive mix). You can also build your own investment portfolio.

Stash also offers additional features to help you save and prepare for retirement, making it something of an all-in-one investment platform.

Fees: Stash has three pricing tiers. To get the beginner package with basic investing tools is $1 per month. Stash Growth is the next tier up, comes with retirement-specific features, and costs $3 per month. The premium option is Stash+, which includes all of the other available features, plus investing tools for children and a few other potentially valuable bonuses. Stash+ is $9 per month.

Robinhood

Robinhood is a trading app that allows you to trade for free. You can trade ETFS, stocks, options, and cryptocurrency. That’s right, there’s no commission fees. On the flipside, the platform is known to be less robust in the research and analytical tools that you’d find through a traditional online stock brokerage.

Fees: As long as you're simply making trades on the app, it's pretty unlikely that you'll encounter a fee. (I mean, they charge $5 for paper statements, but you can probably live with free e-statements just fine, right?)  

Stockpile

Stockpile's calling card is the ability to give the gift of stock. You can choose from over 1,000 fractional shares of stocks and ETFs to choose from. Of course, you can also buy and sell stock for yourself, but giving and receiving stock as a gift is a big part of the unique appeal of the platform. If you're enjoying the act of investing and want to get someone else started, this is a handy way to make that happen

Fees: Stockpile is almost entirely free to use. There are no fees for buying and redeeming gift cards, no fees for buying and selling stock, and no monthly fees.  

Ground rules for beginner investors

A few pointers on investing when you’re just getting started:

Create an investing plan

Know what your goals are to save. Are you budgeting for a down payment for a home, to pay off your debt, or for retirement? Besides your goals, know your timeframe and budget. And of course, your comfort level with risk and uncertainty.

Know the fees

If not careful, fees can eat up your earnings. Costs might include advisory fees, investment management fees, expense ratios, commission fees, front-end load (a fee you pay when you buy a fund), a back-end load (a fee you’re charged when you sell a fund), and an annual account fee.

You’ll also want to know when you’re charged and how. If you’re not sure after checking the website, reach out to chat with a rep to get your questions answered.

Save to invest

Of course, you’ll need some money to get started. If you only have $5 a week to start, carefully check the fees to make sure it’s worth your while. Let’s say you don’t have a lot of money, and it turns out the fees essentially drain your account. In that case, you might want to save until you have a larger chunk to work with.

Read more: Low-Risk Ways to Start Investing

Is getting out of debt part of your financial plan? See how a debt management plan can help accelerate your repayment and start saving you some serious money. 

Tagged in Investing, Best Of, Earning extra income, Savings accounts

A corporate headshot of Jackie Lam.

Jackie Lam is an L.A.-based personal finance writer who is passionate about helping creatives with their finances. Her work has appeared in Forbes, Mental Floss, Business Insider, and Bankrate. She's also a 2022 Financial Literacy and Education in Communities (FLEC) award winner. You can find her at heyfreelancer.com.

Recommended Articles

Man sitting in front of pile of bills, trying to understand his options.
Professional Budget Advice
Make the most of every dollar and start building toward your dreams! Budget counseling is FREE and available 24/7.
Learn More
Learn more
  • Better Business Bureau A+ rating Better Business Bureau
    MMI is proud to have achieved an A+ rating from the Better Business Bureau (BBB), a nonprofit organization focused on promoting and improving marketplace trust. The BBB investigates charges of fraud against both consumers and businesses, sets standards for truthfulness in advertising, and evaluates the trustworthiness of businesses and charities, providing a score from A+ (highest) to F (lowest).
  • Financial Counseling Association of America Financial Counseling Association of America
    MMI is a proud member of the Financial Counseling Association of America (FCAA), a national association representing financial counseling companies that provide consumer credit counseling, housing counseling, student loan counseling, bankruptcy counseling, debt management, and various financial education services.
  • Trustpilot Trustpilot
    MMI is rated as “Excellent” (4.9/5) by reviewers on Trustpilot, a global, online consumer review platform dedicated to openness and transparency. Since 2007, Trustpilot has received over 116 million customer reviews for nearly 500,000 different websites and businesses. See what others are saying about the work we do.
  • Department of Housing and Urban Development - Equal Housing Opportunity Department of Housing and Urban Development
    MMI is certified by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) to provide consumer housing counseling. The mission of HUD is to create strong, sustainable, inclusive communities and quality affordable homes for all. HUD provides support services directly and through approved, local agencies like MMI.
  • Council on Accreditation Council On Accreditation
    MMI is proudly accredited by the Council on Accreditation (COA), an international, independent, nonprofit, human service accrediting organization. COA’s thorough, peer-reviewed accreditation process is designed to ensure that organizations like MMI are providing the highest standard of service and support for clients and employees alike.
  • National Foundation for Credit Counseling National Foundation for Credit Counseling
    MMI is a longstanding member of the National Foundation for Credit Counseling® (NFCC®), the nation’s largest nonprofit financial counseling organization. Founded in 1951, the NFCC’s mission is to promote financially responsible behavior and help member organizations like MMI deliver the highest-quality financial education and counseling services.