Acorns is an investing app that is becoming more and more popular. As all investing apps, some people hate acorns, yet some passionately love it. Acorns has many special properties that make it different than other investing apps such as Webull. Webull is basically just an app for the stock market. You can individually invest in stocks from the convenience of your phone.
Acorn is sort of like a long-term savings account, similar to a retirement account, with special features and on your phone. Acorns automatically invests for you at a degree of risk that you pick when you sign up. The app only requires an initial investment of five dollars. Depending on your plan, the app has a subscription fee of one to five dollars per month.
Viewer Discretion: I am not a financial advisor so it is up to you to partake in the following actions. Many of the following links are affiliate, which means I make money at no extra expense to you. I am not sponsored by Acorns in any way and this article is based solely on opinion.
Acorns Features
The features of Acorns are fairly varied. Acorns most famous feature is its roundup feature. The roundup feature is where if you buy something for $4.99, Acorns will automatically invest one cent. The point is that over time this begins to add up, and can eventually make enough money to be significant to your lifestyle. The adding up of your loose change is why the app is called Acorns. Your small, seemingly insignificant amount of money will one day grow into a mighty Oak tree.
Acorns also has a retirement plan which I will not be reviewing since I haven’t tried it yet. Acorns also has big businesses that run promotions in which the company will invest money for you. For example, if you buy something on eBay through the app, eBay will reinvest one percent of that purchase into your account. My favorite feature of Acorns is the friend referral bonus. If you sign up with my link here, we both can get a free five dollars invested when you deposit five dollars into your account. With this feature, Acorns can double your money overnight.
Pros
The best thing about Acorns is its convenience. Acorns is much more simple than other investing apps.. Acorns is also much simpler to sign up for and feels a lot less stressful and risky. Also, there is no fee when you decide to pull out your money. Most online apps centered on money make their money by taking part of your hard earned cash when you decide to cash out. So, it is very refreshing to see one-hundred percent of your money in your bank account
Cons
Acorn’s biggest con is its twelve dollar per year fee at minimum. Fees such as these mean it is difficult to invest small amounts of money and not take a loss. Most years the average return of the stock market is around eight percent. Taking this number, we can infer that you would have to invest at least one-hundred-fifty dollars just to break even. So, people that can’t afford to invest that much would be losing money.
My Experience
My experience with Acorns has been extremely good over one month. I only invested five dollars and didn’t use an affiliate link to get the free five dollar bonus (you can sign up here). As of the day which I checked my balance (12/30/2020) my five dollars has turned into $5.09. If Acorns was to keep that rate up, it would be a spectacular return of 12.216%. However, there are a few things to note.
I checked my phone the three days after the stimulus relief package was signed. So, the stocks were artificially high those days. Also, I have my investments on aggressive which means my portfolio is very risky. Over the span of the month, my account balance has dipped as low as $4.96 and gone as high as $5.09. For someone dealing with money over the thousands, this could be a bad thing. A near one percent drop in just a month is not something you ever want to hear.
I also didn’t partake on Acorns promotions which can make anyone a few extra bucks. One of the promotions is to sign up for Survey Junkie and get five-hundred points. If you complete this, Survey Junkie will automatically invest ten-dollars into your account. This money added with the five-dollars from the Survey Junkie money, would take care of your Acorns account subscription fee for a year. And, if you would like to learn how you can make more money with surveys, I’ve written an article about this topic here.
Overall Score
Overall, I would rate Acorns a nine out of ten. Acorns is a great tool for people who are just starting to invest or people who struggle to save. I would rate Acorns an easy ten out of ten if it wasn’t for the monthly fees. Acorns was meant for beginning investors, and a lot of beginning investors may not be able to afford to invest enough money in order to make profit.
If you would like to sign up for Webull and receive two free stocks once you’ve invested one-hundred dollars click here.
If you would like to sign up for Acorns and receive a free five dollars invested when you invest five dollars, sign up here. (In order to get the bonus you must sign up for a three dollar per month account. I would suggest using all of the promotions possible and you should be able to cover the cost of the subscription.)