Tech Tuesday: Acorns
The start of a new year calls for change and so does Acorns. The free app acts as a personal financial assistant, investing spare change from everyday transactions into your own portfolio. Until now, most of your spare change has probably ended up wedged between your couch cushions along with the remote control and a few stale Cheetos. Acorns offers you the chance to finally put that change to use while also learning how to invest and save smart.
To get started, register your debit and credit cards as well as a checking account. Acorns takes the remaining change from every purchase you make and invests it in a variety of stocks. For example, you buy a coffee for $2.31. Depending on your risk tolerance, the remaining 69 cents are invested in large or small company stocks, emerging markets, real estate, corporate bonds or government bonds. Over time, that could add up to $180 dollars a month. So much for chump change.
Acorns helps you to regularly invest and optimize your investment through diversification and automatic rebalancing. Automatic whatty what? Basically, Acorns automatically sells high and buys low so you can chuck your change and leave the hard work to the app. The app is free for download and only changes you $1 a month once you invest but has no commissions, meaning you spend less and save more. Better yet, you can deposit or withdraw any amount of money at any time. CHA-CHING.
Mashable ranked Acorns one of the top apps of 2014 and also got two thumbs up from Bloomberg Businessweek, which said Acorns “could prove to be an inexpensive way of introducing young people to the world of investing at ages for which compound interest can become a powerful tool.” The app also protects your info with bank level security.
Download Acorns for free at the iTunes store or at GooglePlay for Android.