• Home
  • Small-Business Marketing Statistics and Trends
  • What Is Mobile Banking?
  • How Student Loans Affect Credit Score?
  • Refinancing an Inherited House
  • How to Build a Kitchen?

Hanover Mortgages

The Refined Mortgage Lending Company & Home Loan Lenders

portfolios

Apache is functioning normally

May 28, 2023 by Brett Tams

A short while ago I wrote reviews of two services that recently launched, both of which intrigued me. One is a free online savings account called Digit, and the other is a free automated investing adviser called Axos Invest.

Both companies are different from anything else out there.

digit plus axos invest experiment

Digit’s claim to fame is that they will automatically save money for you after analyzing your spending and account balance trends. Once Digit figures out how much it can save without you noticing, or overdrawing your account, it just does it. It saves small amounts to your Digit savings account throughout the month. At the end of the month, you’ve got a nice lump sum saved in your account. (Digit review here)

Axos Invest is gaining traction because of its unique business model as well. They’re a robo-adviser, an automated investment advisory along the lines of Betterment or Wealthfront, but they’re different in that they don’t charge any management fees as most other companies do. They invest your money in ETF index funds with no trading fees and no management fees whatsoever. They plan to make their money off of premium add-on products like tax-loss harvesting in the future. (Axos Invest review here)

I liked the ideas behind these services and signed up for both of them to give them a trial run. While I was at it I decided to turn this into a bit of an experiment.  I plan to see just how much money I can automatically save and then invest with them through the end of the year.  I thought it would be interesting to show just how much you can automatically save and invest (at no cost), without even thinking about it. Saving and investing doesn’t have to be hard, or expensive!

Digit Savings Account

Digit savings account

According to Ethan Bloch, the founder of Digit, the company was started to help people, “maximize their money, while at the same time driving the amount of time and effort it takes to do so as close to 0 minutes per year as possible”

So how does Digit work? You sign up for an account, and link your checking account. Digit will then analyze your income and expenses, find patterns and then find small amounts that it can set aside for you – without any pain for you.

So once you sign up and turn on auto-savings, every 2 or 3 days Digit will transfer some money from your checking to your savings, usually somewhere between $5-$50. Digit won’t overdraft your account, and they have a “no overdraft guarantee that states they’ll pay any overdraft fees if they accidentally overdraft your account.

Open Your Digit Savings Account

Axos Invest Investing Account

Axos Invest (formerly WiseBanyan

Axos Invest launched with the goal of being the world’s first completely free financial advisor.  Their founders had a mission “to ensure everyone can achieve their financial goals, which starts with investing as early as possible. This is why there is no minimum to start and we do not charge fees.” 

Axos Invest’s founders understood that one of the drags on the typical person’s portfolios is the fees that they’re paying to invest, as well as the friction point of having to invest thousands of dollars to start.  They changed that with no minimums to invest, and no fees charged for investing.  Axos Invest will be releasing some premium add-on products for their users, which they will charge for, but a basic investing account will not cost anything beyond the mutual fund expense ratios associated with your investments.

What do you invest in with Axos Invest? Axos Invest will invest your funds based on Modern Portfolio Theory (MPT). Your investments will be diversified, low cost, and recognize the value of long term passive investing by investing in ETF index funds.

Open Your Axos Invest Investing Account

The Digit + Axos Invest Experiment (D+AI Experiment)

For the experiment I plan on using the two accounts I have just opened with Digit and Axos Invest in order to show just how easy it is to invest.

From now until the end of the year I plan on allowing Digit to automatically save money from my checking account and put it into my Digit savings.

When the amount in the account gets to around $75 or more, I’ll transfer it back to the checking and transfer the same amount over to my Axos Invest Roth IRA to invest in their automated investing service.  I figure by doing it this way, I’ll engage in a bit of dollar-cost averaging, instead of waiting until the balance is higher and investing once or twice.  Since Axos Invest has no minimums and you can buy fractional shares, why not?

When the end of the year rolls around I’ll do a review and look at how much money I’ve been able to save and invest using these two sites.

The Experiment In Progress

Once I had setup my Digit and Axos Invest accounts I started putting the experiment into action in early February. I turned on the automated saving feature of the Digit savings account, and waited for the small savings amounts to start showing up.  After about 3-4 days, my first few deposits into Digit appeared.  There were deposits for $5, $6.50, $8.45, $2.35 all within the first 7 days. I have also referred friends to Digit, and $5 referral bonuses started showing up as well.

Day after day the referrals and savings deposits started piling up and before I knew it, I had $186 in the account.  At this point I decided to withdraw and make my first investment over at Axos Invest.

Amounts Withdrawn And Invested So Far

I’m only about a month into my little experiment, and so far I’ve withdrawn my Digit savings balance and invested it in my Axos Invest Roth IRA twice.  The amounts were:

  • $186.00
  • $74.72

Here’s a screenshot from my Digit account showing my latest withdrawal for the purpose of investing.

digit-savings

After withdrawing the money I then transfer it from my checking account over to Axos Invest. Here’s a screenshot of my latest deposit with Axos Invest.

wisebanyan-deposit-confirm

Once this deposit goes through I’ll have a little less than $260.72 invested at Axos Invest since the market has gone down slightly since I started. You can see the $184.84 total invested for my first $186 deposit below.

Here’s the portfolio’s asset allocation in my Axos Invest account currently. Probably a tad more aggressive than in my other retirement accounts, but that’s OK.

wisebanyan-allocation

The funds that Axos Invest uses and their expenses are shown below (and are subject to change)

  • Vanguard Total Stock Market ETF (VTI): 0.05%
  • Vanguard FTSE Developed Markets ETF (VEA): 0.09%
  • Vanguard FTSE Emerging Markets ETF (VWO): 0.15%
  • Vanguard Intmdte Tm Govt Bd ETF (VGIT): 0.12%
  • Vanguard Short-Term Government Bond Index ETF (VGSH): 0.12%
  • iShares Investment Grade Corporate Bond ETF (LQD): 0.15%
  • State Street Global Advisors Barclays Short Term High Yield Bond Index ETF (SJNK): 0.40%
  • iShares Barclays TIPS Bond Fund (ETF) (TIP): 0.20%
  • Vanguard REIT Index Fund (VNQ): 0.10%

Depending on how the market does, we’ll see what kind of returns my account sees.  No matter how it goes, I’m already ahead of the game as I don’t have to pay any account management or trading fees. Can’t beat that.

Join In The Digit & Axos Invest Experiment

If you’re intrigued by Digit and Axos Invest like I was, and want to join in the “D+WB Experiment”, I invite you to join in.

Open an account with both services (both accounts are free), set Digit to start automatically saving and get started. Let’s see how much we can save and invest this year – without lifting a finger!

Related Posts

Source: biblemoneymatters.com

Posted in: Investing, Money Basics Tagged: 2, About, Account management, action, advisor, AI, All, asset, asset allocation, Auto, balance, barclays, basic, before, betterment, bible, bond, bonuses, business, Buy, Checking Account, companies, company, cost, deposit, Deposits, Digit, dollar-cost averaging, driving, expense, expenses, expensive, Fees, Financial Advisor, Financial Goals, Financial Wize, FinancialWize, fractional, Free, fund, funds, future, get started, goal, goals, government, great, high yield, ideas, in, Income, index, index fund, index funds, Invest, Investing, investment, investments, IRA, low, Make, market, markets, model, modern, modern portfolio theory, money, Money Matters, More, mpt, ok, Online Savings Account, or, Other, Other Retirement Accounts, overdraft, overdraft fees, passive, passive investing, patterns, plan, portfolio, portfolios, premium, products, referrals, reit, retirement, retirement accounts, returns, Review, Reviews, roth, Roth IRA, save, Save Money, Saving, savings, Savings Account, shares, short, short term, Sites, Spending, states, stock, stock market, tax, the balance, time, tips, trading, trends, unique, value, Vanguard, wealthfront, will, withdrawal, work

Apache is functioning normally

May 28, 2023 by Brett Tams

About 6 months ago I discovered two cool new services that had recently launched, both of which were a part of the recent trend towards automated saving and investment account options.

The first one was an free online savings account from Digit, an account that helps take the busy work out of saving. It analyzes your checking account daily and at regular intervals it saves small amounts of money from your checking and puts it into your Digit savings account – without your intervention. It allows you to save money, a little bit at a time, without even realizing it.

digit plus axos invest experiment

The second account is a free automated investment adviser from the folks at Axos Invest. When you have an investment account from Axos Invest, their system will allow you to regularly invest in a taxable or tax-advantaged retirement account, and it will automatically invest your funds in a portfolio of low-cost ETF index funds. It’s a great new long term investing site, along the lines of Betterment or Wealthfront, but without any account management costs.

Digit and Axos Invest are both big on the idea of automating things in order to make them more efficient, more cost-effective and better for your bottom line. I liked the idea behind both sites, and after signing up I decided to take them on a trial run and to run an experiment.

Just how much could I save automatically for the year using Digit’s tools? How much would I be able to invest at no cost using Axos Invest? How much intervention would I need to have – and just how much could I save over time? First, let’s take a brief look at these two accounts.

Digit Savings Account

According to Ethan Bloch, the founder of Digit, the company was started to help people, “maximize their money, while at the same time driving the amount of time and effort it takes to do so as close to 0 minutes per year as possible”

So how does Digit work? You sign up for an account, and link your checking account. Digit will then analyze your income and expenses, find patterns and then find small amounts that it can set aside for you – without any pain for you.

So once you sign up and turn on auto-savings, every 2 or 3 days Digit will transfer some money from your checking to your savings, usually somewhere between $5-$50. Digit won’t overdraft your account, and they have a “no overdraft guarantee that states they’ll pay any overdraft fees if they accidentally overdraft your account.

Open Your Digit Savings Account

Axos Invest Investing Account

Axos Invest launched with the goal of being the world’s first completely free financial advisor.  Their founders had a mission “to ensure everyone can achieve their financial goals, which starts with investing as early as possible. This is why there is no minimum to start and we do not charge fees.” 

Axos Invest’s founders understood that one of the drags on the typical person’s portfolios is the fees that they’re paying to invest, as well as the friction point of having to invest thousands of dollars to start.  They changed that with no minimums to invest, and no fees charged for investing.  Axos Invest will be releasing some premium add-on products for their users, which they will charge for, but a basic investing account will not cost anything beyond the mutual fund expense ratios associated with your investments.

What do you invest in with Axos Invest? Axos Invest will invest your funds based on Modern Portfolio Theory (MPT). Your investments will be diversified, low cost and recognize the value of long term passive investing by investing in ETF index funds.

Open Your Axos Invest Investing Account

The Digit + Axos Invest Experiment (D+AI Experiment)

So for my  Digit and Axos Invest experiment, the goal was not only to try out these two free products, but also to show just how easy (and low cost) it can be to invest.

When I started in early February my goal was to allow Digit to automatically save money from my checking account and put it into my Digit savings. Whenever the amount in my Digit savings reached $75 I would transfer that money over to my Axos Invest account and invest it in their highly diversified set of ETF index funds.

Why was I doing it this way? I did it this way because Axos Invest has no minimums and you can buy fractional shares, so why not? I can transfer money in small chunks, and engage in a bit of dollar-cost averaging while I’m at it.

So how are things going now that we’re more than half the way through the year?

The Experiment In Progress

Once I had setup my Digit and Axos Invest accounts I put the plan in action and allowed my Digit account to start saving on my behalf. After a few days Digit had started saving small amounts in my account.  There was $7.50 here, $15 there – as well as $5 deposits for referrals of friends and readers. Multiple transfers and deposits ended up adding up to larger amounts over a couple weeks time. The first time that I invested with Axos Invest I deposited $186 that had accrued in my Digit account.

From then on every time the amount reached around $75 or more, I would transfer the money to Axos Invest.

Amounts Withdrawn And Invested So Far

I’m now just over 5 1/2 months into my little experiment, and so far I’ve withdrawn my Digit savings balance and invested it in my Axos Invest Roth IRA 14 times.  The amounts were:

  • $74.36
  • $79.76
  • $121.75
  • $82.03
  • $95.67
  • $81.27
  • $93.28
  • $109.47
  • $76.20
  • $99.08
  • $99.32
  • $90.88
  • $74.72
  • $186.00

Here’s a screenshot from my Digit account showing my latest withdrawal for the purpose of investing.

digit-co-review-withdrawal

After withdrawing the money I then transfer it from my checking account over to Axos Invest. Here’s a screenshot of one of my latest deposits with Axos Invest. In the screenshot you can also see how deposits are then used to purchase fractional shares of the ETF index funds used in the account.

Once my latest deposit of $74.36 goes through I’ll have $1380.70 invested at Axos Invest.

wisebanyan-account

Here’s my portfolio’s asset allocation in my Axos Invest account. It is a bit more aggressive than in my other retirement accounts.

wisebanyan-allocation

The funds that Axos Invest currently uses, and their expenses, are shown below (and are subject to change)

  • Vanguard Total Stock Market ETF (VTI): 0.05%
  • Vanguard FTSE Developed Markets ETF (VEA): 0.09%
  • Vanguard FTSE Emerging Markets ETF (VWO): 0.15%
  • Vanguard Intmdte Tm Govt Bd ETF (VGIT): 0.12%
  • Vanguard Short-Term Government Bond Index ETF (VGSH): 0.12%
  • iShares Investment Grade Corporate Bond ETF (LQD): 0.15%
  • State Street Global Advisors Barclays Short Term High Yield Bond Index ETF (SJNK): 0.40%
  • iShares Barclays TIPS Bond Fund (ETF) (TIP): 0.20%
  • Vanguard REIT Index Fund (VNQ): 0.10%

We’ll see what kind of returns my account sees over the coming months/years, but I’m sure it will about match what the market does.  Since I’m not paying any account management fees as well, I’ll be coming out ahead as compared to some other robo-adviser competitors.

How’s It Going So Far?

So how is the experiment going so far?  I think it’s been pretty successful.  I’ve saved $1380.70 over the 5 1/2 month period. If we round that up to 6 months it means an average saved of about $230.12/month.

Multiply the $230.12 by 12 months and it means that if I continue this experiment for an entire year, I could expect to see somewhere  in the neighborhood of $2761.40 saved for the year.

While $2761.40 isn’t going to profoundly change someone’s life, it isn’t a small amount of money either.

If you look at that $2761.40 amount, it’s just over half of the annual $5500 contribution limit for a Roth IRA.  So essentially, over half of my year’s worth of Roth IRA contributions are happening without any pain for me.

The money is coming out in small chunks, so small I don’t even notice. Over time those small chunks are adding up to larger dollar amounts that do make a difference to my long term strategy. All in all I think it’s a pretty powerful idea, making savings and investment happen automatically in the background, with only a small amount of intervention needed from you. The fact that both of these tools are also free is just icing on the cake.

Join In The Digit & Axos Invest Experiment

Interested in joining the “Digit and Axos Invest Experiment”? I invite you to join in! The only risk you’ll have by joining is that your retirement accounts will grow over time and that you’ll likely be paying fewer costs than your current retirement account provider.

Open accounts with both services, set Digit to save automatically, and get started. You’ll be glad you did. Let’s see how much you can invest – with minimal effort or intervention!

Related Posts

Source: biblemoneymatters.com

Posted in: Investing, Money Basics Tagged: 2, About, Account management, action, advisor, AI, All, Amount Of Money, asset, asset allocation, Auto, average, balance, barclays, basic, betterment, bible, big, bond, Buy, Checking Account, company, contributions, cost, couple, deposit, Deposits, Digit, dollar-cost averaging, driving, efficient, expense, expenses, Fees, Financial Advisor, Financial Goals, Financial Wize, FinancialWize, fractional, Free, fund, funds, get started, goal, goals, government, great, Grow, high yield, in, Income, index, index fund, index funds, Invest, Investing, investment, investments, IRA, IRA contributions, Life, low, Make, making, market, markets, minimal, modern, modern portfolio theory, money, Money Matters, More, mpt, multiply, new, Online Savings Account, or, Other, Other Retirement Accounts, overdraft, overdraft fees, passive, passive investing, patterns, plan, portfolio, portfolios, premium, pretty, products, Purchase, referrals, reit, retirement, retirement account, retirement accounts, returns, Review, risk, roth, Roth IRA, save, Save Money, Saving, savings, Savings Account, second, shares, short, short term, Sites, Start Saving, states, stock, stock market, tax, tax-advantaged, taxable, The Neighborhood, time, tips, tools, transfer money, trend, update, value, Vanguard, wealthfront, will, withdrawal, work, work out

Apache is functioning normally

May 28, 2023 by Brett Tams

The investing information provided on this page is for educational purposes only. NerdWallet, Inc. does not offer advisory or brokerage services, nor does it recommend or advise investors to buy or sell particular stocks, securities or other investments.

The deadline for the U.S. to raise the debt ceiling is looming. If the U.S. defaults, it’s likely to impact many Americans in some capacity. Even if we manage to escape this economic crisis, though, another one is likely on the horizon.

Whether it’s a nationwide recession, worldwide crisis or a personal event, it’s a good idea to start thinking about how to stabilize your finances now so they can be a safety net in your time of need.

How the U.S. debt ceiling crisis could impact your finances 

“We’ve never had this type of default before,” says Jean Ross, a senior fellow of economic policy at the Center for American Progress. A lot depends on whether the default period is short term or more protracted.

Things that could happen include:

  • A decrease in household wealth: This would especially be the case among those who have retirement portfolios and stock holdings. A stock market spiral could impact retirees who are pulling from their retirement funds, as well as workers on the brink of retirement who might now have to reconsider their plans. 

  • Rising interest rates: Rates on credit cards and adjustable-rate mortgages would increase, and with it, the debt load of many Americans — which also could negatively affect their credit scores.

  • Delayed paychecks: This would impact federal employees and businesses with federal government contracts. Those affected could include everyone from cleaning contractors to graphic designers and people who serve lunch in federal buildings, according to Ross. 

  • A disruption in some federal or state government benefits: Programs like Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, Medicaid, Social Security and veterans benefits could be affected. 

How to make your budget resilient

You can’t always control how much time you have to prepare for a financial crisis. The key is to work strategically with the time and resources you have to safeguard your budget as best you can.

Here are some tips for how to brace your budget for a major financial disruption.

1. Make or fine-tune your budget

To prepare for an emergency, isolate your necessary expenses so you know what your bare minimum budget should be. A 50/30/20 budget framework is a good way to start thinking about what’s necessary and what you can cut if needed.

“When it comes to expenses, we usually don’t go back far enough,” says Kia McCallister-Young, the director of America Saves, a nonprofit organization and an initiative of the Consumer Federation of America. Only looking at your last few statements can cause you to leave out annual expenses. McCallister-Young recommends going back a full year and examining all your statements, including those from your bank and other bill pay apps.

If you’re in a crisis now: Make a list of expenses you can cut — things like cable or streaming subscriptions, meal services, eating out and shopping. Contact these providers to cancel immediately.

2. Create or bulk up your emergency fund

Ideally, you should have or be working toward an emergency fund that holds three to six months of necessary expenses. However, “three to six months in expenses is very overwhelming, and for some people unattainable as well, especially if you’re not earning a living wage,” says McCallister-Young.

She recommends starting with an attainable goal and automating your savings, either through direct deposit or through your bank. Even $10 a week is a good starting point. “Saving is a habit, not a destination,” says McCallister-Young.

Storing your emergency fund in a high-yield savings account is a good idea because it’s easy to access and also will be earning interest with each passing month, helping you reach your goal faster.

If you’re in a crisis now: It can feel scary to pull money from your emergency fund, but don’t be afraid. “You don’t have to feel bad about the fact that you are using the savings that you have created,” says McCallister-Young. “It’s supposed to be there to help you.” If you don’t have an emergency fund, though, reach out to your community resources.

3. Research assistance in your area

Knowing where to turn in a financial crisis can be a challenge because you might be feeling panic or shame. McCallister-Young recommends finding a “community of support that can lift you up and can tell you where you should go” in a time of need.

Plugging into these community resources ahead of an emergency can be helpful. Consider joining online neighborhood groups, following the social media pages of local nonprofits and identifying food banks in your area.

If you’re in a crisis now: Start your internet search with 211.org for confidential help from experts on everything from finding food to mental health assistance. From there, reach out to your community of support to find local food banks or identify community groups or nonprofits that can help pay your bills.

4. Pay down your debt

One of the ways you can set yourself up to survive a financial crisis is to have as little debt as possible. Big disruptions are likely to make it harder to pay your bills, and accruing interest will only make digging out of your circumstance harder.

To prepare for an emergency, start paying down credit card and other debt now. If it’s a recession you’re worried about, focus on paying down debt with the highest interest rates.

If you’re in a crisis now: Contact lenders to discuss payment options. For example, a lender might be able to put you on a payment plan to spread out costs into more manageable chunks or temporarily lower your interest rate.

5. Bolster your credit score

The best way to protect your credit during a financial disruption is to make on-time payments and keep your credit utilization as low as possible. However, this might be difficult, especially if you’re operating off of a reduced income and need your credit cards to supplement your monthly expenses.

You have some options when it comes to handling your debts, explains Melinda Opperman, chief external affairs officer at Credit.org. If you have time to prepare, “call your lender to ask if they offer a concession like a lower interest rate or a deferred payment,” she says. The only risk, according to Opperman, is that your lender might lower your credit limit, causing your credit utilization ratio to increase. This could harm your score until you are able to pay down the balance.

You also might consider using a balance transfer or 0% APR credit card to take some of the pressure off. Just pay attention to the fine print, especially when it comes to transfer fees and repayment terms, which are typically around 18 months, says Opperman.

If you’re in a crisis now: One way to weather a financial storm is to make on-time payments, but consider only paying the minimum balance, says Opperman. While it will temporarily increase your debt load, especially if you’re used to paying your balance in full each month, paying the minimum for a short time can help you get through a tough time while recording on-time payments, which is a huge factor in calculating your credit score.

The thing to note about your credit score is that it’s not typically directly impacted by a recession or personal financial crisis.

“A credit score doesn’t reflect your income, wealth or current financial situation,” says Opperman. “It’s a measure of how you handle your debts.”

Source: nerdwallet.com

Posted in: Moving Guide, Personal Finance Tagged: 0% APR, 2, 50/30/20 budget, About, All, Apps, apr, ask, balance, balance transfer, Bank, banks, before, Benefits, best, big, Bill Pay, bills, brokerage, Budget, Buy, Cable, cleaning, contractors, contracts, Credit, credit card, credit cards, credit limit, credit score, credit scores, credit utilization, credit utilization ratio, Crisis, Debt, debt ceiling, Debts, deposit, Direct Deposit, earning, Eating, eating out, Economic Crisis, Emergency, Emergency Fund, event, expenses, experts, Fees, finances, financial crisis, Financial Wize, FinancialWize, food, fund, funds, goal, good, government, Graphic, habit, health, helpful, household, How To, impact, in, Income, interest, interest rate, interest rates, internet, Investing, investments, investors, lenders, list, Living, Local, low, LOWER, Make, manage, market, measure, Media, Medicaid, mental health, money, monthly expenses, More, Mortgages, nerdwallet, offer, or, organization, Other, panic, Paying Down Debt, payments, Personal, personal finance, plan, plans, portfolios, pressure, programs, protect, Raise, rate, Rates, reach, Recession, repayment, Research, retirees, retirement, retirement funds, risk, safety, Saving, savings, Savings Account, search, securities, security, Sell, shopping, short, short term, social, Social Media, social security, stock, stock market, stocks, streaming, subscriptions, the balance, time, tips, veterans, wealth, weather, will, work, workers, working, young

Apache is functioning normally

May 27, 2023 by Brett Tams

In October I published my most recent update in what I call “The Digit + Axos Invest Experiment”.

Since February has come and gone I thought this might be a good time to do my review of the experiment after 1 year – to see just how much I was able to save, and invest, over that time.

The Experiment

The series of posts was designed to show just how easy it can be to save and invest using today’s free and automated saving and investing solutions.

To facilitate the experiment I opened two new accounts, both with free automated services that I discovered just over a year ago

The first account was an free online savings account from Digit, an account that helps take the busy work out of saving. It analyzes your checking account daily and at regular intervals it saves small amounts of money from your checking and puts it into your Digit savings account – without your intervention. It allows you to save money, a little bit at a time, without even realizing it.

Digit + Axos Invest experiment

The second account is a free automated investment adviser from the folks at Axos Invest. When you have an investment account from Axos Invest, their system will allow you to regularly invest in a taxable or tax-advantaged retirement account, and it will automatically invest your funds in a portfolio of low-cost ETF index funds. It’s a great new long term investing site, along the lines of Betterment or Wealthfront, but without any account management costs.

Digit and Axos Invest are both big on the idea of automating things in order to make them more efficient, more cost-effective and better for your bottom line. I liked the idea behind both sites, and after signing up, a year ago I decided to take both services on a trial run, and to run an experiment.

Just how much could I save automatically for the year using Digit’s tools? How much would I be able to invest at no cost using Axos Invest? How much intervention would I need to have – and just how much could I save over time? First, let’s take a brief look at these two accounts.

Digit Savings Account

According to Ethan Bloch, the founder of Digit, the company was started to help people, “maximize their money, while at the same time driving the amount of time and effort it takes to do so as close to 0 minutes per year as possible”

So how does Digit work? You sign up for an account, and link your checking account. Digit will then analyze your income and expenses, find patterns and then find small amounts that it can set aside for you – without any pain for you.

So once you sign up and turn on auto-savings, every 2 or 3 days Digit will transfer some money from your checking to your savings, usually somewhere between $5-$50. Digit won’t overdraft your account, and they have a “no overdraft guarantee that states they’ll pay any overdraft fees if they accidentally overdraft your account.

Open Your Digit Savings Account

Axos Invest Investing Account

Axos Invest launched with the goal of being the world’s first completely free financial advisor. Their founders had a mission “to ensure everyone can achieve their financial goals, which starts with investing as early as possible. This is why there is no minimum to start and we do not charge fees.”

Axos Invest’s founders understood that one of the drags on the typical person’s portfolios is the fees that they’re paying to invest, as well as the friction point of having to invest thousands of dollars to start. They changed that with no minimums to invest, and no fees charged for investing. Axos Invest will be releasing some premium add-on products for their users, which they will charge for, but a basic investing account will not cost anything beyond the mutual fund expense ratios associated with your investments.

What do you invest in with Axos Invest? Axos Invest will invest your funds based on Modern Portfolio Theory (MPT). Your investments will be diversified, low cost and recognize the value of long term passive investing by investing in ETF index funds.  Plus, when you sign up now, you’ll get a $20 Signup Bonus!

Open Your Axos Invest Investing Account and Get A $20 Bonus!

The Digit + Axos Invest Experiment (D+AI Experiment)

So for my Digit + Axos Invest Experiment, the goal was not only to take these two free products for a spin, but also to show just how easy (and low cost) it can be to invest.  There really should be no excuse to not get started.

When I started in February 2015 my goal was to allow Digit to automatically pull money from my checking account and put it into my Digit savings. Whenever the amount in my Digit savings reached $75 or more I would transfer that money over to my Axos Invest account and invest it in their highly diversified set of ETF index funds.

Why was I doing it this way? I did it this way because Axos Invest has no minimums and you can buy fractional shares, so why not? I can transfer money in small chunks, and engage in a bit of dollar-cost averaging while I’m at it.

So how are things going now that I’ve been doing the experiment for an entire year?  Let’s take a look.

The Experiment 1 Year In Progress

After setting up my Digit and Axos Invest accounts I put the plan in action and allowed my Digit account to start saving on my behalf.

Digit started saving small amounts in my account when I first began. $5 here, $15 there. Over time multiple transfers and deposits ended up adding up to larger amounts in my Digit account. My first transfer to my investment account was about $186.

From then on every time the amount reached around $75-$100 or more, I transfered the money to Axos Invest.

Amounts Saved And Invested In One Year

I’m now just over 1 year into my little experiment, and I’ve withdrawn my Digit savings balance and invested it in my Axos Invest Roth IRA 25 times.

Here are the amounts that I have withdrawn and invested, with the most recent investment first:

  • $541.21
  • $230.47
  • $296.95
  • $350.92
  • $306.40
  • $445.21
  • $173.84
  • $419.66
  • $112.68
  • $155.20
  • $142.02
  • $74.36
  • $79.76
  • $121.75
  • $82.03
  • $95.67
  • $81.27*
  • $93.28
  • $109.47
  • $76.20
  • $99.08
  • $99.32
  • $90.88
  • $74.72
  • $186.00

A total of $4538.55 was saved by my Digit account over the 12 months I did this experiment. I invested $3347.68 of that in my Roth IRA. (the last couple of months in the experiment a large tax bill came due and some of the Digit savings went to that instead of my Roth IRA)

Here’s a screenshot from my Digit account showing my latest $541.21 withdrawal for the purpose of investing.

digit-savings

After withdrawing the money I then transfer it from my checking account over to Axos Invest. Deposits can be used to purchase fractional shares of the ETF index funds used in the account.

I currently have $3298.83 invested at Axos Invest, from the $3347.68 I have deposited. The investments (and the markets) have gone down about 1.5% since I started, so that accounts for the losses.

roth-ira-wisebanyan

Here’s my portfolio’s asset allocation in my Axos Invest account. It is a bit more aggressive than in my other retirement accounts.

roth-ira-allocation-wisebanyan

The funds that Axos Invest currently uses, and their expenses, are shown below (but are subject to change)

  • Vanguard Total Stock Market ETF (VTI): 0.05%
  • Vanguard FTSE Developed Markets ETF (VEA): 0.09%
  • Vanguard FTSE Emerging Markets ETF (VWO): 0.15%
  • Vanguard Intmdte Tm Govt Bd ETF (VGIT): 0.12%
  • Vanguard Short-Term Government Bond Index ETF (VGSH): 0.12%
  • iShares Investment Grade Corporate Bond ETF (LQD): 0.15%
  • State Street Global Advisors Barclays Short Term High Yield Bond Index ETF (SJNK): 0.40%
  • iShares Barclays TIPS Bond Fund (ETF) (TIP): 0.20%
  • Vanguard REIT Index Fund (VNQ): 0.10%

We’ll see what kind of returns my account sees over the coming months/years, but I’m sure it will be close to what the market does. Since I’m not paying any account management fees to invest, I’ll be coming out ahead as compared to some other automated investment advisers.

A Recap Of My Progress After 1 Year

So how has the experiment gone now that I’ve made it an entire year? In my book it’s been a rousing success. I’ve saved $4538.55 over the 12 month period via Digit. If we divide that over 12 months, it means an average saved of about $378.21/month.

If you look at that $4538 amount, it’s about 83% of the annual $5500 contribution limit for a Roth IRA. So essentially, almost all of my year’s Roth IRA contributions are happening without me having to actually think about it.

The money is slowly coming out of my accounts – usually in amounts that don’t even really register. The savings amounts tend to be in the $10-50 range, although a few have been $100+.  It’s amazing how fast those small amounts really add up!

The Power Of Investing Over Time

Let’s say you were in your 20s and you were to do something similar to what I’m doing with this experiment. You could end up with a pretty nice start to your nest egg over time.

Just setup automated savings and investments, and in my case that $4538 contribution for the year when extrapolated out over 30 years at an average 8% interest, will end up as just over $567,300 over 30 years.

To me that’s the power of long term investing. You can take small savings and investment amounts like this, and make it grow. In the end those small amounts end up adding up to a large lump sum in retirement. That’s pretty powerful.  Why not get started now?

Join In The Digit & Axos Invest Experiment

Interested in joining the “Digit and Axos Invest Experiment” for year 2? I invite you to join in!

Open your accounts here:

After your accounts are open, sit back and wait for the savings to pile up – then invest!  Piece of cake! Give it a shot and let us know how it goes!

Related Posts

Source: biblemoneymatters.com

Posted in: Investing, Money Basics Tagged: 2, About, Account management, action, advisor, AI, All, asset, asset allocation, Auto, average, balance, barclays, basic, betterment, bible, big, bond, bonus, book, brokerage, Buy, Checking Account, company, contributions, cost, couple, Deposits, Digit, dollar-cost averaging, driving, efficient, expense, expenses, Fees, Financial Advisor, Financial Goals, Financial Wize, FinancialWize, fractional, Free, fund, funds, get started, goal, goals, good, government, great, Grow, high yield, in, Income, index, index fund, index funds, interest, Invest, Investing, investment, investments, IRA, IRA contributions, low, Make, market, markets, modern, modern portfolio theory, money, Money Matters, More, mpt, new, Online Savings Account, or, Other, Other Retirement Accounts, overdraft, overdraft fees, passive, passive investing, patterns, plan, portfolio, portfolios, premium, pretty, products, Purchase, Recap, reit, retirement, retirement account, retirement accounts, returns, Review, roth, Roth IRA, save, Save Money, Saving, savings, Savings Account, second, Series, shares, short, short term, signup bonus, Sites, Start Saving, states, stock, stock market, tax, tax-advantaged, taxable, time, tips, tools, transfer money, update, value, Vanguard, wealthfront, will, withdrawal, work, work out

Apache is functioning normally

May 27, 2023 by Brett Tams

Advertisement

Continue reading the main story

Supported by

Continue reading the main story

Your Money

Mortgage Fees (Seriously) Spurred Outrage on TikTok. Here’s Why.

Changes to fees applied to federal mortgages have led to a misconception that borrowers with low credit scores will pay less at the expense of borrowers with good credit.

  • Send any friend a story

    As a subscriber, you have 10 gift articles to give each month. Anyone can read what you share.

Credit…Adam Maida
Tara Siegel Bernard

Published May 7, 2023Updated May 8, 2023

Mortgage fees usually induce yawns and glazed-over eyes. But when word began circulating last month that updated pricing would cost some home buyers more, it resulted in viral TikTok videos with thousands of outraged comments misinterpreting the new rules.

Many critics raised similar questions: Why were some borrowers with lower credit scores and down payments receiving improved pricing on their mortgage rates, while others with high credit scores and larger down payments were being charged more? Are responsible borrowers subsidizing riskier loans?

The changes made the rounds on cable television, even landing a spot on Tucker Carlson’s final show on Fox News, where he claimed that they were going to provide incentives for bad behavior. But much of the controversy focused on the winners and the losers of the pricing updates — and not the fact that the most creditworthy borrowers with large down payments would still pay much less. To clear up any confusion, the federal regulator behind the new pricing had to issue a statement: Sparkling credit still pays.

“You still get a better rate and loan pricing if you make a higher down payment and have better credit,” said Bob Broeksmit, president and chief executive of the Mortgage Bankers Association, an industry trade group.

January, when the regulator that oversees Fannie and Freddie — the Federal Housing Finance Agency, known as the F.H.F.A. — introduced new pricing charts that lay out how fees are applied to different borrowers and loan types. But the change may have resurfaced now because the updated fees became effective for loans delivered to Fannie and Freddie on May 1. Given the time it takes to close new loans and home purchases, the new fee menus had already been incorporated into mortgages for a while.

There’s little borrowers can do to control the market forces that drove up interest rates on mortgages in the past year. They stood at 6.4 percent as of Friday, nearly twice their level at the start of last year. But your financial profile — your credit scores, the size of your down payment — also factors into how much you pay for a loan. That’s where these fees come into play.

The fees have been in place since 2008.

Depending on how borrowers stack up, they will pay a separate fee on a mortgage backed by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

Those fees, which are a percentage of the loan amount, are often layered on top of a borrower’s base mortgage rate; and the higher your credit score, the less you generally pay. In other words, the riskier the loan is deemed to be, the higher the fee.

Freddie Mac, can add $30 to $70 a month for every $100,000 you borrow). That means they pay more, in total, than those with down payments of 20 percent or more.

The insurance protects the lender, not the borrower — that, in turn, reduces some of the risk of borrower default to Fannie or Freddie and shifts it to the private insurer. “So those who put down less than 20 percent pose less risk,” according to a recent paper by Jim Parrott of the Urban Institute, “and should pay less in fees.”

The misinformation fixated on creditworthiness.

Those nuances aren’t easily explained in short clips on social media. Instead, many critics figured that less creditworthy borrowers were getting a break at the expense of those with higher scores.

“Did you ever think in a million years that having good credit would actually punish you if you were buying or refinancing a home?” one outraged TikTok user asked.

“Guess I’ll go drop my credit score by over 100 points before I go buy my 1st home,” a commenter added.

Those sentiments — or some version of them — gained traction on cable television, social media and elsewhere. “We’re hurting the good people,” Mr. Carlson said during his segment.

Sandra Thompson, the director of the F.H.F.A, explained in a statement meant to “set the record straight” on why the agency made the changes, which began with a review of Fannie and Freddie’s pricing and programs in 2021 (it was last updated in 2015). The agency reiterated that it had recalibrated the fees on its most traditional mortgages to better reflect the risks of the loans and to strengthen its finances.

mission. And the F.H.F.A. said it made other changes to help support those goals.

At the beginning of last year, the agency said it would raise fees on loans that weren’t exactly central to that mission: It increased pricing on vacation home loans, larger mortgages (in some high-cost areas, these loans exceed $1 million), as well as on borrowers who refinanced their loans and withdrew cash from their home equity. “It is through those increases that we were able to eliminate fees for certain home buyers that are lower or moderate income,” according to F.H.F.A. officials.

Gary Acosta, a co-founder and the chief executive of the National Association of Hispanic Real Estate Professionals, said he thinks borrowers on the margins were paying an excessive amount in fees in relation to the risk they added to Fannie and Freddie’s mortgage portfolios. But he doesn’t think the price changes are meaningful enough to make a big difference.

“It is not clear that these price adjustments are going to result in more borrowers being able to participate in homeownership,” Mr. Acosta said. These borrowers may still be more likely to find better pricing through the Federal Housing Administration, he said, a government agency that insures mortgages made largely to first-time homeowners, often with small down payments and lower scores than Fannie or Freddie will permit.

Mark Calabria, a former director of the F.H.F.A. and a senior adviser at the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank, also expects the pricing changes to have minimal effects on the broader housing and mortgage markets.

But there are practical takeaways. People living in higher-cost areas who need larger mortgages to finance their homes, for example, may be better off getting mortgages through providers that hold the loans in their own portfolios instead of selling them to Fannie or Freddie.

“It still pays for you to build your credit and to shop around,” said Mr. Calabria, “even more now.”

@tarasbernard

A version of this article appears in print on  , Section B, Page 1 of the New York edition with the headline: Clearing Up Confusion Over Fees. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

Advertisement

Continue reading the main story

Source: nytimes.com

Posted in: Renting Tagged: 2021, Administration, before, Behavior, big, Bob Broeksmit, Borrow, borrowers, build, Buy, buyers, Buying, Cable, cable television, charts, clear, cost, Credit, credit score, credit scores, down payment, Down payments, equity, estate, expense, Fannie Mae, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, Federal Housing Finance Agency, Fees, Finance, finances, Financial Wize, FinancialWize, Freddie Mac, gift, goals, good, good credit, government, Hispanic, hold, home, home buyers, home equity, home loans, home purchases, homeowners, homeownership, homes, Housing, housing finance, in, Income, industry, Insurance, interest, interest rates, Living, loan, loan pricing, Loans, low, LOWER, Main, Make, Mark Calabria, market, markets, Media, minimal, More, Mortgage, Mortgage Bankers Association, mortgage fees, MORTGAGE RATE, Mortgage Rates, Mortgages, National Association of Hispanic Real Estate Professionals, new, new york, new york times, News, or, Other, payments, percent, place, play, points, portfolios, president, price, Professionals, programs, questions, Raise, rate, Rates, Real Estate, refinancing, Review, risk, Sandra Thompson, selling, short, social, Social Media, television, TikTok, time, traditional, updates, Urban Institute, vacation, vacation home, viral, will

Apache is functioning normally

May 27, 2023 by Brett Tams

Back in March I published the first post in what I call “The Digit + Axos Invest Experiment“.

The series of posts was designed to show just how easy it can be to save and invest using today’s automated saving and investing solutions.

To facilitate the experiment I opened two new accounts, both with free automated services that I discovered earlier this year.

The first account was an free online savings account from Digit, an account that helps take the busy work out of saving. It analyzes your checking account daily and at regular intervals it saves small amounts of money from your checking and puts it into your Digit savings account – without your intervention. It allows you to save money, a little bit at a time, without even realizing it.

digit plus axos invest experiment

The second account is a free automated investment adviser from the folks at Axos Invest. When you have an investment account from Axos Invest, their system will allow you to regularly invest in a taxable or tax advantaged retirement account, and it will automatically invest your funds in a portfolio of low cost ETF index funds. It’s a great new long term investing site, along the lines of Betterment or Wealthfront, but without any account management costs.

Digit and Axos Invest are both big on the idea of automating things in order to make them more efficient, more cost-effective and better for your bottom line. I liked the idea behind both sites, and after signing up I decided to take them on a trial run and to run an experiment.

Just how much could I save automatically for the year using Digit’s tools? How much would I be able to invest at no cost using Axos Invest? How much intervention would I need to have – and just how much could I save over time? First, let’s take a brief look at these two accounts.

Digit Savings Account

According to Ethan Bloch, the founder of Digit, the company was started to help people, “maximize their money, while at the same time driving the amount of time and effort it takes to do so as close to 0 minutes per year as possible”

So how does Digit work? You sign up for an account, and link your checking account. Digit will then analyze your income and expenses, find patterns and then find small amounts that it can set aside for you – without any pain for you.

So once you sign up and turn on auto-savings, every 2 or 3 days Digit will transfer some money from your checking to your savings, usually somewhere between $5-$50. Digit won’t overdraft your account, and they have a “no overdraft guarantee that states they’ll pay any overdraft fees if they accidentally overdraft your account.

Open Your Digit Savings Account

Axos Invest Investing Account

Axos Invest logo

Axos Invest launched with the goal of being the world’s first completely free financial advisor. Their founders had a mission “to ensure everyone can achieve their financial goals, which starts with investing as early as possible. This is why there is no minimum to start and we do not charge fees.”

Axos Invest’s founders understood that one of the drags on the typical person’s portfolios is the fees that they’re paying to invest, as well as the friction point of having to invest thousands of dollars to start. They changed that with no minimums to invest, and no fees charged for investing. Axos Invest will be releasing some premium add-on products for their users, which they will charge for, but a basic investing account will not cost anything beyond the mutual fund expense ratios associated with your investments.

What do you invest in with Axos Invest? Axos Invest will invest your funds based on Modern Portfolio Theory (MPT). Your investments will be diversified, low cost and recognize the value of long term passive investing by investing in ETF index funds. Plus, when you sign up now, you’ll get a $20 Signup Bonus!

Open Your Axos Invest Investing Account And Get A $20 Bonus

The Digit + Axos Invest Experiment (D+AI Experiment)

So for my Digit + Axos Invest Experiment, the goal was not only to take these two free products for a spin, but also to show just how easy (and low cost) it can be to invest.  There really should be no excuse to not get started.

When I started in early February my goal was to allow Digit to automatically pull money from my checking account and put it into my Digit savings. Whenever the amount in my Digit savings reached $75 I would transfer that money over to my Axos Invest account and invest it in their highly diversified set of ETF index funds.

Why was I doing it this way? I did it this way because Axos Invest has no minimums and you can buy fractional shares, so why not? I can transfer money in small chunks, and engage in a bit of dollar-cost averaging while I’m at it.

So how are things going now that we’re in the 4th quarter?

The Experiment In Progress

After setting up my Digit and Axos Invest accounts I put the plan in action and allowed my Digit account to start saving on my behalf.

Digit started saving small amounts in my account when I first began. $5 here, $15 there. Over time multiple transfers and deposits ended up adding up to larger amounts in my Digit account. My first transfer to my investment account was about $186.

From then on every time the amount reached around $75-$100 or more, I transferred the money to Axos Invest.

Amounts Withdrawn And Invested So Far

I’m now around 8 months into my little experiment, and I’ve withdrawn my Digit savings balance and invested it in my Axos Invest Roth IRA 20 times.

Here are the amounts that I have withdrawn and invested, with the most recent investment first:

  • $445.41
  • $173.84
  • $419.66
  • $112.68
  • $155.20
  • $142.02
  • $74.36
  • $79.76
  • $121.75
  • $82.03
  • $95.67
  • $81.27*
  • $93.28
  • $109.47
  • $76.20
  • $99.08
  • $99.32
  • $90.88
  • $74.72
  • $186.00

A total of $2812.60 has been invested in my Roth IRA over these months.

Here’s a screenshot from my Digit account showing my latest $445.41 withdrawal for the purpose of investing.

digit-savings

After withdrawing the money I then transfer it from my checking account over to Axos Invest. Here’s a screenshot from my latest deposit with Axos Invest. The screenshot shows how deposits can be used to purchase fractional shares of the ETF index funds used in the account.

WiseBanyan-invest

Now that the latest deposit of $445.41 has gone through, I have $2,750.06 invested at Axos Invest, slightly less than the amount deposited since the investments (and the markets) have gone down almost 2.5% since I started.

WiseBanyan-invest-total

Here’s my portfolio’s asset allocation in my Axos Invest account. It is a bit more aggressive than in my other retirement accounts.

wisebanyan-allocation

The funds that Axos Invest currently uses, and their expenses, are shown below (but are subject to change)

  • Vanguard Total Stock Market ETF (VTI): 0.05%
  • Vanguard FTSE Developed Markets ETF (VEA): 0.09%
  • Vanguard FTSE Emerging Markets ETF (VWO): 0.15%
  • Vanguard Intmdte Tm Govt Bd ETF (VGIT): 0.12%
  • Vanguard Short-Term Government Bond Index ETF (VGSH): 0.12%
  • iShares Investment Grade Corporate Bond ETF (LQD): 0.15%
  • State Street Global Advisors Barclays Short Term High Yield Bond Index ETF (SJNK): 0.40%
  • iShares Barclays TIPS Bond Fund (ETF) (TIP): 0.20%
  • Vanguard REIT Index Fund (VNQ): 0.10%

We’ll see what kind of returns my account sees over the coming months/years, but I’m sure it will be close to what the market does. Since I’m not paying any account management fees to invest, I’ll be coming out ahead as compared to some other automated investment advisers.

A Recap Of My Progress So Far

So how is the experiment going 3/4 of the way through the year? In my book it’s been a rousing success. I’ve saved $2812.60 over the 8 month period. If we divide that over 8 months, it means an average saved of about $351.58/month.

Multiply the $351.58 by 12 months and it means that if I continue this experiment for an entire year, I could expect to see somewhere in the neighborhood of $4218 saved for the year.

If you look at that $4218 amount, it’s about three quarters of the annual $5500 contribution limit for a Roth IRA. So essentially, 3/4 of my year’s Roth IRA contributions are happening without me having to actually think about it.

The money is slowly coming out of my accounts – usually in amounts that don’t even really register. The savings amounts tend to be in the $10-50 range, although a few have been $100+.  It’s amazing how fast those small amounts really add up!

The Power Of Investing Over Time

30-year-return

Let’s say you were in your 20s and you were to do something similar to what I’m doing with this experiment. You could end up with a pretty nice start to your nest egg over time.

Just setup automated savings and investments, and in my case that $4218 contribution for the year when extrapolated out over 30 years at an average 8% interest, will end up as just over $516,000 over 30 years.

To me that’s the power of long term investing. You can take small savings and investment amounts like this, and make it grow. In the end those small amounts end up adding up to a large lump sum in retirement. That’s pretty powerful.  Why not get started now?

Join In The Digit & Axos Invest Experiment

I’ll be maxing out the Roth IRA this year when taking into account my small regular auto-investments with Betterment in addition to the Roth IRA from this experiment.  Not too shabby for setting things on auto-pilot, and not even noticing the saving is happening!

Interested in joining the “Digit and Axos Invest Experiment”? I invite you to join in!

Open your accounts here:

After your accounts are open, sit back and wait for the savings to pile up – then invest!  Piece of cake! Give it a shot and let us know how it goes!

Related Posts

Source: biblemoneymatters.com

Posted in: Investing, Money Basics, Retirement Tagged: 2, About, Account management, action, advisor, AI, asset, asset allocation, Auto, average, balance, barclays, basic, betterment, bible, big, bond, bonus, book, Buy, Checking Account, company, contributions, cost, deposit, Deposits, Digit, dollar-cost averaging, driving, efficient, expense, expenses, Fees, Financial Advisor, Financial Goals, Financial Wize, FinancialWize, fractional, Free, fund, funds, get started, goal, goals, government, great, Grow, high yield, in, Income, index, index fund, index funds, interest, Invest, Investing, investment, investments, IRA, IRA contributions, low, Make, market, markets, modern, modern portfolio theory, money, Money Matters, More, mpt, multiply, new, Online Savings Account, or, Other, Other Retirement Accounts, overdraft, overdraft fees, passive, passive investing, patterns, pilot, plan, portfolio, portfolios, premium, pretty, products, Purchase, Recap, reit, retirement, retirement account, retirement accounts, returns, roth, Roth IRA, save, Save Money, Saving, savings, Savings Account, second, Series, shares, short, short term, signup bonus, Sites, Start Saving, states, stock, stock market, tax, taxable, The Neighborhood, time, tips, tools, transfer money, update, value, Vanguard, wealthfront, will, withdrawal, work, work out

Apache is functioning normally

May 27, 2023 by Brett Tams

Savings may be essential for financial health, but building a savings account is easier said than done. Between regular expenses and well…life in general, it’s often hard to figure out what you can actually afford to save, let alone prioritize planning for the future. 

Fortunately, the best money-saving apps on the market today promote saving techniques that work around your regular spending habits – sometimes so smoothly you save money without even noticing.

What’s Ahead:

Overview of the best money-saving apps

App Fees Investing included Account minimum Savings account APY Checking/spending account
Acorns $1-$5/month Yes $0 ($5 for round-ups) N/A Yes
Digit $5/month Yes $0 N/A No
Stash $3-$9/month Yes $0 ($1 for certain investment accounts) N/A Yes
Chime N/A No $0 2.00% Yes
Twine 0.6%/year for investment accounts Yes $5 for investment accounts 1.05% No
Qapital $3/$12-month Yes $10 for investment accounts 0.1% Yes

Best for first time investing – Acorns

  • Best Money Saving Apps - AcornsCost – $3 or $5/month.
  • Options – Saving, investing, and checking accounts, retirement accounts, children’s UTMA/UGMA accounts, cash back extension.
  • Savings techniques – Round-ups, automatic paycheck deposits, cash back shopping extension.

Acorns gets its name from the idea that small “acorns” of spare change can grow into big savings if you give them a little time. As a combo savings/investing app, Acorns makes things simple for the brand new investor and doesn’t require much money to get started. 

The $3/month “Personal” plan gets you an Independent Retirement Account (IRA) and an “Acorns Spend” checking account. For $5/month, you can tack on investment accounts for children as well. 

If savings are your main goal, the basic account will probably be enough to get you rolling. When you link a credit or debit card to your investment account, Acorns “rounds up” your purchases to the nearest dollar and invests the difference for you once it hits $5 or higher – a popular auto-savings technique. You can add a “multiplier” feature if you want Acorns to double or triple the amount of investment with every transaction. 

Learn more about Acorns or read our full review.

Best for flexible savings – Digit

  • Best Money Saving Apps - DigitCost – $5/month (first 30 days are free).
  • Options – Savings, investment, and retirement accounts.
  • Savings techniques – Automatic fund transfers, credit card debt reduction.

For $5/month, Digit’s algorithms analyze your spending patterns and cash flow, then make a savings plan tailored to you. When you can spare a little extra, Digit transfers some cash to a linked savings account. When you have just enough to pay the bills, Digit skips the transfer. 

This method can work well for people with fluctuating incomes or anyone who has trouble deciding in advance how much to save. If Digit does overdraft your account (which they promise not to), they’ll reimburse fees for up to two overdrafts. 

Like most money apps, Digit lets you pick your own savings goals, and if you’re paying down credit card debt, Digit can automatically send the amount you’ve saved to the credit card company on your behalf.

Learn more about Digit or read our full review.

Best for lots of investment options – Stash

  • Cost – $3 or $9/month.
  • Options – Savings, investment, and retirement accounts, checking accounts, individual stocks and fractional shares, life insurance.
  • Savings techniques – Round-ups, stock-back, automatic saving.

For people who want to watch their savings grow, Stash offers over 150 ETFs, stocks, and other micro-investment vehicles. You have more control over your portfolio picks with Stash than you do with Acorns – you can design your own portfolio or pick a pre-selected one from Stash. You can even pick ETFs that align with your values. 

Savings options are flexible, too: you can choose an amount to put in savings each month, invest your spare change with the “round-up” method, or let Stash’s “Smart Stash” feature figure out what you can afford to save based on your cash flow.  

Stash comes with a debit card, something a lot of savings apps offer, and its own unique “stock-back” incentive. Whenever you use the Stash bank card to buy something at a publicly-traded company, Stash gives you a small fractional share of company stock to add to your portfolio. 

The app’s cost depends on how many extra features you want. Most everyday savers will be fine with the $3/month Growth plan, which includes a debit card, an investment account, and stock-back perks. You can also add a tax-advantaged retirement plan (a good idea if you haven’t opened a retirement account yet). Serious investors can upgrade to the $9/month “Stash+” for 2x stock-back returns and extra market info.

Learn more about Stash or read our full review.

Disclaimer – Paid non-client endorsement. See Apple App Store and Google Play reviews. View important disclosures.

Investment advisory services offered by Stash Investments LLC, an SEC registered investment adviser. This material has been distributed for informational and educational purposes only, and is not intended as investment, legal, accounting, or tax advice. Investing involves risk.

¹For securities priced over $1,000, purchase of fractional shares start at $0.05.

²Debit Account Services provided by Green Dot Bank, Member FDIC and Stash Visa Debit Card issued by Green Dot Bank, Member FDIC. pursuant to a license from VISA U.S.A. Inc. Investment products and services provided by Stash Investments LLC, not Green Dot Bank, and are Not FDIC Insured, Not Bank Guaranteed, and May Lose Value.” because the article mentions the debit card.

³You’ll also bear the standard fees and expenses reflected in the pricing of the ETFs in your account, plus fees for various ancillary services charged by Stash and the custodian.

⁴Other fees apply to the debit account. Please see Deposit Account Agreement for details.

⁵Stock-Back® is not sponsored or endorsed by Green Dot Bank, Green Dot Corporation, Visa U.S.A, or any of their respective affiliates, and none of the foregoing has any responsibility to fulfill any stock rewards earned through this program.

Best for low fees – Chime®

  • Best Money Saving Apps - ChimeCost – No monthly fees.
  • Options – Savings and checking accounts.
  • Savings techniques – Round-ups, automatic transfers to savings, paycheck transfers. 

Chime is a mobile app that takes advantage of the lower-cost online-only financial app model to pass savings on to customers. They don’t charge a monthly fee, so you keep any money you save.2  

Chime’s free checking and savings accounts offer plenty of the features you’ll find at a bank*, like:

  • A Chime Visa® Debit Card.
  • Check deposit options.4
  • Bill-paying functions.
  • Two-day advance on directly deposited paychecks.3

Checking and savings are linked; whenever you make a purchase with your checking account, Chime rounds up to the nearest dollar and adds the difference to savings.^ Or you can have Chime auto-deposit 10% of every paycheck into savings before the rest hits checking.1 Either way, the app does all the work.

Learn more about Chime or read our full review.

* Chime is a financial technology company, not a bank. Banking services and debit card provided by The Bancorp Bank, N.A. or Stride Bank, N.A.; Members FDIC.
^ Round Ups automatically round up debit card purchases to the nearest dollar and transfer the round up from your Chime Checking Account to your savings account.
1 Save When I Get Paid automatically transfers 10% of your direct deposits of $500 or more from your Checking Account into your savings account.
2 There’s no fee for the Chime Savings Account. Cash withdrawal and Third-party fees may apply to Chime Checking Accounts. You must have a Chime Checking Account to open a Chime Savings Account.
3 Early access to direct deposit funds depends on the timing of the submission of the payment file from the payer. We generally make these funds available on the day the payment file is received, which may be up to 2 days earlier than the scheduled payment date.
4 Mobile Check Deposit eligibility is determined by Chime in its sole discretion and may be granted based on various factors including, but not limited to, a member’s direct deposit enrollment status.

Best for joint savings – Twine

  • Best Money Saving Apps - TwineCost – No fees for saving, 0.6% of invested assets/month for investing.
  • Options – Interest-bearing savings account, investment accounts, joint accounts.
  • Savings techniques – Automatic fund transfers.

Twine is ideal for people who are saving for a goal together (though you can use it on your own, too!). It combines savings-app automation with robo-advisor guidance, which can be helpful if you have more than one savings goal. 

The basic free Twine savings account earns you a little interest – there’s a 1.05% variable Annual Percentage Yield (APY). They encourage you to earmark accounts for certain financial goals, either “general savings” or specific goals like a vacation or a down payment on a house, and pick a monthly goal deposit amount so you can track your progress. If you’re saving with someone else, you’ll pick a joint goal but open individual accounts. 

Investment portfolios are optional if you want to take your savings to the next level. Twine pre-selects diverse portfolios for you, and they only require $5 to get started. 

Learn more about Twine or read our full review.

Best for creative saving techniques – Qapital

  • Best Money Saving Apps - QapitalCost – $3, $6, or $12/month.
  • Options – Interest-bearing spending account, “goals” savings account, investment accounts.
  • Savings techniques – Round-ups, automatic fund transfers, “triggering activities” savings, “guilty pleasure” savings, 52-week savings, “spend less” savings, payday savings.

Qapital runs on behavioral economics – their multiple savings strategies use your routines, habits, and everyday purchases to help bulk up your savings. 

Here’s how it works: you get a spending account that earns you 0.1% in compounded monthly interest, and a “goals” account to grow your savings. To fund your goals, you can transfer regular, set amounts from a linked bank account to your goals account, or pick one of Qapital’s “rules” or savings tricks. 

There’s the “round-up” rule, which lots of apps use. There’s the “trigger” rule which saves a specific amount every time you engage in a certain activity (something simple you do regularly, whether it involves spending money or not). 

The “guilty pleasure” rule moves a little cash into savings whenever you indulge in your favorite pricey latte, takeout, etc. The “52-week” rule lets you gradually increase the amount you stash in savings over a year. Qapital has other rules, too, and you’ll probably find one that works for you.

Their pricing is higher than most money-saving apps – a $3/month basic plan has all the savings tools, while the $6/month plan unlocks pre-selected investment portfolios and gives you a Qapital debit card. The $12/month master plan lets you open joint savings with a partner, similar to Twine.

Learn more about Qapital or read our full review.

Why should you use money-saving apps?

You’re just starting to build savings

The idea of building a savings account might be intimidating, but it’s much simpler to stash away 50 cents whenever you buy a cup of coffee or a dollar whenever you refill your gas tank. That’s mostly what these apps do – take the work out of savings one small amount at a time, so your regular budget isn’t disrupted. 

Read more: The Pros And Cons of ‘Spare Change’ Investment Apps

You struggle to make savings a habit

If your money management style is on the “spend now, save later” side, it may be unrealistic to overhaul your habits right away and heap everything into savings. That’s not how habits work; they take time to develop.

A free 30-day trial of Digit or Qapital, for instance, could be enough to show you how much the app can grow your savings in a typical month; and after 30 days, you’ll be more used to putting a little cash aside. 

You’re curious about small-scale investing

Investing can be a great way to save, but it’s inherently risky, and you don’t want to launch yourself right into an investment account without knowing what you’re doing.

These apps make micro-investing as easy as sticking to an automated savings plan and assessing your risk comfort level. And they let you start with small balances, so you don’t have much to lose.

Read more: 7 Easy Ways To Start Investing With Little Money

Why shouldn’t you use money-saving apps?

You have a savings pattern that works for you

If you’re already saving money on a timeline that fits with your goals and income, a savings app could help you skim a little more off the top of everyday purchases, but it might not be worth the fees. 

You already have substantial savings

The savings accounts built into money-saving apps are great tools to get started, but they’re not the highest-yield accounts out there. You’ll earn more money keeping your savings in a bank or investment account that offers a higher APY (Annual Percentage Yield), especially if you have decent credit. 

Most important features of money-saving apps

Automated saving

Money-saving apps take the “how much can I afford” guesswork out of savings by putting them on autopilot. You won’t see a huge interruption to your regular cash flow, which is nice – saving money doesn’t have to feel like a penalty or a punishment.

And most apps make the automation flexible; if you’re having a lean month or two, you can temporarily stop withdrawals (or, as with Digit, the app stops them for you). 

Most importantly, you’ll get into the savings habit after a while.

Saving for short- and long-term goals

Sometimes it’s easier to save if you have something to look forward to. Money-saving apps keep you motivated by letting you choose your goals and showing you how much your savings have progressed. 

“Rounding up” purchases

This auto-savings technique is available on almost every app now. By rounding up your purchases to the nearest dollar (or two dollars, or three – some apps let you multiply) you’re saving small, manageable, regular amounts while you spend.

Checking accounts

Several apps set you up with a checking account and debit card, though you can usually link an existing checking account as well. 

Everyday money management

For elaborate budgeting templates, look for a budgeting app specifically (you can find our recommendations here). But savings apps have plenty of tools to keep your finances in line, especially if you tend to be disorganized and overdraft your accounts by accident. You can observe your spending patterns, set up payment reminders for bills, and get regular balance alerts all through the app. 

Investing options

While investment accounts aren’t available with every savings app, they seem to be becoming more of a standard offering. “Micro-investing” lets you start out with spare change. Once you really get the hang of it, you may choose to switch to a higher-yield investment account elsewhere.

Summary

Money-saving apps are a great starting point, but they’re only one aspect of a solid financial management plan.

Think of them as a helpful tool to analyze your spending behavior and nudge you into the next steps, whether that means breaking down a monthly budget or working towards financial freedom. 

Read more:

Source: moneyunder30.com

Posted in: Personal Finance, Saving And Spending Tagged: 2, About, Acorns, Activities, advice, advisor, All, app, apple, Apps, assets, Auto, automation, balance, Bank, bank account, Banking, basic, before, Behavior, best, big, bills, Budget, Budgeting, build, building, Built, Buy, cash back, cents, Checking Account, Checking Accounts, Children, Chime, coffee, company, cons, cost, Credit, credit card, credit card company, Credit Card Debt, Debit Card, Debt, deposit, Deposits, design, Digit, Direct Deposit, double, down payment, down payment on a house, Economics, ETFs, existing, expenses, FDIC, FDIC insured, Features, Fees, fees and expenses, finances, Financial Freedom, Financial Goals, financial health, financial management, Financial Wize, FinancialWize, fractional, Free, free checking, freedom, fund, funds, future, gas, General, get started, Getting Started, goal, goals, good, Google, great, green, Grow, growth, habit, habits, health, helpful, house, in, Income, Insurance, interest, Invest, Investing, investment, investment apps, investments, Investor, investors, IRA, launch, Learn, Legal, Life, life insurance, LLC, low, LOWER, Main, Make, market, member, mobile, Mobile App, Mobile Check Deposit, model, money, money apps, Money Management, monthly budget, More, more money, multiply, new, no fee, offer, offers, or, Other, overdraft, party, patterns, paycheck, Personal, personal finance, plan, Planning, play, Popular, portfolio, portfolios, products, pros, Pros and Cons, Purchase, retirement, retirement account, retirement accounts, retirement plan, returns, Review, Reviews, rewards, right, risk, robo-advisor, save, Save Money, Saving, saving money, savings, Savings Account, Savings Accounts, savings apps, savings goal, Savings Goals, savings plan, Savings Strategies, SEC, securities, shares, shopping, short, Side, simple, smart, Spending, spending habits, stock, stocks, Strategies, Style, takeout, tax, tax-advantaged, Technology, time, timeline, timing, tools, Transaction, tricks, u.s., under, unique, upgrade, vacation, value, variable, vehicles, visa, will, withdrawal, work, work out, working

Apache is functioning normally

May 26, 2023 by Brett Tams
Only about half of Americans invest in the stock market. Many others want to learn how to invest but think it's complicated or scary. It doesn't have to be.

When I told readers that January would be “back to basics” month at Get Rich Slowly, the number-one request I received was to write about how to invest.

Rather than scatter investing info throughout the month, I decided to collect the essentials into one mammoth article. Here it is: all you need to know about how to invest — even if you’re a beginner.

In writing this article, I tried not to bog it down with jargon and definitions. (I’m sure I let some of that slip through the cracks, though. I apologize.) Nor did I dive deep. Instead, I aimed to share the basic info you need to get started with investing.

What follows are eight simple rules for how to invest. And in the end, I’ll show you how to put these rules into practice. First, let’s dispel some popular misconceptions.

Investing isn’t Gambling — and It isn’t Magic either

Investing scares many people. The subject seems complicated and mysterious, almost magical. Or maybe it seems like gambling. When the average person meets with his financial adviser, it’s often easiest to sit still, smile, and nod.

One of the problems is that the investing world is filled with jargon. What are commodities? What’s alpha? An expense ratio? How do bonds differ from stocks? And sometimes, familiar terms – such as risk – mean something altogether different on Wall Street than they do on Main Street.

Plus, we’re bombarded by conflicting opinions. Everywhere you look, there’s a financial expert who’s convinced she’s right. There’s a never-ending flood of opinions about how to invest, and many of them are contradictory. One guru says to buy real estate, another says to buy gold. Your cousin got rich with Bitcoin. One pundit argues that the stock market is headed for record highs, while her partner says we’re due for a “correction”. Who should you believe?

Perhaps the biggest problem is complexity – or perceived complexity. To survive and seem useful, the financial services industry has created an aura of mystery around investing, and then offered itself as a light in the darkness. (How convenient!) As amateurs, it’s easy to buy into the idea that we need somebody to lead us through the jungle of finance.

Here’s the truth: Investing doesn’t have to be difficult. Investing is not gambling, and it’s not magic.

Playing Poker

You are perfectly capable of learning how to invest. In fact, it’s likely that — even if you know nothing right now — you can earn better investment returns than 80% of the population without any scammy tricks or expensive tips sheets.

Today, I want to convince you that if you keep things simple, you can do your own investing and receive above-average returns – all with a minimum of work and worry. Sound good? Great! Let’s learn how to invest.

Table of Contents

  1. Investing rule #1: Get started
  2. Investing rule #2: Think long-term
  3. Investing rule #3: Spread the risk
  4. Investing rule #4: Keep costs low
  5. Investing rule #5: Keep it simple
  6. Investing rule #6: Make it automatic
  7. Investing rule #7: Ignore the noise
  8. Investing rule #8: Conduct an annual review

Investing Rule #1: Get Started

The first thing you need to know about investing is that you should start today. It doesn’t matter how much money you have. What matters is getting started — then making it a habit. There are many investment apps out there that make investing easier than ever.

“The amount of [money] you start with is not nearly as important as getting started early,” writes Burton Malkiel in The Random Walk Guide to Investing, which is an excellent beginner’s book on how to invest. “Procrastination is the natural assassin of opportunity. Every year you put off investing makes your ultimate retirement goals more difficult to achieve.”

The secret to getting rich slowly, he says, is the extraordinary power of compound interest. Given enough time, even modest stock market gains can generate real wealth.

As you’ll recall from your junior high math class, compounding is the snowball-like growth that occurs as the interest (or other return) from an investment generates more interest. Let’s look at some examples.

  • If you make a one-time contribution of $5000 to a retirement account and receive an 8% annual return, you’ll earn $400 during the first year, giving you a total of $5400.
  • During the second year, you’ll receive 8% not only on the initial $5000, but also on the $400 in investment returns from the first year, for total earnings of $432.
  • In the third year, you’ll earn returns of $466.56. And so on.

After ten years of receiving an 8% annual return, your initial $5000 will have more than doubled to $10,794.62!

Compounding is powerful, but it needs time to work its magic. The longer you wait to begin investing, the less time your money has to grow.

Assume you a one-time $5000 contribution to your retirement account at age twenty. And assume that your account somehow manages to earn an 8% annual return every year. If you never touch the money, your $5000 will grow to $159,602.25 by the time you’re 65 years old. But if you wait until you’re forty to make that single investment, your $5000 would only grow to $34,242.38.

The power of compounding can be accentuated through regular investments. It’s great that a single $5000 investment can grow to nearly $160,000 in 45 years, but it’s even more exciting to see what happens when you make saving a habit. If you were to invest $5000 annually for 45 years, and if you left the money to earn an 8% annual return, your savings would total over $1.93 million. A golden nest egg indeed! You’d have more than eight times the amount you contributed.

This is the power of compounding.

It’s human nature to procrastinate. A lot of people put off investing for retirement (and other goals) because they get distracted by the demands of daily life. (Studies show that only about half of Americans have money in the stock market.) “I can start saving next year,” they tell themselves. But the costs of delaying are enormous. Even one year makes a difference.

The following chart illustrates the cost of procrastination.

If, starting when you’re twenty, you invest $5000 per year and receive an 8% return, your account would have $1,932,528.09 when you’re 65 years old. But if you wait even five years, you’d have to increase your annual contributions to nearly $7500 to have that same amount by age 65. And if you were to wait until you were forty to begin investing, you’d have to contribute over $25,000 per year to hit the same target!

The Cost of Procrastination

When investing, time is your friend. Start as soon as you can. Tomorrow is good. Today is better. (You can’t invest yesterday, so now will have to do.)

True story: For a brilliant example of compounding in real life, turn to American statesman Benjamin Franklin. When he died in 1790, Franklin left the equivalent of $4400 to each of two cities, Boston and Philadelphia. But his gift came with strings attached. The money had to be loaned out to young married couples at five percent interest. What’s more, the cities couldn’t access the funds until 1890 – and they couldn’t have full access until 1990. Two hundred years later, Franklin’s $8800 bequest had grown to more than $6.5 million between the two cities! True story.

Investing Rule #2: Think Long-Term

A lot of people have the mistaken idea that investing requires following daily stock market movement, then buying and selling stocks frequently. That’s how it’s done in the movies, but you know what? People who invest like that actually tend to make less than the people who do nothing. I’m not making this up.

Smart investing is a waiting game.

It takes time – think decades, not years – for compounding to do its thing. But there’s another reason to take the long view.

In the short term, investment returns fluctuate. The price of a stock might be $90 per share one day and $85 per share the next. And a week later, the price could soar to $120 per share. Bond prices fluctuate too, albeit more slowly. And yes, even the returns you earn on your savings account change with time. (High-interest savings accounts yielded five percent annually in the U.S. just a few years ago; today, the best savings accounts yield about 1.5%.)

Short-term returns aren’t an accurate indicator of long-term performance. What a stock or fund did last year doesn’t tell you much about what it’ll do during the next decade.

In Stocks for the Long Run, Jeremy Siegel analyzed the historical performance of several types of investments. Siegel’s research showed that, for the period between 1926 and 2006 (when he wrote the book):

  • Stocks produced an average real return (or after-inflation return) of 6.8% per year.
  • Long-term government bonds produced an average real return of 2.4%.
  • Gold produced an average real return of 1.2%.

My own calculations – and those of Consumer Reports magazine – show that real estate returns even less than gold over the long term.

Although stocks tend to provide handsome returns over the long term, they come with a lot of risk in the short term. From day to day, the price of any given stock can rise or fall sharply. Some days, the price of many stocks will rise or fall sharply at the same time, causing wild movement in entire stock-market indexes.

Even over one-year time spans, the stock market is volatile. While the average stock-market return over the past 80 years was about 10% (about 7% after inflation), the actual return in any given year can be much higher or lower. In 2008, U.S. stocks dropped 37%; in 2013, they jumped over 32%.

Here’s a table showing the rise and fall of the S&P 500 index over a fifteen-year timespan. Looks like a roller coast, right?

[S&P 500 Annual Returns]

During any one-year period, stocks will outperform bonds only 60% of the time. But over ten-year periods, that number jumps to 80%. And over thirty years, stocks almost always win.

Despite the stock market’s ongoing wins, the average person almost always underperforms the market as a whole. Even investment professionals tend to underperform the market.

During the 20-year period ending in 2012, the S&P 500 returned an average 8.21%. The average investor in stock-market mutual funds only earned 4.25%. Why? Because they tended to panic and sell when prices dropped, and then bought back in as prices rose – just the opposite of the “buy low, sell high” advice we’ve all heard.

Investing is a game of years, not months.

Don’t let wild market movements make you nervous. And don’t let them make you irrationally exuberant either. What your investments did this year is far less important than what they’ll do over the next decade (or two, or three). Don’t let one year panic you, and don’t chase after the latest hot investments. Stick to your long-term plan.

Investing Rule #3: Spread the Risk

While the stock market as a whole returns a long-term average of ten percent per year, individual stocks experience drastically different fortunes. In 2013, the S&P 500 index grew 29.60%. But some of the 500 companies that made up the index did much better than others. Stock in Netflix (NFLX) soared 297.06%. Best Buy (BBY) was up 237.64% and Delta Airlines up 130.33%. Meanwhile, Newmont Mining (NEM) dropped 51.16% and Teradata (TDC) fell 27.18%.

To smooth the market’s wild ups and downs, smart investors spread their money around. Surprisingly, studies show that while diversification reduces risk, it doesn’t affect average performance much — if at all. (For more info, check out this guide to diversification from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.)

Buying individual stocks isn’t really investing — it’s gambling. I know this from experience. In the past, I thought I could outsmart the market. In 2000, enamored by the PalmPilot, I bought shares of the company that made the devices. I paid close to $90 per share. Just over a year later, the shares had lost 90% of their value. (I made similar mistakes with The Sharper Image and Countrywide Financial.)

By owning more than one stock, you reduce your risk. If you have ten stocks and one of them tanks, the damage isn’t as bad because you still own nine others. True, you don’t reap all of the rewards if a stock skyrockets like Netflix did in 2013, but the smoother ride is generally worth it.

Investors also reduce risk by owning more than one type of investment. As we’ve seen, over the long term stocks are better investments than bonds or gold or real estate. But over the short term, stocks only outperform bonds about two-thirds of the time. Because the prices of stocks and bonds move independently of each other, investors can reduce risk by owning a mix of both.

One popular guideline is to base how much you put into bonds on your age. If you’re 35 years old, put 35% into bonds and 65% into stocks. If you’re 53, put 53% into bonds and 47% into stocks. This is a fine starting point for the average investor.

One of the best ways to spread risk when investing is through the use of mutual funds.

Mutual funds are collections of investments. They let people like you and me pool our money to buy small pieces of many companies all at once. Imagine, for instance, the hypothetical Awesome Fund, which invests in fifty different stocks and ten different corporate bonds. By buying one share of the Awesome Fund, You, Inc. would have a piece of sixty different investments. If one goes bust, the damage is minimized.

Mutual funds make diversification easy by letting you own shares in many companies at once. Plus, when you own a mutual fund, somebody else does the research and buys and sells the stocks so you don’t have to.

Because mutual funds offer great advantages to individual investors, they’ve soared in popularity over the past 30 years. But they’re not without drawbacks.

Investing Rule #4: Keep Costs Low

The biggest drawback to mutual funds is their cost. With stocks and bonds, you usually only pay when you buy and sell. But with mutual funds, there are ongoing costs built into the funds. (You don’t pay these costs directly; instead, they’re subtracted from the fund’s total return.) Some of these costs are obvious, but others aren’t.

All together, mutual-fund costs typically run about 2% annually. So for every $1,000 you invest in mutual funds, $20 gets taken out of your return each year. (On average.) This may not seem like much, but 2% is huge when it comes to investments.

In fact, according to a 2002 study by Financial Research Corporation, the best way to predict a mutual fund’s future performance was to compare its expense ratio with similar funds. Mutual funds with lower fees tend to have better performance. Again and again, other studies have found the same thing.

In his book Your Money & Your Brain, Jason Zweig notes:

“Decades of rigorous research have proven that the single most critical factor in the future performance of a mutual fund is that small, relatively static number: its fees and expenses. Hot performance comes and goes, but expenses never go away.”

There are a couple of reasons mutual funds are so expensive.

  • First, most funds are run by a team of people who research opportunities, buy and sell individual investments, and do other work necessary to maintain the fund. These “actively managed” funds subtract their operating costs from whatever money they earn (or lose) for their investors.
  • Many funds also carry a “load”, which is a one-time sales charge or commission. These loads are generally around five percent. Think about that. When you purchase a mutual fund with a load, you’re basically agreeing to handicap yourself by five percent before you even begin to run the investment race. That doesn’t sound like a smart investment to me!

Fortunately, there’s an alternative to these expensive actively managed funds. Some funds are “passively managed”.

Passively managed funds – also called index funds – try to mimic the performance of a specific benchmark, like the Dow Jones Industrial Average or S&P 500 stock-market indexes. Because these funds try to match (or index) a benchmark and not beat it, they don’t require much intervention from the fund manager and her staff, which means their costs are much lower.

The average actively managed mutual fund has a total of about 2% in costs, whereas a typical passive index fund’s costs average only about 0.25%. So, to come out ahead on a passively managed fund, the average fund manager doesn’t just have to beat his benchmark index — he has to beat it by 1.75%! And since both types of funds — active and passive — earn market-average returns before expenses, investors who own actively managed funds typically earn 1.75% less than those who own index funds!

Although this 1.75% difference in costs between actively and passively managed mutual funds may not seem like much, there’s a growing body of research that says it makes a huge difference in long-term investment results.

Further reading: If you’re a math nerd and want to see all the calculations and proof as to why index funds do better than actively-managed fund, check out this short (but dense) paper from Stanford professor William Sharpe: “The Arithmetic of Active Management”.

Investing Rule #5: Keep It Simple

Index funds offer another great advantage for individual investors like you and me.

Instead of owning maybe twenty or fifty stocks, an index fund owns the entire market. (Or, if it’s an index fund that tracks a specific portion of the market, they own that portion of the market.) For example, an index fund like Vanguard’s VFINX, which attempts to track the S&P 500 stock-market index, owns all of the stocks in S&P 500 and in the same proportions as they exist in the market.

The bottom line is this: The only investments you need to hold are index funds. They provide lower risk, lower costs, and lower taxes than stocks or actively managed mutual funds. Yet they provide the same returns as the market as a whole.

I’m not the only one who believes this. Over the past twenty years, many intelligent investors have come to this same conclusion. In fact, the greatest investor of all time — Warren Buffett — has publicly and repeatedly argued that 99% of people should be invested in index funds.

Still, there many different index funds from which to choose. Plus, how many should you own? As always, it pays to keep things simple.

One good way to get started is to use a lazy portfolio, a balanced collection of index funds designed to do well in most market conditions with a minimum of fiddling from you. Think of them as recipes: A basic bread recipe contains flour, water, yeast, and salt, but you can build on it to get as elaborate as you’d like.

This two-fund portfolio from financial columnist Scott Burns may be the simplest way to achieve balance. He calls it his “couch potato portfolio”. It’s evenly split between stocks and bonds:

  • 50% Vanguard 500 Index (VFINX)
  • 50% Vanguard Total Bond Market Index (VBMFX)

Burns has also created a “couch potato cookbook” that lists several different lazy portfolios and answers some common questions.

In his book How a Second Grader Beats Wall Street, Allan Roth (no relation to your humble author) explains how he taught his son how to invest. He used this lazy portfolio:

  • 40% Vanguard Total Bond Market Index (VBMFX)
  • 40% Vanguard Total Stock Market Index (VTSMX)
  • 20% Vanguard Total International Stock Index (VGTSX)

This is the medium-risk version of Roth’s second-grader portfolio. For higher risk, you’d put 10% into bonds, 60% into American. stocks, and 30% into international stocks. A lower-risk allocation would be 70% in bonds, 20% in American stocks, and 10% in foreign stocks.

Though I’m a passive investor, I don’t actually use a lazy portfolio. But if I were to use one, it’d follow three simple rules. First, I’d want the bond portion to equal my age. Second, I’d want 10% in real estate to spread risk a little more. And third, I’d want the stock portion to be two-thirds American stocks and one-third international stocks. Since I’m 48 years old, it’d look like this:

  • 48% Vanguard Total Bond Market Index (VBMFX)
  • 28% Vanguard Total Stock Market Index (VTSMX)
  • 14% Vanguard Total International Stock Index (VGSTX)
  • 10% Vanguard REIT Index (VGSIX)

This lazy portfolio changes with your age, which I like. It takes on more risk when you’re younger and then eases into bonds as you get older.

These are just a few suggestions. There are scores of index funds out there, and countless ways to build portfolios around them. In fact, there’s a subculture of investors who love lazy portfolios. You can read more about lazy portfolios at sites like Bogleheads and Marketwatch.

There’s no one right approach to index-fund investing. Yes, it’s simple, but you can spend a long time deciding which asset allocation is right for you. While it’s important to do the research and educate yourself, you probably shouldn’t spend too much time sweating over which choice is “best.” Just pick one and get started. You can always make changes later.

Investing Rule #6: Make It Automatic

After you’ve set up your investment account, it’s time to remove the human element from the equation. As always, you should do what it can to automate good behavior.

If you plan to do all your investing through your employer’s retirement plan, it’s easy to get started. Contact HR to have retirement contributions automatically taken out of your paycheck. You should at least contribute as much as your employer matches. But remember: The more you contribute, the sooner you’ll reach the goals in your personal action plan. Funnel as much profit as possible into investing for the future.

Many company plans don’t offer index funds. In that case, find funds that have low costs and are widely diversified. So-called lifecycle or “target-date” funds are often an okay backup option. If your employer-sponsored plan doesn’t offer a lot of choices, ask HR if it’s possible to get more. They might say “no,” but then again, they might expand the company’s menu of mutual funds. It never hurts to ask!

If you plan to invest on your own — whether instead of or in addition to investing through your company’s plan — contact the mutual fund companies directly instead of going through a broker. Three of the larger no-load mutual fund companies are:

If you’re just learning how to invest, you should probably pick one company and stick with it; that’ll make things easier because you’ll be able to track all your investments in one place. Vanguard is probably the most popular company for passive investors. Personally, I use Fidelity. T. Rowe Price is fine too.

For a more detailed discussion of how to automate your investing, pick up a copy of David Bach’s The Automatic Millionaire.

Investing Rule #7: Ignore the Noise

As you’re learning how to invest, one important skill to master is ignoring all of the noise. Ignore the news. Ignore your friends. Ignore everyone. Make a plan. Put that plan into action. Make it automatic. Then forget about it. Seriously, this is the secret to investing success.

People tend to pour money into stocks in the middle of bull markets — after the stocks have been rising for some time. Speculators pile on, afraid to miss out. Then they panic and bail out after the stock market has started to drop. By buying high and selling low, they lose a good chunk of change.

[USA Today Hyperbole]

It’s better to buck the trend. Follow the advice of Warren Buffett, the world’s greatest investor: “Be fearful when others are greedy, and be greedy when others are fearful.”

In his 1997 letter to Berkshire Hathaway shareholders Buffett — the company’s chairman and CEO — made a brilliant analogy: “If you plan to eat hamburgers throughout your life and are not a cattle producer, should you wish for higher or lower prices for beef?” You want lower prices, of course: If you’re going to eat lots of burgers over the next 30 years, you want to buy them cheap.

Buffett completes his analogy by asking, “If you expect to be a net saver during the next five years, should you hope for a higher or lower stock market during that period?”

Even though they’re decades away from retirement, most investors get excited when stock prices rise (and panic when they fall). Buffett points out that this is the equivalent of rejoicing because they’re paying more for hamburgers, which doesn’t make any sense: “Only those who will [sell] in the near future should be happy at seeing stocks rise.” He’s driving home the age-old wisdom to buy low and sell high.

Following this advice can be tough. For one thing, it goes against your gut. When stocks have fallen, the last thing you want to do is buy more. Besides, how do you know the market is near its peak or its bottom? The truth is you don’t. The best solution is to make regular, planned investments — no matter whether the market is high or low.

Meanwhile, ignore the financial news.

In Why Smart People Make Big Money Mistakes, Gary Belsky and Thomas Gilovich cite a Harvard study of investing habits. The results?

“Investors who received no news performed better than those who received a constant stream of information, good or bad. In fact, among investors who were trading [a volatile stock], those who remained in the dark earned more than twice as much money as those whose trades were influenced by the media.”

Though it may seem reckless to ignore financial news, it’s not: If you’re saving for retirement 20 or 30 years down the road, today’s financial news is mostly irrelevant. So make decisions based on your personal financial goals, not on whether the market jumped or dropped today.

Investing Rule #8: Conduct an Annual Review

During a given year, some of your investments will have higher returns than others. For example, if you started the year with 60% in stocks and 40% in bonds, you may find that you now have 66% in stocks and 34% in bonds. What’s more, your goals may have changed, or you might discover you can’t stomach as much risk as you thought you could (this happened to a lot of folks in 2008).

To compensate, rebalance your investments at the end of each year. This simply means you should shift money around so your assets are allocated the way you want them to be. Doing this is another way to take the emotion out of investing.

There are two ways to rebalance.

  • You can sell your winners and buy your losers. By selling the investments that have grown and buying those that lag behind, you’re buying low and selling high, just as you should. Be aware, though, that you might owe taxes if you go this route, so check out the tax implications before you sell any securities.
  • If you can afford it, contribute new money to your investment account, but only to buy the assets that need to catch up. By doing this, you don’t have to worry about taxes, but you’ll need some cash on hand.

Though many investment professionals swear by rebalancing, there’s some research that shows it’s not as important as people once thought. In The Little Book of Common Sense Investing, John Bogle writes, “Rebalancing is a personal choice, not a choice that statistics can validate. There’s nothing the matter with doing it…but also no reason to slavishly worry about small changes…” In other words: Rebalance if your asset allocation is way out of line but don’t worry about small changes — especially if you’d end up paying a lot of fees by rebalancing.

The Bottom Line

In this article, you’ve learned that the stock market provides excellent long-term returns, and that you can do better than 95% of individual investors by putting your money into index funds. But how do you put this knowledge to work? What’s the best way to take advantage of the things you’ve learned?

The answer is shockingly simple: To get started investing, set up automatic investments into a portfolio of index funds. Here’s how:

  • Put as much as you can into investment accounts – as soon as possible. Fund tax-advantaged accounts (such as retirement accounts) before taxable accounts.
  • Invest in a low-cost stock index fund, such as Vanguard’s Total Stock Market Index Fund (VTSMX) or Fidelity’s Spartan Total Market Index Fund (FSTMX).
  • If the stock market makes you nervous, or you want to spread the risk, put some of your money into a bond fund like Vanguard’s Total Bond Market Index Fund (VBMFX) or Fidelity’s Total Bond Market Index Fund (FTBFX).
  • If you want diversification with less work, invest in a low-cost combo fund like Vanguard’s STAR Fund (VGSTX) or Fidelity’s Four-in-One Index Fund (FFNOX).

After that, ignore the news no matter how exciting or scary things get. Once a year, go through your investments to be sure your investments still match your goals. Then continue to put as much as you can into the market—and let time take care of the rest.

That’s it. That’s how to invest so that you earn great returns without stress and worry. Seriously. Do this and you should outperform most other individual investors over the long term.

This strategy isn’t just great for investing novices. Even market professionals endorse it. In his 2013 letter to shareholders, for instance, Warren Buffett outlined what will happen to his vast wealth when he dies. Most of it will go to charity; some will go to his wife. How will his wife’s money be handled?

“My advice to the trustee couldn’t be more simple: Put 10% of the cash in short-term government bonds and 90% in a very low-cost S&P 500 index fund. (I suggest Vanguard’s.) I believe the trust’s long-term results from this policy will be superior to those attained by most investors…”

Are there other investment strategies that might provide similar returns? Sure. But these approaches also require greater education, sophistication, and attention on the part of the investor.

Unless you know for a certainty that you have this knowledge, sophistication, and attention, you’re better off sticking with index funds.

Footnote: How I Invest

Do I practice what I preach? You bet! All of my money is in index funds and individual bonds. Here are my top four holdings as of today:

[My Top Holdings]

That gives me an overall asset allocation that looks like this:

[My Asset Allocation]

I’m 48 years old and have 80% of my portfolio in stocks, 10% in bonds, and 10% in other investments. I do still own 1115 shares of now-worthless Sharper Image stock. I keep it to remind me of my past stupidity.

One of my personal goals over the next few years is to gain the knowledge and sophistication necessary to dabble in other forms of investing. (I believe I have the mindset already.) For now, I’m content heeding Warren Buffett’s advice. It’s served me well.

Source: getrichslowly.org

Posted in: Investing, Retirement, Taxes Tagged: 2, About, action, active, actual, advice, age, airlines, All, Apps, ask, asset, asset allocation, assets, author, Automate, average, balance, basic, basics, before, beginner, Behavior, bequest, best, best buy, big, bitcoin, bond, bonds, book, boston, Broker, buffett, build, Built, bull markets, Buy, Buying, buying and selling, CEO, charity, chase, choice, Choices, Cities, Collections, commission, commodities, companies, company, Compound, Compound Interest, compounding, contributions, corporate bonds, cost, couch, couple, couples, dark, data, decades, decisions, delta airlines, discover, diversification, driving, earnings, education, emotion, employer, Essentials, estate, expense, Expense Ratio, expenses, expensive, experience, Fall, Features, Fees, fees and expenses, fidelity, Finance, Financial Goals, Financial Services, Financial Wize, FinancialWize, flood, franklin, fund, funds, funnel, future, get started, Getting Started, gift, Giving, goals, gold, good, government, great, Grow, growth, guide, habit, habits, historical, hold, home, hot, how i invest, How To, how to invest, HR, in, index, index fund, index funds, industrial, industry, Inflation, interest, international, Invest, Investing, investment, investment apps, investment returns, investment strategies, investments, Investor, investors, lazy portfolio, Learn, learned, Life, lists, low, LOWER, Main, Make, making, market, markets, MarketWatch, married, math, Media, Millionaire, mindset, Misconceptions, Mistakes, money, Money Mistakes, More, most popular, Move, movies, mutual funds, natural, needs, netflix, new, News, offer, one day, one year, opportunity, or, Other, panic, passive, paycheck, percent, Personal, place, plan, plans, points, pool, Popular, portfolio, portfolios, price, Prices, Professionals, proof, Purchase, questions, race, random, reach, Real Estate, Real Life, real return, rebalance, rebalancing, Recipes, reit, Research, retirement, retirement account, retirement accounts, retirement goals, retirement plan, retirement savings, return, returns, Review, rewards, rich, right, rise, risk, roth, s&p, S&P 500, sales, save, saver, Saving, Saving for Retirement, savings, Savings Account, Savings Accounts, savings plan, second, securities, Sell, selling, shares, sheets, short, short term, simple, single, Sites, skill, smart, snowball, Start Saving, statistics, stock, stock market, stocks, story, Strategies, stress, target, tax, tax-advantaged, taxable, taxes, The Stock Market, time, tips, trading, trend, tricks, trust, trustee, value, Vanguard, wall, Wall Street, warren, wealth, will, work, young

Apache is functioning normally

May 26, 2023 by Brett Tams

In the past 5 years there have been a plethora of startups popping up that offer an easy way to invest for the smaller investor.

As I was doing some research to find my top 5 companies to invest with I found a company that will allow you to invest with as little as $5. That company is called Stash Invest.

Stash not only lets you invest with small amounts and buy fractional shares, but also gives you a variety of interesting portfolios and investments that you can purchase. In fact, Stash offers more choices than many investment companies.

Here’s a review of Stash Invest, and a look at how they can help you to jump start your retirement savings.

[embedded content]

Stash Invest Background

Stash Invest

Stash was founded by Brandon Krieg and Ed Robinson as a place for first time investors to invest in a diversified portfolio, without having to have a big bankroll.  After receiving all of the regulatory approvals, they launched the iOS app in October 2015. Here are the details from Wikipedia:

Stash was founded in February 2015 by Brandon Krieg and Ed Robinson. Krieg and Robinson had previously worked together at Macquarie Group, an investment banking firm. Stash was launched as an iOS app in October 2015, and was made available on Android in March 2016. Within a year of its launch, Stash had signed up 215,000 users. As of January of 2019 Stash has $530M+ in assets under management. Through January 2019, the app had approximately 3 million users.

So they’re pretty new to the scene having launched in October of 2015, but have quickly added almost 4 million users as of 2019.

Co-founder Brandon Krieg explains the idea behind the company on the company’s about page:

“My co-founder Ed and I left our jobs to start Stash because we believe everyone should have access to financial opportunity. After a combined 30+ years in the business, we saw that Wall Street can be fundamentally unfair to smaller investors as they work to accomplish their goals. Stash will change that. “

Stash should be a pretty attractive option for newer investors, so let’s see what they have to offer.

Stash Invest homepage

How Does Stash Work?

Stash is a micro-investing and banking app that is mainly utilized via a mobile phone app for iOS or Android. You can start investing with as little as $5.

Anyone can open an account, you just have to be 18 years old, and live in the United States.

Opening an account with Stash should only take a few minutes, and if you do it now they currently have a bonus offer.  You’ll get a $5 account bonus for signing up, which is enough to start investing.

Stash Invest Review - $5 Bonus

Sign Up For Stash Here – Get A $5 Bonus

To get started, you will need to answer a series of questions and provide your Social Security number, and then link an external bank account.

Based on your level of acceptable risk (conservative, moderate or aggressive) you’ll be given recommendations for portfolios.

Stash Investment Portfolios

Stash Invest Investment portfolios

Stash’s investments are mainly ETF index funds and they have 250+ETFs and stocks in pre-built investments that you can use to build your portfolio.

When you first open your account, the app will recommend a mix of diversified stocks that suits your level of risk.

In addition to their main 3 portfolios, there are an abundance of other investment options including funds focusing on large blue chip companies, small companies, environmentally friendly investments, technology, health care, banking, entertainment and more.

They talk about “investing in things you believe in”, and if that’s something you’re interested in doing, there are plenty of niche focused investments to partake in.

You can invest in just about anything your heart desires with Stash, just be cognizant of what the “risk level” is for each fund, and what the fund management fees are for the individual ETF funds you’re choosing as they can range from very low cost, to less so.

Stash Online Banking

Stash Online Banking

Stash has an optional online banking account and Visa debit card that you can sign up for with your account. 1.

Some of the features of the account include:

  • Early payday (Get paid up to 2 days early)
  • No overdraft fees.
  • No monthly maintenance fees.
  • No minimum balance fees.
  • Access to thousands of fee-free ATMs.
  • Stock-Back® Rewards for everyday spending.
  • Setup automatic transfers to keep the account funded.

This account is included in the regular monthly fee, and doesn’t have additional fees.

Stash Stock-Back® Rewards

Stash introduced a cool feature a while back that they call “Stash Stock-Back® Rewards” 2. It’s a rewards program of sorts that works in conjunction with your Stash debit card and your online banking. Instead of getting cash back, however, you’re getting fractional shares of stock where eligible.

Here’s how it works. Make a purchase with your Stash Visa at any of 11 million businesses nationwide, and you’ll get rewards for that purchase in the form of a fractional share of stock for that company (or for a diversified ETF index fund if that company isn’t available).

For example, if you buy something on Amazon with your Stash debit card, you’ll earn AMZN Stock-Back® as a reward.

As soon as you make a purchase using your Stash debit card, you should get a notification of the stock that you’ve earned. You’ll earn 0.125% Stock-Back® rewards on everyday purchases, and up to $5 Stock-Back® rewards at certain merchants. The stock will be added to your taxable brokerage account within your app. 3

Other Features of Stash

Here are some other important features and functionality of the app that are important to know about.

  • Stash Retire: Stash recently has moved into the retirement investing space and they now offer Traditional and Roth IRA accounts.4 Those accounts have a minimum of $15 to invest.
  • Smart-Save: Smart-Save functionality studies your spending and income patterns to figure out when you have cash to spare. Then it automatically saves small amounts of extra cash into your Stash account. There, it earns interest, or can be invested.
  • ASAP Direct Deposit: Get paid up to 2 days early.5
  • Automated investments: Set up a regular deposit and fund your account on an automated basis.
  • Fractional shares: You can buy fractional shares – buying a small fractional share of a single stock.
  • Educational materials: They have a decent array of educational materials available for newer investors in both the app, via email, and on their website.
  • Tools to forecast: The app has a tool to see the impact your saving and investing might have over time. It gives you insight into how your positive choices are impacting your future.
  • Security: Stash’s app uses 256-bit bank grade encryption to secure your personal information.  Information sent between the app and their servers use SSL encryption, and they don’t store you your bank long information.
  • SIPC Coverage: Your investments in your account are covered by Securities Investor Protection Corporation (SIPC) through the clearing agency used by Stash, Apex Clearing Corp. The limit of SIPC protection at any brokerage is $500,000, which includes a $250,000 limit for cash.

Stash Service Fees And Minimums

Where the rubber meets the road is just how much you’ll be paying to use Stash. What are the fees and minimums for using the service?

First of all, there is a $5 minimum in order to have an account, and you only need $5 to invest.6 So the service is accessible to just about everyone, especially if you get the $5 bonus mentioned above.

Low Monthly Fees

The service offers three monthly subscription plans. There is the Stash Beginner account for $1/month7 that includes a personal investment account, debit Visa card account access, Stock-Back® rewards program that helps you to earn stock for your normal spending, and free financial education.

Stash Invest pricing and account options

The $3/month7 Growth subscription will give you everything in the basic account, but also includes access to retirement accounts.

The $9/month7 plan gives you everything in the above plans but adds in the option of custodial accounts where you can start investing for 2 kids, a metal debit card that also gives you 2x earnings on Stock-Back® rewards, as well as monthly market insights reports.

While $1/month isn’t really that much, the one caveat is that if you have a low balance account and you’re paying $1/month for the service, that fee could be a relatively large percentage of your assets in comparison to some other services. It might be something to consider. Stash becomes more cost effective in my opinion once your account reaches a higher dollar value, and at that point it’s very comparable to other investment sites like Betterment, Wealthfront and others.

Automated Investing With A Low Barrier To Entry

If you’re a newer investor and you don’t have a lot of money to start investing, Stash might be worth your time to get your feet wet. They have a low initial deposit of $5, and from there you can use dollar cost averaging to build your portfolio bit by bit.  You can even start a Roth IRA or Traditional IRA and invest for retirement with Stash Growth.

Stash has a wide variety of investment options, and if you’re looking to hold a diversified portfolio, their basic mix portfolios can give you what you’re looking for.

While the fees aren’t the lowest, once the account grows to a reasonable level the fees are very comparable to other players in the space.

Try Stash for free with the currently available $5 account bonus!

Sign Up For Stash Invest Today!

1 Debit Account Services provided by and Stash Visa Debit Card issued by Green Dot Bank, Member FDIC, pursuant to a license from Visa U.S.A. Inc. Investment products and services provided by Stash Investments LLC, not Green Dot Bank, and are Not FDIC Insured, Not Bank Guaranteed, and May Lose Value. In order for a user to be eligible for a Stash debit account, they must also have opened a taxable brokerage account on Stash. Account opening of the debit account is subject to Green Dot Bank approval.

2 Stash Stock-Back® is not sponsored or endorsed by Green Dot Bank, Green Dot Corporation, Visa U.S.A., or any of their respective affiliates, and none of the foregoing has any responsibility to fulfill any stock rewards earned through this program.

3 You’ll also bear the standard fees and expenses reflected in the pricing of the ETFs in your account, plus fees for various ancillary services charged by Stash and the custodian.

4 Stash does not monitor whether a customer is eligible for a particular type of IRA, or a tax deduction, or if a reduced contribution limit applies to a customer. These are based on a customer’s individual circumstances. You should consult with a tax advisor.

5 Early access to your direct deposit depends on deposit verification and when Green Dot Bank gets notice from your employer, and may vary from pay period to pay period.

6 Other fees apply to the debit account. Please see Deposit Account Agreement for details.

7 You’ll also bear the standard fees and expenses reflected in the pricing of the ETFs in your account, plus fees for various ancillary services charged by Stash and the custodian.

Bible Money Matters is a paid Affiliate/partner of Stash. Investment advisory services offered by Stash Investments LLC, an SEC-registered investment adviser.

Stash

Stash

Rating

8.5/10

Pros

  • Low minimum deposit to start investing
  • Plenty of investment options
  • Beautiful app
  • Low fees on larger accounts
  • Educational content

Cons

  • Fees for smaller accounts

Stash Invest Review: A Flexible Way To Invest With As Little As $5

Related Posts

Source: biblemoneymatters.com

Posted in: Investing, Money Basics Tagged: 2, 2016, About, advisor, All, Amazon, android, app, assets, balance, Bank, bank account, Banking, basic, beginner, betterment, bible, big, blue, bonus, brokerage, brokerage account, build, Built, business, Buy, Buying, cash back, Choices, companies, company, cost, Debit Card, deposit, Direct Deposit, earnings, education, employer, Entertainment, environmentally friendly, ETFs, expenses, FDIC, FDIC insured, Features, Fees, fees and expenses, Financial Education, Financial Wize, FinancialWize, Forecast, fractional, Free, friendly, fund, funds, future, get started, goals, great, green, growth, health, Health care, hold, impact, in, Income, index, index fund, index funds, Insights, interest, Invest, Investing, investment, investments, Investor, investors, iOS, IRA, jobs, jump, kids, launch, Live, LLC, low, Main, maintenance, Make, market, Market Insights, member, mobile, Mobile App, money, Money Matters, More, new, offer, offers, Online Banking, Opening an Account, Opinion, opportunity, or, Other, overdraft, overdraft fees, patterns, Personal, personal information, place, plan, plans, portfolio, portfolios, pretty, products, protection, Purchase, questions, Regulatory, Research, retirement, retirement accounts, retirement savings, Review, reward, rewards, risk, roth, Roth IRA, save, Saving, savings, SEC, securities, securities investor protection corporation, security, Series, shares, single, SIPC, Sites, smart, social, social security, space, Spending, startups, states, stock, stocks, tax, tax deduction, taxable, taxable brokerage account, Technology, time, tools, traditional, traditional IRA, u.s., under, united, united states, value, visa, wall, Wall Street, wealthfront, will, work

Apache is functioning normally

May 26, 2023 by Brett Tams

Many consider the 2000s to be a “lost decade” for stock market investors. This view is not surprising since the 2000s marked the biggest loss for the S&P 500 of any decade, including the 1930s. However, it wasn’t what you invested, as much as how you invested that mattered the most in the 2000s. Some investors found success in the 2000s and those lessons can be applied to the 2010s.

What is the best investment for the 2010s?

We are often asked: What is the best investment for the 2010s? However, the question itself implies the wrong approach to how to best invest in the 2010s. The most effective approach to investing is not likely to be holding any single investment for the whole decade. Instead, a consistent approach to saving and tactically buying and selling a number of investments suited to different environments and conditions is more likely to result in investment opportunities for the decade as a whole.

Our outlook for the 2010s is for modest buy-and-hold returns and the likelihood of volatility as many factors influence the markets. However, to illustrate our point about successful investing let’s look at the 2000s when positive returns were even harder to come by. The 2000s offered tactical investors many opportunities to add value beyond the lackluster performance of the indexes; we expect the 2010s will also offer similar opportunities.

How much of a lost decade were the 2000s?

It depends on how consistently you saved and tactically you invested. As you can see in [Chart 1] with $120,000 invested in the S&P 500 at the beginning of the decade, it was only worth $109,082 (including dividends) 10 years later, for a loss of about $11,000. Looked at this way, the 2000s were certainly a lost decade — or, at the least, a decade of losses.

However, that wasn’t the only investor experience during the 2000s. It may seem that those investing money over the course of the 2000s probably wish that they hadn’t. In fact, for those that added to their investments over the course of the decade the experience was very different. For those that consistently invested $1,000 per month in the S&P 500 the decade produced a modest gain of over $8,000 instead of an $11,000 loss. The same $120,000 placed in the same investment provided very different results. While the gain isn’t big, it calls into question whether the 2000s were a lost decade. [Chart 2]

Source: LPL Financial, Bloomberg

  • This is a hypothetical example and is not representative of any specific situation. Your results may vary. The rates of returns used do not reflect the deduction of fees and charges inherent to investing.
  • The S&P 500 is an unmanaged index, which can not be invested into directly. Past performance is no guarantee of future results.

Source: LPL Financial, Bloomberg

  • This is a hypothetical example and is not representative of any specific situation. Your results may vary. The rates of returns used do not reflect the deduction of fees and charges inherent to investing.
  • The S&P 500 is an unmanaged index, which can not be invested into directly. Past performance is no guarantee of future results.

More importantly, those investors that used a tactical asset allocation approach (here represented by the performance for a decade of the LPL Financial SAM/Research Recommended Mutual Fund Models Growth with Income Diversified and Diversified Plus Portfolios) as they consistently invested $1,000 per month ended up with a gain of $41,000 over the decade. This is $52,000 better than the $11,000 loss represented in the first example on the same $120,000. No lost decade here!

It’s How You Do It

In summary, it isn’t what you invested in; it is how you invested that mattered over the 2000s. We believe this is the secret to investing success in the 2010s, as well. Even if the 2010s offer only a repeat performance of the “lost” 2000s, investors can find opportunities to invest and profit by consistently saving and tactically managing the investments in their portfolio. Rather than look back with regret at what may have been a lost decade, we encourage investors to look forward with newfound wisdom and invest for success in the 2010s.

Important Disclosures

  • This was prepared by LPL Financial. The opinions voiced in this material are for general information only and are not intended to provide specific advice or recommendations for any individual. To determine which investment(s) may be appropriate for you, consult your financial advisor prior to investing. All performance reference is historical and is no guarantee of future results. All indices are unmanaged and cannot be invested into directly.
  • Investing in international and emerging markets may entail additional risks such as currency fluctuation and political instability. Investing in small-cap stocks includes specific risks such as greater volatility and potentially less liquidity.
  • Stock investing involves risk including loss of principal Past performance is not a guarantee of future results.
  • Small-cap stocks may be subject to higher degree of risk than more established companies’ securities. The illiquidity of the small-cap market may adversely affect the value of these investments.
  • Bonds are subject to market and interest rate risk if sold prior to maturity. Bond values will decline as interest rate rise, are subject to availability, and change in price.

decade of investing

Source: goodfinancialcents.com

Posted in: Money Basics Tagged: 2, 2010s, About, advice, advisor, All, asset, asset allocation, best, big, bond, bonds, Buy, Buying, buying and selling, cents, companies, currency, dividends, experience, Fees, Financial Advisor, Financial Wize, FinancialWize, fund, future, General, good, growth, historical, hold, How To, illiquidity, in, Income, index, interest, interest rate, international, Invest, Investing, investment, investments, Investor, investors, lessons, liquidity, market, markets, money, More, offer, or, past performance, portfolio, portfolios, price, principal, PRIOR, rate, Rates, Research, returns, rise, risk, s&p, S&P 500, Saving, securities, selling, single, stock, stock market, stocks, value, volatility, will, wrong
1 2 … 24 Next »

Archives

  • May 2023
  • April 2023
  • March 2023
  • February 2023
  • January 2023
  • July 2022
  • June 2022
  • May 2022
  • April 2022
  • March 2022
  • February 2022
  • January 2022
  • December 2021
  • November 2021
  • October 2021
  • September 2021
  • August 2021
  • May 2021
  • April 2021
  • March 2021
  • February 2021
  • January 2021
  • October 2020

Categories

  • Account Management
  • Airlines
  • Apartment Communities
  • Apartment Decorating
  • Apartment Hunting
  • Apartment Life
  • Apartment Safety
  • Auto
  • Auto Insurance
  • Auto Loans
  • Bank Accounts
  • Banking
  • Borrowing Money
  • Breaking News
  • Budgeting
  • Building Credit
  • Building Wealth
  • Business
  • Car Insurance
  • Car Loans
  • Careers
  • Cash Back
  • Celebrity Homes
  • Checking Account
  • Cleaning And Maintenance
  • College
  • Commercial Real Estate
  • Credit 101
  • Credit Card Guide
  • Credit Card News
  • Credit Cards
  • Credit Repair
  • Debt
  • DIY
  • Early Career
  • Education
  • Estate Planning
  • Extra Income
  • Family Finance
  • FHA Loans
  • Financial Advisor
  • Financial Clarity
  • Financial Freedom
  • Financial Planning
  • Financing A Home
  • Find An Apartment
  • Finishing Your Degree
  • First Time Home Buyers
  • Fix And Flip
  • Flood Insurance
  • Food Budgets
  • Frugal Living
  • Growing Wealth
  • Health Insurance
  • Home
  • Home Buying
  • Home Buying Tips
  • Home Decor
  • Home Design
  • Home Improvement
  • Home Loans
  • Home Loans Guide
  • Home Ownership
  • Home Repair
  • House Architecture
  • Identity Theft
  • Insurance
  • Investing
  • Investment Properties
  • Liefstyle
  • Life Hacks
  • Life Insurance
  • Loans
  • Luxury Homes
  • Making Money
  • Managing Debts
  • Market News
  • Minimalist LIfestyle
  • Money
  • Money Basics
  • Money Etiquette
  • Money Management
  • Money Tips
  • Mortgage
  • Mortgage News
  • Mortgage Rates
  • Mortgage Refinance
  • Mortgage Tips
  • Moving Guide
  • Paying Off Debts
  • Personal Finance
  • Personal Loans
  • Pets
  • Podcasts
  • Quick Cash
  • Real Estate
  • Real Estate News
  • Refinance
  • Renting
  • Retirement
  • Roommate Tips
  • Saving And Spending
  • Saving Energy
  • Savings Account
  • Side Gigs
  • Small Business
  • Spending Money Wisely
  • Starting A Business
  • Starting A Family
  • Student Finances
  • Student Loans
  • Taxes
  • Travel
  • Uncategorized
  • Unemployment
  • Unique Homes
  • VA Loans
  • Work From Home
hanovermortgages.com
Home | Contact | Site Map

Copyright © 2023 Hanover Mortgages.

Omega WordPress Theme by ThemeHall