Full Discloser: I am NOT a financial professional. Also, this is NOT a paid advertisement from Acorns.com or Acorns the app. The purpose of this post is to share my experience. This blog post is for entertainment purposes only. This is not financial advise.
Investing for beginners using the Acorns app
Acorns is the app I first started using to invest over two years ago and I still use it today.
Times are rough.
You might have been furloughed or laid off recently? Maybe you haven’t received your stimulus check or your unemployment hasn’t kicked in because you live in Florida like me and the Florida Department of Opportunity is a bit of a hot freaking mess and getting paid your benefits is like winning the lottery?
That was a long question. Sorry. I’m just so frustrated with the unemployment system at the moment. Grrrr. Yes, I growled, don’t judge me.
If you answered yes to any of the questions above, you aren’t alone. I am too am a recently furloughed employee. I don’t know if I’ll be hired back to my previous employer. I’m just in a state of limbo.
All I know is that I am stressing. I am stressing about going to pick up the nessities at the grocery store with a mask. Is my mask on right? I wear glasses and my glasses fog when I wear a mask. So I stress about seeing. I stress about touching something in the world, what if someone with corona touched before me, then I touch my purse or my face or my hair or clothes.
I also stress a lot about money.
I can’t control the virus. I can’t control the pandemic.
I can control that I stress a little less because a year ago, I started investing with Acorns.
What’s Acorns?
Acorns is an application and website that makes investing easy. So very easy.
With Acorns, unlike other investment platforms, they make it fool proof. They do all the thinking for you. No researching which stocks or index funds are right for you. In the past, it has taken me months to find the right stock to invest my money in. It’s stressful and discouraging to see the stock go down the next day.
I am not in a position to invest right now. However, with Acorns I am able to pause my investment which I was go grateful for. I’ll resume investing when I get a job again.
With Acorns, I’ve been able to create a nest egg for myself. This has become my emergency fund I can tap into when I need money. I’ve used this money to fix my car or fix the air conditioner in my house last year.
I invest in Acorns by reoccured payments of $50 a week. That’s what I am comfortable with. However, you can invest with as little as $5 a month. In fact, that’s how I started investing in Acorns. And little by little, I would watch my money grow and I loved seeing my money grow so I would increase the amount and intervals whenever I could afford it.
Also, Acorns offers a round up your purchase to the nearest dollar to keep the change program. For every purchase you make with your debit card and any credit card you link to Acorns, the change of that purchase is placed into your Acorns account. For example, if you make a purchase of $5.95 at Starbucks with your debit card and a purchase of $21.55 with your credit card, if both cards are linked you will have deposited $.60 into your Acorns account from just those 2 purchases. This is an option, not mandatory.
Recently, I’ve had to withdraw money from my Acorns account to purchase groceries and pay the light bill. Acorns makes withdrawing your money so easy. The money takes anywhere from 3 – 6 days to land into your checking account. But the process, from my experience, is painless.
I can’t talk about Acorns enough and how it’s saved me during my furlough days. I don’t need to take a personal loan and I don’t need to max out my credit cards to live.
If you’re interested in Acorns please check out my code here. Full disclosure, if you sign up to Acorns using my link I will receive $5 which will go towards my Acorns account. Also, if you use my link YOU, yes YOU, also get $5 to invest in Acorns. That’s pretty cool!
Wait, I forgot to tell you about my favorite feature. One of my favorite Acorns feature shows you your potential money if you invest consistently what you’re currently investing now. I think it’s so neat to see what you can have if you keep on going. See my hypothetical figures below. This is what I can potentially earn if I left my account as in and didn’t invest anything else.
Yes, this amount seems low, however, I am not currently contributing any funds to my Acorns account because I’m not in the position to do so. Once I’m back on my feet with a regular schedule, I’ll be able to regularly invest again. Hopefully, I’ll be able to match my $50 a week or maybe I’ll invest even more if I’m lucky.
Also, Acorns if transparent where your money goes, how your portfolio is looking and what your gain/loss for the day and in total are. This is an amazing tool which can tell you up to the minute stock activity.
I’ve chatted your ear off about how much I love Acorns and how I’ve been able to use my money, I invested and grew while being furloughed.
Again, if you’re intersted in learning more or investing yourself, you can earn yourself $5 by using my link here.
I hope you have a beautiful rest of your day.
Best,
Mel
