Investing From Your Smartphone
Now that smartphones have become a staple in society, a lot of the ways we used to do things has changed. In the past, if you wanted to invest you needed to find an advisor, set-up a meeting and fill out paperwork. Now, if you want to invest, it’s as easy as grabbing your phone from your pocket. There are several apps available to download on your phone. Whether you are new to the market or a veteran investor, there’s probably an app that fits your needs. Here are a few of my favorites.
Acorns
If you’re new to investing and don’t have a large chunk of funds available to invest, then Acorns is a great fit for you. It rounds up the purchases you make to the nearest dollar and saves the difference. With as little as five dollars you’re able to invest. They also have platforms that help you save for retirement or college. The app also supplies you with an educational aspect that helps you learn about personal financing too!
Stash
This app is similar to Acorns and also lets you start with as little as five dollars. Before you get started, Stash will ask you questions to learn more about you; such as your investment experience and tolerance for risk. The app will recommend an exchange-traded fund based on your responses. They also offer the ability to invest in portfolios centered around causes you like to support. Like Acorns, this app also has an educational aspect that helps you learn about investing and the market as you go!
Wealthfront
Wealthfront uses automated financial planning to better understand you and your financial needs and investing preferences. With their robo-advising, you can put your funds in one place. They help to develop an investing plan to help you achieve your personal goals. The founder’s goal in creating this app was to give everyone a means of access to sounds financial planning.
SigFig
This app is equipped with investment tools that help you track, manage and optimize existing portfolios you have. Manage investments, and see everything you have on one dashboard with real-time views of stocks. They also have you take a risk questionnaire and provide up-to-date market news. They will manage up to $10,000 free and then charge a fee for any additional above that amount.
Yahoo! Finance
Yahoo! Finance stands out in design and offers a personalized experience. It sleekly synchs and integrates portfolios across multiple devices for ease of access. It tracks your portfolio and has push notifications to help you stay current in news and highlights that might affect your portfolio. This is a good app if you’ve already got an investment portfolio and some investing experience. The design and ease of use make this app worth checking out.
TD Ameritrade
This app provides you with the basic essentials needed to invest. One feature that is special to this app is their Snapstock feature, this allows users to snap a picture or barcode on any item to help you find information on that company such as company name, symbol, stock quote and ticker. The app gives access to trading, streaming, transfers, and quotes. This app helps you stay informed and manage your portfolio.
Fidelity Investments
This app would be good for those that are comfortable with their investment knowledge. This app gives you options to trade and track from your smartphone. The layout of the home page is customizable to the user and offers other management tools. Transfer funds and bill pay options are available by linking a bank account. Create watchlists and received trade notifications to keep you informed.
Whether your investment game is strong, or if you’re not sure where to start to check out a few of these apps and see if one is a good fit for you. If you’ve never invested and don’t know much about it, hopefully, this article will help to get you started.