Best investing apps in 2019

Investment, Passive Income, Personal Finance, Pharmacist Money, Retirement
Best investing apps

What are the best investing apps out there in 2019? When it comes to investing, yup, you guessed it right, there’s an app for that!

In traditional investing, you need a couple of thousand dollars to get started with either through ETFs or index mutual funds.

Enter micro-investing apps.

In today’s high-tech world, there are easier ways for you to invest your money. All you need is a banking account and a smartphone.

And most importantly, you can start with this type of investing with just a few bucks.

Micro-investing apps allow Millenials to invest by bypassing the minimum investment requirements. Which can range from $1,000 to as much as $10,000 in some cases?

Similar to Robo-advisors, you can automate your investing or use a variety of different tools to make investing user-friendly and simple.

You can build a portfolio through individual stock pickings or a combination of ETFs. It’s all up to your personal preferences.

You usually start by answering a few questions about your investment preferences and risk tolerances. The apps will then recommend different options for you to choose from.

Best Investing Apps in 2019

M1 Finance

Smaller in comparison to apps like Robinhood. M1 finance is kind of like a hybrid investing app.

They combine Robo-advisor with traditional brokerage features and is best for passive long term investors.

Summary of Pros and Cons

Pros

It’s free to use.

You’re going to wonder how do they make money? They make money by earning interests from cash and equities in each customer’s accounts.

One of the main features of M1 Finance is its expert pies.

The expert pies feature is created by professional investors. They are prebuilt portfolios but you have the option to build your own custom pies.

You can pick individual stocks and can take advantage of their auto rebalance feature.

Currently, M1 Finance has over $100 million dollars in assets through 25,000 plus accounts.

M1 is a good fit for investors looking for a long term investing plan.

Another good feature of M1 is the availability of fractional shares.

For example, at the time of this writing, one share of Amazon cost $1,820.55.

With M1 you can have the opportunity to buy 1/1,000 share of Amazon even when you didn’t have enough funds to buy one whole share.

Additionally, M1 offers a dividend reinvesting (DRIP) plan. Which is good, you want your dividends to be reinvested and compound for you.

Alternatively, you are able to split your stocks 50/50. For example, you wanted to invest $100 but only wanted to buy 50% Apple stock and 50% Amazon stock. This feature allows you to do just that.

Not only that, you’re eligible to receive dividends from both stocks.

If you’re interested in a retirement account M1 Finance offers “M1 Retire.”

Lastly, M1 will automatically rebalance your portfolio for you.

When selling, M1 will automatically sell what you’re overweight in, so essentially they are selling high and buying low on your behalf, which will save on taxes.

Cons

  • No day trading stock option

Other features

  • M1 Spend is an FDIC-insured checking account and debit card that seamlessly integrates into the current M1 app.
  • M1 Borrow allows investors to borrow money against their portfolios.

Interested and want to learn more about M1 Finance? Visit them here. Note, this is not an affiliate link.

Robinhood

Robinhood is better suited for investors who like to pick individual stocks.

Robinhood allows trading for stocks, ETFs, cryptocurrencies or options trading without a fee.

You can choose from more than 5,000 stocks and many of the major ETFs currently available on the market.

Robinhood Gold

If you want even more out of Robinhood, you can opt for the Robinhood Gold membership.

One of its features is the ability to invest with money loaned to you by Robinhood financial.

In addition, Gold membership allows for extended trading time, 30 minutes before the market opens and 2 hours after it closes.

How does Robinhood make money?

Robinhood charges $6 per month for a Gold membership and earns interests from cash and equities in each member’s accounts.

Summary of Pros and Cons

Pros

  • Free trading
  • Easy to navigate and good for beginners

Cons

  • Customer service is lacking
  • No fractional shares
  • No retirement accounts
  • No dividend reinvestment

Interested and want to learn more about Robinhood? Visit them here. Note, this is not an affiliate link.

Acorns

What sets Acorns apart from the other investing apps is its roundup feature.

An investor can invest their spare change via Acorn Roundup. With Acorn you can have the app round up to the nearest dollar of your purchases and invest the difference.

  • Let’s say you bought a latte for $1.75, the app will round up your purchase to $2.00 and invest the 25 cents.

You can elect to set up automatic investments daily, weekly or monthly.

Found Money works like a cashback portal. When you shop through partners, you’ll receive a bonus.

For example, if you made a purchase through Target via the Acorn app, you’ll get 2% of the value spent deposited in your Acorn account for a specified period of time.

Additionally, Acorn also provides free educational materials through its website and app portals.

Acorns Later and Spend

Acorn Later gives you the option to invest in Roth, traditional or Sep IRA.

Acorn Spend is a checking account that provides a debit card and is integrated with the roundup feature as you make your purchases.

You can invest through Acorn via five preset portfolios made up of popular funds and ETFs from the likes of Vanguard and Blackrock.

Investing options:

  • Conservative
  • Moderate
  • Moderately aggressive
  • Aggressive

Summary of Pros and Cons

Pros

In addition to the traditional roundup feature, Acorn offers the roundup multiplier. Your purchases are rounded up to the nearest dollar and multiply that by 2, 3 or 10 depending on your preference.

  • Recurring investments
  • Broad index funds
  • Can be cost-effective
  • Basic service cost $1 per month
  • Automate your investing

Cons

  • $1 per month for accounts under $1 million. Fortunately, this is free for college students.
  • $2 per month for Acorn plus Later
  • $3 Acorn + Later + Spend
  • Unfortunately, all of these fees can eat into your overall returns
  • No day trading for stocks

Interested and want to learn more about Acorn? Visit them here. Note, this is not an affiliate link.

Stash

Stash is a good fit for a beginner and for those who wanted a hands-on approach to picking their own investments.

Investments style

Stash offer for you to pick stocks and ETFs that align with your goals. A coach is available to help selections if needed.

Gaming like achievements will be rewarded for tasks such as setting up automatic deposits, making a deposit and select certain stocks bonds and ETF.

Stash Retire: traditional or Roth IRA with a minimum of $5.

Stash Learn: Stash’s education component that’s free to all, articles are written on personal finance and investing advice.

You also can bank with Stash Checking powered by Green Dot.

Stash allows for a custodial account, which is when a parent is able to open an account for a child that is less than 18 years of age.

Stash gives you access to more than 100 investments including ETFs and individual stocks.

For example, social media mania for social holdings, and Blue Chip funds which feature some of the biggest companies in the U.S. (Apple, Microsoft, etc.)

Cost

  • $1 per month for account less than $5,000
  • $2 per month for Stash retire

Once your account has a $5,000 balance or more, you’ll pay 0.25% per year. That’s equivalent to $25 dollars for every $1,000 dollar.

Overall, Stash makes it very simple to start investing, as little as $5, not a ton of options but familiar stocks are available.

Summary of Pros and Cons

Pros

  • Fractional shares
  • ETF index funds
  • No trading fees
  • Automatic deposit
  • Custodial account (under 18)
  • Retirement account

Cons

  • $1 per month for accounts with less than $5,000
  • $5,000 or great, you pay a flat 0.25% fee

Interested and want to learn more about Stash? Visit them here. Note, this is not an affiliate link.

Vanguard

You can use Vanguard by visiting their homepage. Vanguard is ubiquitous in the investment world and yes they do have an app.

They hold trillion dollars of assets, $5.2 trillion dollars in global assets to be exact.

They are best known for their low-cost index funds which mirror indices such as the S&P 500, total stock index fund, total international index fund, and total bond index fund to name a few.

Pro

  • No trading fees
  • Low expense ratios for index funds
  • Offer different types of accounts such as IRA/529 plans
  • Both ETFs and mutual funds are available

Cons

  • Not for individual stocks
  • Not user-friendly

Interested and want to learn more about Vanguard? Visit them here. Note, this is not an affiliate link.

Fidelity

Fidelity is one of the biggest financial services corporation in the U.S. with over $6.69 trillion dollars under its administration.

Summary of pros and cons.

Pros

  • No minimum
  • Free index funds
  • Ideal for long term investment
  • 24/7 customer service

Cons

  • Not for individual stocks
  • $4.95 commission per stock trade

Interested and want to learn more about Fidelity? Visit them here. Note, this is not an affiliate link.

Webull

Similar to Robinhood in offerings but probably best reserved for an intermediate investor.

Summary of pros and cons.

Pros

  • Free trading
  • Offer a free stock when opening an account
  • Great analytics
  • Fast processing

Cons

  • There is a learning curve on how to use the app
  • Better suited for an intermediate investor
  • Complicated app

Interested and want to learn more about Webull? Visit them here. Note, this is not an affiliate link.

Best Investing Apps Final Thoughts

In my opinion, you should pick out an investing app to try and start investing today.

I prefer Vanguard but I have been experiencing a few technical issues with Vanguard lately and I hope it gets resolved soon.

M1 Finance looks intriguing and it’s worth a try.

I listened to a few podcasts and there are a few endorsements for M1 financial and that’s why it is at the top of my list.

The bottom line is this, use whichever app that best suits your needs and goals.

What do you think about my list of best-investing apps? Have you tried any of them, please share your thoughts.