I use Mint and see the Acorns App advertised. Anyone using it? If not familiar with the App, it is a system where you invest your spare change. For example, if your transactions was $2.50, 50 cents would be invested.

I'm not using it, but intrigued as another vehicle to save.

I use it and love it. You are correct. Spend $2.50 get $.50. We use it to stockpile a cash for travel.

If you sign up feel free to use my code. I think we both get $10. www.acorns.com/invite/XRQUS6

I prefer to invest real money, not spare change.

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I prefer to invest real money, not spare change.

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I guess unless you invest BIG money there is no point. Acorns is a nice avenue to put a little cash away. I guess maybe someday we can graduate to investing REAL money

Wow, I must have hurt some fee-fees.

Acorns targets young investors without a lot of money to invest. I believe the way it does so encourages the wrong thinking about saving and investing. I'd rather see a young person save up the $1000 or $3000 account minimum (aka "real money") and open an account with a traditional investment company like Schwab, Fidelity, Vanguard, or one of the other excellent brokerages out there. I think it's preferable to consciously save towards a goal than passively letting a service do it for you. The behavior underlying saving is the important thing for young people to learn, and Acorns specifically doesn't really help with that by putting it on auto-pilot.

If rounding up debit purchases materially affects a persons savings rate or investment returns in any way, then there are probably some behaviors regarding saving and investment that need to be improved. Relying on gimmicks like this just seems like such a warped way to handle money that I honestly wonder who it would have any real benefit for.

Also, if you're not a young person and you have enough to open a brokerage account, why are you paying Acorns fees? 25 bips on $5k or more is a lot to pay for what amounts to ACH transfers.

It's probably immaterial. I doubt Acorns is profitable and I doubt they'll be around in five years.

Not looking to retire off Acorns. We have done well with our pre tax investing. We also have pensions coming our way. TRS and Chevron.
Acorns would be for the next golf or ski trip.

I don't use Acorns but your idea is not materially different than what these guys are doing. Saving up 1k to throw in a vanguard fund is no feat of economic responsibility

I've used the app since January. I put in ~$500, used the round-up feature and automatic deposits on a monthly basis to build up the fund. At the end of March, I decided to see how easy it was to pull the money out. It took about a week for them to sell all the assets and transfer to the bank account I have linked. Most of the assets were just in Vanguard ETFs such as VOO, VB, VWO and VNQ as well as a couple of Bond ETFs. The allocation %s were typical for someone in my age range (late 20s). You can choose how "aggressive" you want the fund to be. They do this by simply changing the allocation % for the funds that I listed.

I decided to restart with the app a couple of weeks ago. The transaction back to my bank account went smoothly. I'm not using this as a main retirement or investment account -- I have those already. I simply view the app as digging for loose change in your couch or finding some coins in your car and putting them in a piggy bank thats earning as you go. I'll take the funds out in case of emergency, want to spend on a vacation or use as a downpayment later on down the road.

I also don't think its bad for someone in college or in your early 20s as well. Build the roundups through college not thinking about it and maybe put in $10 or $20 a month, and after graduation maybe you'll have enough to meet the Vanguard account minimum and open an IRA or other account and move on from Acorns.

I see Acorns as your investment first car, not a car you want to drive later in life.

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I see Acorns as your investment first car, not a car you want to drive later in life.

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Just started using Acorns(through Mint) a month ago with the same idea in mind. More along the lines of 10 years from now maybe I use it to buy a weekend car/cheap boat/etc. As often as I use my card versus cash, it seemed like a fun way to "invest" as opposed to keeping loose change in a jar and cashing it out every 5 years or so.

Just opened up an account with a $25/wk recurring and the round-up. Put in on aggressive investment. Let's see what this bad boy is all about. It's play money. Not expecting anything big, but if it covers a random vacation, so be it

ColinAggie said:

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Just opened up an account with a $25/wk recurring and the round-up. Put in on aggressive investment. Let's see what this bad boy is all about. It's play money. Not expecting anything big, but if it covers a random vacation, so be it

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I'm doing the same, see what their aggressive plan can do

I was going to use this when I first saw someone mention Acorns a couple of years ago. Instead, I just download my credit card activity each quarter and calculate the round-ups myself then transfer the money into my Vanguard account. It's worked well so far and only doing it once a quarter is not too much of a pain.