Any one using Acorn as an investment tool?

Anonymous · ‎06-06-2018

I have grown it to almost 1000 in about 6 months using roundups...

Anonymous · ‎06-06-2018

Hi gaheckler,

I have been meaning to investigate Acorn but haven't gotten around to it yet. How much money did you start out with (if you don't mind me asking)? Or do you mean you've grown from $0 to $1,000 in 6 months? If so, that's impressive.

Anonymous · ‎06-06-2018

So many ways to invest with it .. Download the app and start playing with it... I started recently adding 10 a week on top of all my round ups which is set at 3x..

iced · ‎06-07-2018

When I started looking at Acorns and other similar apps, I came to the conclusion that they weren't right for me. The main killer for me was the fees.

I currently pay fees of 0.07% on several of my ETFs, though there are some ETFs as low as 0.03%. By comparison, 0.25% felt too high, especially given my understanding is that Acorns is using the same Vanguard-family of ETFs that I am for 0.07%. I would recommend that as soon as someone hits the $5,000 mark in Acorns, that money should be moved to a different brokerage.

I do see its potential as a tool for those starting out and/or who struggle with saving any money as it automates and controls that side of things for people. The $1/month is arguably high for doing something people should have the discipline to do themselves, but I'd much rather see someone pay $1/month to get them to save something than to not save at all.

Blodreina · ‎06-07-2018

@iced wrote:
When I started looking at Acorns and other similar apps, I came to the conclusion that they weren't right for me. The main killer for me was the fees.

I currently pay fees of 0.07% on several of my ETFs, though there are some ETFs as low as 0.03%. By comparison, 0.25% felt too high, especially given my understanding is that Acorns is using the same Vanguard-family of ETFs that I am for 0.07%. I would recommend that as soon as someone hits the $5,000 mark in Acorns, that money should be moved to a different brokerage.

I do see its potential as a tool for those starting out and/or who struggle with saving any money as it automates and controls that side of things for people. The $1/month is arguably high for doing something people should have the discipline to do themselves, but I'd much rather see someone pay $1/month to get them to save something than to not save at all.

I think it's a good product. The fee is for portfolio management, not particularly for helping people save money (as you seem to suggest, "doing something people should have the discipline to do themselves"). I'm seeing a 6% return for the last year (and that's accounting for the fee). Granted, I get a much higher return on my other accounts, but I'll definitely be keeping Acorns.

iced · ‎06-07-2018

@Blodreina wrote:
@iced wrote:

I do see its potential as a tool for those starting out and/or who struggle with saving any money as it automates and controls that side of things for people. The $1/month is arguably high for doing something people should have the discipline to do themselves, but I'd much rather see someone pay $1/month to get them to save something than to not save at all.
I think it's a good product. The fee is for portfolio management, not particularly for helping people save money (as you seem to suggest, "doing something people should have the discipline to do themselves"). I'm seeing a 6% return for the last year (and that's accounting for the fee). Granted, I get a much higher return on my other accounts, but I'll definitely be keeping Acorns.

Sounds like we're arguing two sides of the same coin. We're both agreeing it's not giving the best returns, and I'm adding it has relatively high fees for management (compared to similar ETFs; mutual/managed funds and the like are naturally much more expensive).

I'm suggesting that a lot of people, when left to their own devices, can't manage to put so much as $10/month into a savings account, let alone invest it. For those people, having an app tied in to their everyday spending that diverts money they won't miss into savings is a big deal. For those people, an app like Acorns is invaluable in helping them save, and thus why I also suggest one can look at the costs as a convenience fee to do something they don't otherwise do on their own.

If there was an app that did the rounding up of purchases and put that into a savings account for free, then the argument of paying fees to help people save money goes away.

OldFatJarhead · ‎06-08-2018

I just downloaded it and started playing with it the other night. I don't really need it as I have several other investment accounts. But I was curious and figured what the hell. First, as a software developer, I'm very impressed with the app itself, both mobile and web. Very nicely done. I do like the "round ups" model and think that could be great for some people. I linked my most-used cards to it. We'll see what I average in round-ups per month after a couple of months. I also did a one-time investment of $100 just to see what the transfer time is: took less that 48 hours for it to hit my account. Not bad.

The feature I'm most excited about is the "found money" feature. I've been less and less impressed with Amazon lately and have been looking for an excuse to broaden my online shopping. This might be the trick. I tried it today and went to Zoro (where I'd never shopped before) and found 2 metal gas cans I'd been contemplating buying from Amazon but just never pulled the trigger on. They were about $30 less than Amazon, each, and supposedly, Zoro will kick 3% of the purchase into my acorns account. That's on top of the 1.5% cash back from the CashRewards card I used to buy them. I'll be checking there more often before making purchases online, for sure.

Anonymous · ‎06-11-2018

So I have been using betterment for a while now, mostly letting it sit recently as I build up a new savings account. I had looked into acorns but not since starting my rewards cards journey so I was wandering how linking cards to acorns works. Does the round up show as a separate charge to the original purchase? What does it typically catagorize as on your statements? Most of my investments are in funds but always looking to diversify, honestly I seem to remember the fees seeming a bit high as the reason I chose betterment instead.

OldFatJarhead · ‎06-11-2018

That's a good question. Roundups don't happen in real time. Acorns basically keeps track of your transactions and waits until your roundups hit the minimum combined threshold of $5 then they sweep that into your acorns account from your checking account together in one transaction.

I actually like this method since I use YNAB. Keeping track of roundups indivudually would be a nightmare for me. But being able to capture many roundups together in a single transaction makes keeping track of things in YNAB not so bad. So far, anyway.

Another thing I found in acorns is you can set a roundup "multiplier". So you can double, triple, or even 10x your roundup amounts to invest more aggressively. I haven't tried it out yet but it seems pretty straightforward.

Anonymous · ‎06-12-2018

I've been using Acorns as my piggy bank since 2 years. Started with $300 and have setup a bi-weekly investment of $35 and it's now grown to $2035.

It's not a get-rich tool. Give it time (at least a year or two) and you'll see the difference. Did withdrew a few times and the money was credited to my checking account by 5th day.

Oh well, there's a $1 management fee per month per account....!