Invest Your Spare Change With Acorns for iOS/Android Beth Snyder May 15, 2014 Last year I decided to do an experiment, and I threw all of my pocket change in a jar. In four months, I had gathered almost $45.00 worth, and I hardly ever pay cash for anything (and when I do, it’s usually even dollar amounts). Spare change adds up at an astonishing rate, but most of us end up with it weighing down our pockets, purses, or bags before finally getting tired of hauling it around and cashing it in somewhere. If you were to invest it, imagine how much money you could save toward your retirement! Now imagine how much more you could save if you were to use the “spare change” from your credit card purchases. Acorns is a new app for iPhone and Android set to launch later this quarter that will allow you to invest your virtual pocket change. Which won’t help you get rid of those quarters and nickels, but can definitely help you with that retirement fund. What Acorns does is round up your credit card purchases to the nearest dollar, and invest the change into a diversified portfolio. It was designed to make saving and investing something you hardly have to expend any effort to do, and in a way that can be handled by even the most budgetary inept among us. It’s not clear if the Acorns app itself is free to download, but there will be a $1.00 US monthly fee for using it, in addition to 1% of what your portfolio earns. As I said, it’s set to launch a little later in the year, but you can sign up for email alerts on the Acorns home page. I’m very intrigued by this, especially if it would work with debit card purchases as well as credit card. I use my debit card for almost everything, and this would not only be a great way to save money, but it would make balancing my checking account a whole lot easier since all transactions would be for even dollar amounts. Source: BGR Share This With The World!
