I've been considering investment as a potential source of passive income. I've come across this new investment platform called Acorns. The company seems to have raving reviews from prominent financial advisors, the likes of Noel Whittaker:
http://www.smh.com.au/money/investing/noel-whittaker-gives-h…
Has anyone used it? What's you verdict?
Yay or Nay?
Similar experience. I installed the app to play with it following a conversation at work and figured I'd mess around with it for a week. Ended up leaving it installed with the round up running and have $630 in it now, with 6.97% growth - pretty happy considering it's the equivalent of a loose change piggybank. The fees are a little high compared to other options as chidg pointed out, so this will probably be put towards a spending money at some point rather than adding $xK as a primary investment tool.
So Acorns have just released the 'Emerald' portfolio option, which is a 'socially responsible' fund. Not sure on the details and how well it compares to other options like Australian Ethical, but it offers the same projected growth rate as Moderately Aggressive which is where I had my fund set. Good news :). https://www.finder.com.au/acorns-launches-sustainable-invest…
I initially deposited $1000, I was with acorns for about a month then pulled out at a loss of $8 to go for cryptocurrencies.
I can see you are operating over a long range investment horizon.
Started march-ish last year, linked my account and my partners for double the roundups, sitting at 2300ish and it was 10.4% last week and had been hovering for around 3 months, before that sat at about 8%.. although it went down to 8.6% today I noticed at a quick glance earlier. At the very least I recommend it for a "forced savings" plan.
What did you have your portfolio set to?
moderately aggressive
Thanks much appreciated :)
I had mine set to aggressive - made about 3% in a month and a half back in March - pulled it out before the asx crashed a few hundred points and now I haven't made much in the last month. But ye would recommend/10.
My $5 in referral credit has grown to $5.10 in 3.5 months
Almost one month in, still haven't broken even yet. Aggressive setting.
I have used it for about a year and a half. I like the convenience and low friction of the roundup feature; it has enabled me to save around $700 without even realising it. In that time my fund has grown at around 6%, so much better than any bank account but not as high performing as some other managed funds. Personally I don't want to use Acorns as my primary investment fund because it has no ethical investment guidelines, and I'm not interested in seeing my money support weapons manufacturers or coal miners, so I use Australian Ethical as my main long term investment fund, and at some point I'll shift the money in my Acorns account over into Aus Ethical (in addition my Aus Ethical fund has performed better over the last couple of years). However I don't mind compromising on that ethical preference for the relatively small amount of money in the Acorns account given the fact that it enables me to save a little more very easily.
The other major downside with Acorns is the fees - it's something like $1.35 per month, so if you're only using the roundup feature and don't add a few hundred or a thousand dollars to start the account, you can assume a lot of your growth will be eaten by the fees for the first year or six months.
TLDR: Great app, easy to use, recommend for the roundups feature and for convenient investment of amounts $500 - $5000. Find something with better returns and more control over portfolio (and ethical guidelines if you care about that) if you are investing larger sums for long periods.