Acorns Review: Automatic Investing And Banking

If you’re anything like me, you probably remember your parents or grandparents filling up cups, jars, cup holders and desk drawers with leftover coins from daily cash spending. Once in a blue moon, you might have rolled these coins and deposited them at the bank. It was a surprisingly effective way to save hundreds or even thousands of dollars each year.

These days, most of us don’t use paper currency, so we rarely have “spare change”. Hoarding coins in jars for a rainy day fund simply isn’t a realistic option. Instead, our money is electronic digits on a screen. As a result, we simply spend our money without wondering what we should do with the “spare change.” However, many apps want to change that habit.

One of the first apps to come out with the spare change concept was Acorns. It’s an app that automates investing, rounds up your transactions, and can function as a starter financial wellness system. It automatically invests your money into a diversified portfolio that makes sense for you.

Since its initial release, Acorns has continued to innovate, and it’s raised the bar for micro-investing apps - and now banking as well! A few of the new feature releases make it reasonable to consider Acorns again. Should you create an Acorns account, or is it an overblown app? This Acorns review explains the good and the bad.

Bonus: Right now, Acorns is offering a $10 bonus when you register an account. Get stared here >>

What Does Acorns Do?

Acorns is a micro-investing platform designed around the concept of modern portfolio theory. As an Acorns user, you’ll download the Acorns App and answer a few questions. The app will then recommend an efficient portfolio for you.

Acorns portfolios range from conservative (lots of bonds) to aggressive (all stocks and real estate). 

All the portfolios contain exclusively low cost ETFs from Vanguard and BlackRock. From time to time, Acorns may swap out one ETF for another ETF that tracks the same index. These are the investments that Acorns is using today. It’s worth noting that these options haven’t changed in at least a year (likely because they are still among the lowest cost ETFs in the market).

• iShares iBoxx $ Investment Grade Corporate Bond ETF | LQD
• iShares 1-3 Year Treasury Bond ETF | SHY
• Vanguard Small-Cap Index Fund ETF Shares | VB
• Vanguard REIT Index Fund ETF Shares | VNQ
• Vanguard 500 Index Fund ETF Shares | VOO
• Vanguard Emerging Markets Stock Index Fund ETF Shares | VWO
• Vanguard FTSE Developed Markets Index Fund ETF Shares | VEA

Once you’ve chosen your portfolio, you’ll link your debit and credit cards to the Acorns platform. When you make a transaction, Acorns will “round up” the transaction to the nearest dollar. The round up (or spare change) gets deposited into a holding account. If you spend $7.55, Acorns will deposit $.45 into your holding account. When the account has at least $5, Acorns will automatically invest the proceeds into the market. They will use the investing opportunity to rebalance your portfolio.

A new feature that Acorns recently released is “round-up multiplier.” Essentially you can double to 10X your roundups. For example, a $.45 round-up could automatically become a $.90 round-up if you select a 2x multiplier. If you select a 10x multiplier it will become $4.50. The Round-Ups Multiplier can be adjusted through the app or website.

You can also set up recurring investments. For example, you could choose to invest $5 per day on the platform, or $200 per month if you prefer.

If your portfolio gets way out of line, Acorns will engage in rebalancing. In the non-tax advantaged accounts, the rebalancing may have tax implications for you. However, if you opt to set your money into an IRA (using Acorns later), the rebalancing will not have immediate tax consequences.

Finally, Acorns has a new debit card platform called Acorns spend. The advantage of Acorns spend is that you can immediately deduct round-ups from your checking account (something that could take several days from a credit or debit account). Acorns offers unlimited ATM reimbursement, has no minimum balance, and doesn’t charge overdraft fees. However, you will need to pay the $3 per month Acorns fee, to maintain the account.

Earn Partnerships

Acorns has also created referral relationships with a number of online retailers and brands. When you use the Acorns app or Chrome desktop browser to purchase from a select list of brands, the companies will deposit Earn bonus investments into your account.

Earn bonus investments range from 1-5% and up to 10% of the purchase price for most retailers. Retailers include Apple, Walmart.com, AirBnB, The Wall Street Journal and more. The Earn concept combines the micro-investing concept with the cashback site concept.

New And Upcoming Features

Acorns Earn Chrome Extension- This was added to make it easier to find and redeem bonus investment offers while you browse your favorite brands.

Job Finder- In partnership with ZipRecruiter, Acorns recently added its Job Finder experience which make it easy to explore millions of full-time, part-time, and remote jobs to earn more money.

Acorns Harvest- In March 2021, Acorns acquired Harvest, a platform that negotiates bank and credit card fees on its customers' behalf. In 2020, Harvest helped its customers earn back more than $4 million in bank fees and interest refunds. Harvest will soon be integrated into Acorns’ subscription tiers.

ESG (Environmental, Social and Governance) Investing- Launching in April 2021, Acorns ESG portfolios will give customers a way to easily invest in firms that have high environmental, social, and governance ratings.

Acorns Early

Acorns Early is a UGMA/UTMA that allows you to save and invest for your child's benefit. The account is in your name, for the beneficiary of your child. This account/savings is NOT a 529 plan - and there are no tax benefits for saving in a UGMA account. However, savings is a good thing, so if this works for you, go for it.

Acorns Early is included in the Acorns Family pricing level ($5 per month).

This is a very comparable service to Stash Investing. However, if you're looking to save for your children, we recommend using a tool like CollegeBacker.

Acorns Spend

Acorns Spend is Acorn's checking account product - which links your Acorns account to a checking account with a debit card that you can use to spend.

It's a compelling checking account product - with no overdraft or minimum balance fees, free bank-to-bank transfers, and more.

Plus, you can earn up to 10% cash back when you use your debit card at certain Earn merchants (which we couldn't find which specific merchants you can earn at - although it appears to be similar to their existing Found Money partnerships).

However, the big drawback with Acorns Spend is that you must be on the $3/mo Acorns Premium plan (which includes a basic Acorns account and a retirement account).

Compared to other free checking products (like Chime), this is a big drawback.

You can check out Acorns Spend here >>

How Much Does Acorns Cost?

Acorns currently has three pricing levels:

• Lite: $1 per month
• Personal: $3 per month
• Family: $5 per month

Acorns Lite - $1/mo

Acorns Lite is the basic investing plan, that allows you to put your spare change to work with Round-Ups. This is the product that Acorns started with, and is their bread and butter.

While $1 per month may not seem like much - that's $12 per year. If you're not rounding-up a lot of money, this could be relatively expensive for you. 

When you combine Found Money and all your round ups, most people will invest at least a few hundred dollars every year. Saving and investing the change can make a huge difference when you’re just getting started.

Acorns Personal - $3/mo

Acorns personal is their flagship product today. It has the basic investment account of Lite, but it also adds "Later" (which is a retirement account), and "Spend" (which is their banking product).

Honestly, combining banking and retirement savings at this level make a lot of sense, and the pricing isn't terrible for what you get. Compared to robo-advisors like Betterment and Wealthfront (which charge 0.25% per year), Acorns is a steal. Of course, M1 Finance is still free.

Acorns Family - $5/mo

Acorns Family combines everything above, but adds Acorns Early - which is their UGMA account that allows you to save for your children. You can also add multiple children at no additional cost.

The benefit of an UTMA/UGMA account is that it can be used for anything that benefits the child, so things like housing, technology, travel, etc. But we'd still rather see the saving going into a 529 plan rather than a taxable account, especially since this plan will set you back an extra $2 per month.

Aside from the management fee, Acorns does not charge transaction fees. That means you can deposit a lump sum (up to $20,000 per day) into your Acorns account, and you can withdraw money at any time without transaction costs.

You’ll never pay trading fees which is a big cost saver for small investors.

Are these prices worth the service that Acorns provides? Let’s say you save $20 through roundups your first month. Then you pay a $1 maintenance fee. In that case, you’re paying an 5% management fee your first month. As your portfolio grows, the ratio shrinks.

If you end up investing $400 your first year, you’ll pay $12 in management fees. That’s an effective 3% management fee.

3% or even 0.25% is a hefty fee to pay for mediocre investing. Acorns isn’t offering tax loss harvesting, and the ETFs they offer can be purchased for free from a traditional brokerage.

If you exclusively use the $1 per month option (for an after-tax) portfolio, you’re getting a low cost. However, Acorns doesn’t engage in tax loss harvesting, so it’s probably better to choose a robo-advisor instead. This is especially true if you aren’t adding regular contributions and just relying on round-ups to build your portfolio.

That said, Acorns newer features may make the platform worthwhile for more users. If you set up regular contributions, you could save $6,000 in an IRA or Roth IRA, and even more in a SEP-IRA (depending on your income and the IRA contribution limits). When you take into account that Acorns automatically rebalances for you, $3 per month is a great deal. Since you’re inside a tax advantaged account, tax-loss harvesting becomes less important.

The $3 per month gives you access to the $1 per month option, plus an option for more Earn bonus investments, real time roll-ups and a debit card. I suspect that most people won’t earn an extra dollar per month in found money to offset the cost of the account. Instead of opening an Acorns account, you would be better served to open a fee-free account instead.

If you're concerned about the pricing (and you should be), check out our list of places to invest for free.

Note: Acorns ended its under 24 with a valid .edu email address program in 2016.

How Does Acorns Compare?

Acorns is a popular online investing app, but it's definitely not the only one. Here is a quick comparison of some of the other popular investing platforms.