[Updated 2021.6] Acorns now offers a Checking account with no monthly fee and no minimum balance requirement. After opening the account, if you receive two direct deposits of at least $250 each, you can earn $75. This $75 is deposited directly into your Acorns investment account. It is not yet clear which deposits qualify as DD, but you can try PayPal transfers or a bank ACH push.

Note: you must first sign up for an Acorns investment account before you can open this checking account. If you register through the link below first, you can also earn the account opening bonus.

Introduction to Acorns

Founded in 2012, Acorns is a company focused on automated investing. Its biggest feature is that every time you make a purchase, you can use the round-up feature to funnel a small amount of money into your investment account for portfolio investing. Round Up means each purchase is automatically rounded up to the next whole dollar. For example, if you spend $3.5 at Starbucks, $0.5 will automatically be invested through the platform; if you spend $9.8 at Walmart, $0.2 will be added. Based on your selections and personal profile, this money is allocated proportionally to investments such as stocks and bonds, generating portfolio returns. In addition to this small-change investing approach, somewhat similar to building savings little by little, Acorns also allows one-time or recurring monthly investments via bank transfer. Compared with other mainstream robo-advisors, Acorns has lower fees and is easier to understand.

In short, Acorns makes investing almost effortless, especially for people who are not great at saving money. Its low barrier to entry and low fees helped Acorns grow rapidly, reaching 500,000 users in 2016 (green line). However, its total assets under management were still smaller than those of more established robo-advisors.

In addition, Acorns has a Found Money feature, similar to a cashback portal, that lets you invest cashback earned from online shopping directly into your account. There are often some very good deals as well. We will focus on that below.

Sign-Up and Welcome Bonus

If you sign up for Acorns through a referral link now and complete one investment, you can receive a $5 bonus. The bonus is deposited directly into your investment account for investing. If you register using an email address ending in .edu, you can also get 4 years of waived fees.

During registration, you will need to provide personal information such as your name, date of birth, address, and SSN. The SSN is used only for identity verification and will not result in a hard pull. If you are not a US Citizen, you can still answer truthfully without issue. You will also need to provide some income and employment information so Acorns can initialize your investment strategy and allocation. You can change this later based on your own situation. You can also link a bank account for direct investing, though this step can be skipped.

After completing registration, you must make one investment to receive the $5 sign-up bonus. You can transfer money directly from your bank account, or activate the round-up feature so that the "spare change" from one purchase is automatically invested.

Acorns Investment Features

Fees

Acorns has a very simple fee structure, following these rules:

  • No fee if your account balance is 0
  • No fees for the first 4 years if you sign up with a .edu student email
  • $1 per month if your account balance is under $5,000
  • 0.25% annually if your account balance is above $5,000

There are no additional fees for transfers, deposits, or withdrawals.

Recently, Acorns announced that it would raise the monthly fee for its entry-level Acorns Lite plan from $1 to $3. At the same time, Acorns is offering an option for those experiencing financial hardship: you can click the link below to keep the $1 monthly fee.

Thank you for choosing Acorns to help you save and invest every day. To continue growing our technology, business, and team for you, our $1 subscription fee tier, Acorns Lite, will no longer be available as of September 21. At that time, you will be automatically upgraded to Acorns Personal, and your subscription fee will be $3 per month, billed on your regular billing date.

You do not need to take any action, but if you are experiencing economic hardship and need to stick with the $1 per month tier, simply click here by September 21. Enter this email address where you see the prompt, and we will honor your request.

Ways to Invest

Under the Invest section, you can see all the ways to add money to your account. You can invest through one-time deposits, recurring monthly investments, or Round-Ups. For example, if you spend $3.5 at Starbucks, $0.5 will automatically be invested through the platform; if you spend $9.8 at Walmart, $0.2 will be added. One thing to note: the original purchase is paid using your linked card, but the roundup amount comes from your checking account. You can also set a multiplier for Round-Ups to accelerate your spare-change investing. The link a card feature works by connecting to other banks' online banking systems, so there is no need to manually enter card numbers. Platforms like this generally do not store your username or password; they are only used for bank verification and information transmission.

Changing Your Portfolio

When you first start, Acorns sets your investment allocation based on your profile. You can also modify it through Profile-Portfolio. However, you cannot specify the exact percentage for each holding; you can only choose among five investment strategies. From left to right, the risk increases, and the potential return also increases. Choose based on your own situation.

Acorns Found Money

In addition to its core investing functions, Acorns also offers Found Money. This feature is somewhat similar to a traditional cashback portal: if you click through Acorns' links and shop at participating merchants, you can receive a certain percentage back.

For example, if you click on the Nike offer, you can see that purchases made through that link earn 5% back into your investment account.

In addition to percentage-based cashback, Found Money also has many offers with fixed-dollar rewards. Some of the better current offers include:

  • Sam's Club: spend $75, get $1 back: just pay with your linked card, and it stacks with your credit card's own rewards, making it equivalent to an extra 1.3% back.
  • Upside: Spend $600, Get $100 Back: This works for both new and existing Upside users. For new Upside users, it should also stack with the first-order offer of spending $600 and getting a $100 gift card, making it effectively $600 back on $200 total. That is a very solid deal. Upside is a website that sells travel packages, and each package comes with quite a bit of gift-card cashback. You can also directly book airfare + Uber Credit as a package. See details here: Introduction to Upside Travel

Card Link Offer

[2019.9 update] Here is an update on the current Acorns merchants. What we care about most is the card link offer: after you link your credit card and make a purchase with participating merchants, you automatically earn cashback, and it can stack with other cashback portals and similar offers. Details are below:

  • cardlink: Which Wich 5%, Baskin-Robbins 5%, Chevron and Texaco: spend $20+ and get $0.25 back
  • Personal finance-related offers: if you already plan to sign up for these websites, you may want to go through Acorns to earn a little extra

Acorns Gift Card

I recently looked into Acorns and found that it still has some useful tricks. For example, you can use Acorns gift cards to max out Discover’s 5% PayPal category this quarter without leaving home. Note: according to a reader report, one Acorns account can only use 10 gift cards. At the current $25 denomination, that means you can only do $250 total. The steps are as follows:

  • Buy an Acorns gift card at Walmart (purchase link), or buy one through PayPal (purchase link), and pay at checkout using your Discover card in PayPal
  • After receiving the gift card, copy the code and load it into your Acorns account (reload link)
  • The gift card funds will be added to your Acorns account in 1-2 business days, after which you can withdraw directly to your bank account
  • Because this is an investment account, the money will not arrive immediately and will take 3-6 business days. During the withdrawal period, the value in the investment account may fluctuate, so the final amount received will control.
  • Compared with potential stock-market losses, the 5% return from Discover is probably enough to make the difference negligible. If you are worried about losses, you can set your Acorns investment risk to the lowest level, which should be relatively safe. Note that investment accounts also require tax reporting; if you use tax software, it is pretty simple. If you file taxes manually and do not want the hassle, then this may not be worth doing. If your total income does not reach the minimum filing threshold, then in theory you may not need to file the stock tax forms either. If you do not owe tax, the IRS is unlikely to bother you anyway (this is just my personal understanding, for reference only).

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