Tags
The experts say that you need to start investing for retirement by the time you are 30. I’m well past 30 and haven’t saved a single dime. Isn’t that horrible?
I know I should. I’ve always mean to and sometimes I even do, or at least I try to. But life happens and it seems like every time I start to get ahead, something blows up.
Recently however, I discovered an app called Stash. They have a 30-day free trial so I decided to check it out.
Basically, it’s an investment app. You put money in your account and use that money to invest into various funds.
I intended to start out slow with $5, the minimum required to invest in a fund. However, I messed up by clicking buttons without reading and ended up with $15 instead of $5. Still, $15 wasn’t bad so I went ahead and pushed forward.
With my $15 Stash balance, I spent $5 on three different funds.
Yes, I know investing $5 in something isn’t going to make me rich. But that wasn’t really my point. I was just trying to learn how it all worked.
After two weeks, I put another $5 into my Stash account, and then invested that in another fund.
At the end of the month, I seen a small return on all my investment funds, except for one. I picked “All That Glitters” because someone once told me that investing in things like Gold and Silver during times of political turmoil was a good idea. I put $5 into my fund during the Trump and Clinton election. So far, that fund is down 2.16%. Guess that’s what I get for listening to random people about investing.
Overall though I was still ahead, making more than I invested, so I put another $5 into my Stash account. This time, instead of finding a new fund, I put it in a fund that I had previously invested in. The Raw Earth fund had the most gains so now with a $10 investment into Raw Earth, I’m happy to say that I am showing a 4.27% growth.
By investing small amounts, $5 or $10 here and there, it makes saving money easier. My sister invests 4% of her check every month into her retirement account. That’s only $250 a month, and I know I should do that too but I just don’t. I’m sorry I’m just not that responsible.
Instead I’m going to try it this way. I’ll put $5 in every time I have a little bit of money. During the first 30 days of using this app that turned out to be $30.
By the way, you can find the Stash app in iTunes. It’s free to use for the first 30 days and then after that it cost $1 per month.
If you don’t know anything about investing, don’t worry. They make it easy.
- Step 1: Deposit some money into your Stash Account
- Step 2: Tell it something you like. ie: Movies, Jewelry, The Environment (You have a long list to pick from)
- Step 3: Invest the money you put into your Stash account in one of the suggested funds.
- Step 4: Wait and watch your money grow.
You won’t get rich overnight but it’s nice seeing that $5 you put in turn into $5.10 and then $5.43 and then eventually who knows how much.
This isn’t really meant for short term earnings. It’s about the long haul. Put some money in today, invest it and forget about it. Over time that $5 will grow. It will one day become $10 or maybe even more.
The point is, that you do something. Nobody ever really has a lot of spare money lying around but you have to try and saving money and investing in your future with a mobile app like Stash makes it a lot less painful.
If you put just a tiny bit of money in your Stash account every time you can, it will start to add up over time.
Update: In the end I used the app for 90 days, which ended up costing me $2 since my first 30 days were free. I ended up making a 1.46% return on my total investment. Since I actually made more than I spent I call it a win but even better, it actually forced me to save money that I wouldn’t have otherwise done.
