Hi all,
I took a long break from investing for a few reasons (mostly that I was working on two startups, but also that I wanted to pay down some debt). I've always had a Sharebuilder account (now Capital One Investing) and have been pretty happy with it... cheap real time trades, and automatic investment programs (occur every Tuesday for dollar cost averaging) as cheap as $2-3 per trade.
I was about to pick this strategy up again, but more recently I've noticed the robo investment apps like Acorns. The fees seem astronomically reasonable ... .25% of your balance each year in lieu of trade commissions. They're investing in ETFs, which I understand to typically be better than mutual funds.
Does anyone have any thoughts on programs like these for things like retirement investing? Obviously if I want to speculate on a single stock, a traditional broker makes sense, but for averaging out over the years, I can see how these apps are attractive. Looks like I could replicate the same thing at Capital One with their portfolio builder, but that ends up being $18.95 every time you buy up to 8 ETFs. Even if I invest little by little once per month in one of their portfolios, that would still be $240/year in commissions. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I would have to have $100,000 invested before those fees were better than Acorns .25% per year (assuming I never stopped investing).
Any thoughts? What am I missing?
I took a long break from investing for a few reasons (mostly that I was working on two startups, but also that I wanted to pay down some debt). I've always had a Sharebuilder account (now Capital One Investing) and have been pretty happy with it... cheap real time trades, and automatic investment programs (occur every Tuesday for dollar cost averaging) as cheap as $2-3 per trade.
I was about to pick this strategy up again, but more recently I've noticed the robo investment apps like Acorns. The fees seem astronomically reasonable ... .25% of your balance each year in lieu of trade commissions. They're investing in ETFs, which I understand to typically be better than mutual funds.
Does anyone have any thoughts on programs like these for things like retirement investing? Obviously if I want to speculate on a single stock, a traditional broker makes sense, but for averaging out over the years, I can see how these apps are attractive. Looks like I could replicate the same thing at Capital One with their portfolio builder, but that ends up being $18.95 every time you buy up to 8 ETFs. Even if I invest little by little once per month in one of their portfolios, that would still be $240/year in commissions. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I would have to have $100,000 invested before those fees were better than Acorns .25% per year (assuming I never stopped investing).
Any thoughts? What am I missing?
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