I’m at the point in my life where I know I should be saving, planning for the future – yet I’d prefer to spend my money on a new life experience. Does anyone know when my adult programming will kick in and I will actively want to save for my future? Please let a girl know. 🙋🏻 For the time being, I have discovered a life hack. A way to plan for my future without affecting my present. By downloading the Acorns App and connecting it with my spending habits I have been able to continually save for the past six months.

How It Works

Acorns is an app that is easy to download in the iPhone App Store or Google Play Store. Once downloaded the app is super user-friendly and easy to navigate. Within the app, you can link your bank accounts, credit cards, and even PayPal accounts. Everywhere you spend money on the daily you can link. There is no limit to the number of accounts. Once your accounts are linked Acorns will automatically begin investing your spare change. 

Spare chage or “Round Ups” (as they’re called in the app) are the cent’s left over from every purchase.

For example, if you go to Starbucks and spend $ 3.86 on your favorite hot beverage, Acorns will automatically round that transaction to the nearest dollar and invest the change ($ 0.14).  Acorns will keep track of these roundups and then withdraw them when your round ups total $ 5.00. 

Acorns does charge a service fee of $ 1.00/month. This fee covers the administrative cost of your account. It is also good to mention that this monthly fee does increase once your account totals more than $ 5,000.00.

Slow and Steady Growth

As someone with zero investment experience or knowledge Acorns has given me the opportunity to dip my toe in the water. I opened my account on December 1st with $ 5.00 seed money and now today my account totals over $ 300.00. Penny by penny I have built an investment/savings account. The best part is because it’s fully automated – I literally set it and forget it. So easy.

One of my favorite aspects of this app is the “Potential” tab. This tab shows you a hypothetical picture of what your account will look like in 5, 10, 30+ years if you continue to save at your current rate. In addition, you can set a goal, say $ 100,000 by the time you are 65. You can click the “Change My Future” button, plug in your goal and it will show you what you need to save to meet that goal.  Now, of course, the chart displayed is not guaranteed, but it is helpful when planning for the future. 

Of course, the goal of an investment account is to continually add money and then to ride the market as a way to help with long-term goals – but, if/when you need to pull from your Acorns account you can. Not only can you withdraw the money, there is no transaction fee (this service is covered in the monthly dues).  🙌🏻🙌🏻🙌🏻

Investment Options

Acorns let’s you choose from five investment profile ranging from Conservative to Risky. When you open your account the app will walk you through a brief survey to identify the best investment profile for you. You can, however, chose a different profile if you disagree with the result of the survey. Once again everything is so easy. In the realm of #adulting, I’ll take alllll the easy options! 💯😂

Free Seed Money

This is the BEST part of Acorns! By clicking the link below Acorns with GIVE YOU $ 5.00 for FREE! Not only that, but by clicking below, I also get $ 5.00! That’s what I call a win-win! 💃🕺

Once you set up your account you’ll also receive a shareable link so you can share Acorns with your friends and family!