Thinking about retirement?
I work with college students, young professionals and people that generally don’t have $5,000 lying around to start investing for retirement. If you do, make sure to speak with a fee-only advisor (they don’t make commissions on products so their advice is non-biased) before you start investing. If you don’t I’ve come up with a list of investment options that you can use to get into the market and stick to your spending plan.
This image is from the Thrivent website.
It’s important to remember, that investing is always risky. There is no way to guarantee that you’ll always earn money if you are investing in stocks. Please take a look at this list of low cost options for opening an investment account and do your homework. Call the organizations. Ask questions. Google.
Investment firms that allow you to open an account with no, or a few, dollars to start are expecting that you will make a monthly contribution. Most will let you “turn off” the monthly contribution on months where you just don’t have the money to spare but once your spending plan is set, you’ve decided to pay yourself first, and you are committed to investing early and often, it’s best to set the money to transfer from your checking account to your new investment account automatically.
This is by no means an exhaustive list, but here are a few low barrier accounts you can open:
Open an Account With $0
Charles Schwab index funds – Choose an index fund with no minimum investment amount.
Nationwide Funds Group – Choose Automatic Asset Accumulation. From their website “When you invest the same amount on a regular basis, you buy fewer shares when the market is up and more shares when the market is down. This may cut your average cost per share because you’re buying fewer shares at a higher price and more shares at a lower price. This investment strategy is called dollar-cost averaging.”
A list of cheap robo-advisors can be found here. For those that are into technology want to open an account quickly (and use their spare change to do it, see Acorns app) this could be a good option.
Open an Account With $50
Thrivent Mutual Funds Automatic Purchase Plan – Easy to understand. Easy to set up.
Open an Account With $100
Monetta Low Minimum Investing – From their website, “Investing for your retirement or child’s educational expenses through a low minimum automatic investment plan (AIP) can be an effective way to accumulate assets. Funds are automatically deducted from your checking/savings account or paycheck. Studies indicate that regular automatic investing, also known as dollar cost averaging, has the potential to be an effective investment plan for long-term asset accumulation.”
For a few more low barrier mutual funds, visit here.
Disclaimer: The information on this site is provided for discussion purposes only, and should not be misconstrued as investment advice. Under no circumstances does this information represent a recommendation to buy or sell specific funds.
Bigger Than Your Block 