You can do a lot with a little money—even as a beginning investor. If you have $1,000, $100, or even just $2.26, you can start investing with little money today—right now, in fact!
You’re never going to build wealth if you don’t invest in some form. Technically, even lottery winners invest their money (by buying tickets) before becoming millionaires (by getting very, very lucky).
I’m not at all suggesting you play the lottery, however. I’m suggesting you start building a real investment portfolio instead—right now, with whatever amount of money you can spare. In this post, we’ll go through some of the best places for beginners to start investing with little money.
How to Invest with Little Money
Here are the best small investment ideas to help you grow your money:
- Invest Spare Change with Acorns
- Real Estate Crowdfunding
- High Yield Savings Accounts
- Invest In Fractional Shares
- Robo-advisors
- Get a Free Stock from Robinhood
- Certificates of Deposit
- Ally Invest: For Banking and Investing
- Peer-to-Peer Lending
- U.S. Treasury Securities
- Employer-Sponsored Retirement Plan
- Gold and Other Precious Metals
- Stock Options
- Target-Date Mutual Funds
1. Invest Your Spare Change with Acorns
Acorns lets you invest your spare change—literally—by rounding up your debit or credit card purchases to the nearest dollar. Just link your credit or debit card to the app, and once your spare change balance has reached $5, you can start investing.
With Acorns, you can choose your own risk tolerance. The app will invest your money conservatively or aggressively in an exchange traded fund based on your preferences. Unlike an individual stock, an ETF diversifies your investment instantly.
It will even round up to the nearest $10 instead of the nearest $1 to increase your investment funds more rapidly if you so choose.
Don’t forget about their weekly referral bonus opportunities which can land you anywhere from $300 to $1,200!
Learn more:
- Read our complete Acorns Review
2. Real Estate Crowdfunding
This one might surprise you, but an investor can invest in real estate without much money. With crowdfunded real estate, you can invest as little as $500.
The way it works is that an investor teams up with other real estate investors, they all pool their money together, and then they buy some real estate. You become a partial owner of the property.
Any profit made from selling the real estate, or earning income from ongoing rents, would come back to you.
Learn more:
- Read our complete Fundrise Review
- Real Estate Investing For Beginners
3. High Yield Savings Accounts
Words like “investing,” “stock markets,” and “index fund” scare off a lot of would-be investors who think they’d need a finance degree to make good investments.
In reality, saving money in a high-yield savings account is a form of investing, and you’ll have a hard time finding an easier way to invest.
Saving and investing are like siblings. You can’t really do one without the other. You can start slow—just save any loose change left over from the coffee you buy or the cost of parking. If you can put in, say, $5 a week, that can turn into $260 a year.
After 10 years—at 1% interest—you’d have $2,747. About $147 of that would be from compound interest. It’s not a lot of money, but you get the idea: Letting money grow slowly and steadily is a form of investing.
Today’s best online high-yield savings accounts earn 2% to 4% interest, which is a lot higher than the rate you’d get in your neighborhood’s brick-and-mortar bank account. If you do nothing else on this list, open up a high-yield savings account today.
FDIC insurance provides the closest thing to a risk-free investment you’ll ever find—if you have $250,000 or less in your bank account or money market account.
4. Invest in Fractional Shares
Investing in fractional shares means you can own a small piece of a company without owning one full share.
For example, let’s say you want to invest in a company, but the stock price is over $200. Instead of purchasing an entire share, modern brokers will let you purchase a “fractional share” of that company for a cheaper price. So you could possibly buy 1/2 of a share for only $100. Or, 1/20th of a share for $10. This allows you to invest in top companies, even if you can’t afford an entire share of the stock.
Better yet, many micro-investment apps charge no commissions or fees for purchasing fractional shares. You can open an account and start investing in the stock market right away, even if you have only $1 to spare.
- Robinhood is a great example, which requires no minimum investment either to open an account or to invest in fractional shares, called slices.
- Public.com is another great recommendation for fractional shares. They have one of the best user interfaces and have a free app for both Apple and Android users.
5. Robo Advisors
Investment managers and financial advisors cost money, even if you open a brokerage account with a discount broker.
Coming up with enough money to invest and pay fees and commissions on investments has rattled many would-be investors.
But cost is no longer a big issue. Now, a robo-advisor like Betterment can manage your portfolio for a small annual fee — 0.25% of your account balance (if $20,000 or more, otherwise $4 per month), to be exact.
On a balance less than $20,000, you’d pay $48 a year in management fees.
Learn more:
- Read our full list of Best Robo Advisors
6. Get A Free Stock From Robinhood
Robinhood is an online investment services company that offers commission-free trades on stocks, options, ETFs, and cryptocurrencies.
Robinhood has built lots of momentum lately due to its zero-commission structure, attractive sign-up incentives, robust trading tools, and sleek user-friendly design.
While Robinhood is particularly useful for beginners, I pay $5 a month for Robinhood Gold, their premium account option, which includes round-the-clock access to over 1,700 Morningstar reports and access to Level 2 market data, making it a great trading platform for more advanced users.
What’s more? They’ll give you free stock just for signing up.
Learn more:
- Read our complete Robinhood Review
7. Certificates Of Deposit (CDs)
Certificates of deposit (CDs) work like savings accounts but you can earn higher interest rates by agreeing to leave the money alone for a set period of time known as a “term.”
Your CD’s term could be three months or five years. Normally, a longer term means you’ll earn higher interest rates. If you need the money before the CD’s term matures, you’d have to pay a fee and lose your earnings from interest.
The downside is that CDs offer much lower returns than other types of investments, but the risk is much lower. In fact, assuming you have an FDIC-insured bank, your risk is virtually non-existent.
Want a quick start?
CIT Bank consistently offers competitive CD rates. Read our full CIT Bank Review.
9. Ally Invest: For Banking and Investing
Ally Bank is one of my favorite online banks for high-yield savings accounts. Now Ally has its own investment app, Ally Invest, and it’s a great fit for new investors with small amounts of money.
You can get commission-free trades on individual stocks, bonds, options, and exchange-traded funds.
There are no account minimums to meet before investing. (Ally does have high fees for mutual funds.)
All this sounds ideal, but I recommend Ally for new investors because of its research. For example, you can learn a lot about options and even run hypothetical scenarios before putting up actual money.
Since Ally has a quality high-yield savings account, you can move money into Ally Invest seamlessly.
Learn more:
- Read our full Ally Invest Review
10. Peer to Peer Lending
If you have $1,000, you could lend the cash to someone else as a form of investing. This kind of small investment can be risky because you don’t know if the borrower will honor his or her promise to repay the loan with interest.
So to lower this risk, you could lend out your $1,000, in small installments of $25 or $50, to a lot of different people. This is how peer-to-peer (P2P) lending works.
Platforms like Prosper and Lending Club can help you get started with just a little bit of money. You choose which borrowers to finance.
You may want to try just a few smaller loans to see what the experience is like, then increase the amounts if you feel it’s worthwhile.
Learn More:
11. U.S. Treasury Securities
Although a Treasury security (aka a savings bond) isn’t a huge money-making investment option, it can be a stable place to put your money and earn some interest.
You can buy these through the U.S. Treasury’s online savings bond portal called Treasury Direct. You can buy fixed-rate bonds that have maturity periods from 30 days to 30 years. And the great news is that bonds can cost as little as $100.
These, too, can pull money right from your payroll if you’d like. If you’re interested in bonds but don’t want to buy them directly, robo-advisors like Betterment often mix in bond investments depending on your risk tolerance.
12. Employer-Sponsored Retirement Plan
Even if money is tight, you should contribute to the 401(k) your employer offers. You can choose the amount you contribute, so even if you can only do $5 per paycheck, that’s at least a start.
This is so important because many employers match your contributions into your 401(k), up to a certain percentage. This means they’re giving you free money.
Many 401(k)s invest money in mutual funds for you so the money can grow with the market as you earn. Contributing to your 401(k) is one of the best personal finance choices you can make.
If your employer doesn’t have a 401(k) or equivalent, you can open an Individual Retirement Account (IRA) at a bank or through a stock broker.
With an IRA you can deposit money tax-free each year. (The tax-free max for 2021 is $6,000.) With a Roth IRA you don’t get the tax break now, but you can claim it after you retire when you withdraw the money.
13. Gold and Other Precious Metals
Investing in precious metals like gold can actually have a good payoff. There are doubters and critics, but the idea is that metals hold their value because they’re physical, tangible products.
The downside is that you won’t see dividends—it’s literally a piece of metal or rock that you’d lock away and hope to someday sell it for more than you bought it. However, the price of gold has gone up by over 300% in the past three decades.
It’s a risk, and you’re basically hoping that the demand for gold and other precious metals will skyrocket and people will be desperate for it. Demand tends to increase when there’s market instability like there was when the COVID-19 pandemic started.
If you think it’s a viable investment, you can buy gold or precious metals through your brokerage or from the U.S. Mint.
14. Stock Options
Stock options aren’t stocks. Options are contracts that give you the ability to buy or sell a stock at a certain price on a certain date—if you want. You’ll have options.
You can buy “calls” or “puts.” Calls are options that are projected to go up in price. Puts are projected to fall.
Options let you lock in a price well in advance, insulating you against later market instability. In times of market turmoil, options can become exceedingly valuable.
As you can already tell, dealing with stock options can get very complicated—and they’re also pretty risky.
But small investors could earn big rewards so I’m including options on this list. I’d suggest doing a little more research and getting some solid financial advice before buying in.
When you’re ready, Robinhood, the app I mentioned above, lets you trade options without paying a commission.
15. Target-Date Mutual Funds
In the age of robo-advisors and self-directed investment apps that depend on exchange-traded funds, mutual funds can fall through the cracks.
But these professionally managed funds—which resemble ETFs that require more effort to trade—still have value, especially in the long run.
A target-date mutual fund, for example, can mix up your asset allocation as time passes and the target date approaches.
Early on, the mix will hold more individual stocks. Then, as your target-date approaches, the allocation will become more bond-heavy to lower the risk. This is an ideal option for passive investing.
I recommend looking into Vanguard’s target-date mutual funds.
Why Is Investing Important?
The most advantageous part of investing is that it can provide you with a consistent passive income stream. These are investments that you don’t have to think about every day.
So when you’re chilling at the park or at the beach, you know you’re still earning money and can avoid the rat race of trading your limited hours for money.
Building another income stream through an investment portfolio is a key way to add a third dimension to your personal finance life.
Another great part of investing is something called compound earnings. This is money gained on top of money already earned by being reinvested. So you can see how important it is to start saving money and investing as soon as you can. $1 now is worth more than $1 five years from now. With investing, time truly is money.
Taking advantage of compound earnings allows you, at the very least, to afford price increases from inflation and other natural market trends.
Over time you can slowly decrease your dependence on working for an income. For example, I made $45 an hour on my investments last year. (Warren Buffett made $1 million an hour from his!)
You’ll need time and patience to build this kind of investment portfolio. But you don’t need a huge amount to get started, you can use small investments to make money.
If you currently have any consumer debt, it might be a good idea to pay off that debt first, before investing.
Learn More:
Automate Your Savings
As I mentioned earlier, the more you can save now, the more it will pay off in the future. If you don’t have a lot of money to invest in at first, you won’t earn much. But that’s OK. Just get into the habit of diverting part of your monthly income into investments month after month and year after year.
I would also recommend finding ways to save a little extra money to put aside for these investments. This could be going out to eat one less time per week or skipping Starbucks once a week and making your own coffee at home. If you’re really serious, get a part-time job and invest all of those wages. Or start a side hustle like a DoorDash delivery gig and invest your earnings.
The amount you save now can passively grow exponentially with the right investments. Let us show you how to get started investing and how to use small investments to make money.
Tracking Your Investments
One of the most important practices in investing is to monitor your overall financial growth to see how your wealth is accumulating over time—a practice called net worth tracking.
Thankfully, there’s a free app for that! The best tool to help monitor and track your investments is called Personal Capital.
Personal Capital is an online investment management company that allows you to connect all your financial accounts and view them in a single dashboard. They offer free budgeting tools, expense tracking, and a number of advisory services to help monitor and grow your wealth.
- Check out our full Personal Capital Review
Frequently Asked Questions
Is it worth investing with little money?
Absolutely! Everyone has to start somewhere. No matter how small you feel your savings are, learning to invest is a vital part of building wealth and working towards financial freedom. If you don’t have a lot of money to invest at first, you won’t earn much. But that’s OK. Just get into the habit of diverting part of your monthly income into investments month after month and year after year.
Learning how to invest with little money provides a few benefits. The first obviously is a return on your capital. Even if you only make a few dollars in interest or profit, that’s money that you wouldn’t have otherwise.
The next benefit is the experience and knowledge you gain from making a small investment. If you don’t know how to invest $100 right now, you probably won’t know the best way to invest $10,000 later. Or even $1 million later in life. Every millionaire started small by learning how to invest with little money first.
Lastly, watching your money grow is incredibly empowering. It is proof that you can build wealth, even with a small income or little savings. Learning how to invest with little money is absolutely worth it.
Can I Invest As Little As $100?
With $100, you can invest in fractional shares, group real estate projects, savings and retirement accounts, or even start a side hustle or business. Thanks to living in the 21st century, there are investing apps that allow you to invest in just about anything you want.
For more detailed options, read our post on How To Invest $100.
How do beginners buy stocks?
One of the best ways for beginners to invest in stocks is via mutual funds inside an employee-sponsored 401(k) plan. Contributions are automatically deducted from your paycheck, and the money is invested broadly across the stock market.
If you have spare cash and want to invest outside of traditional retirement accounts, there are a number of beginner investing apps that cater to new investors. Acorns and Robinhood are good examples of this kind of micro-investing app. They have a simple sign-up process to open a trading account and begin investing.
While we typically recommend a mutual fund or index fund investing for beginners, if you’re looking to invest in individual company stocks, we recommend thorough research and starting very small.
Learn more:
Should I invest or pay off debt first?
Having debt while trying to build wealth is like running up an escalator that is moving downwards. It’s not impossible to climb your way up, but with each step forward you are still moving backward a little.
New investments may make you money, but if you carry consumer debt, the interest payment may wipe away all your gains. Typically, it’s smarter to abolish all high-interest debt instead of investing. Pay off your high-interest credit cards, car loans, and personal loans as soon as possible.
Paying off debt is a form of investing. It’s risk-free, provides an instant return, and can improve your credit score in many ways.
Learn more:
Start by Making Small Investments
There are several ways to start investing, even if you don’t have a ton of money in the bank—even if you have only $5 or so for your initial investment!
Yes, investing can be risky, especially when you’re buying securities and not CDs. We all fear the risk, but isn’t it a risk not to invest?
What happens if an emergency hits? What if you’re never financially free and can never afford to stop working all the time?
With these simple investment strategies, there is no excuse to wait until you have saved thousands. That’s the bottom line. You can start today!
Read 3 comments
Read Comments