You might feel frustrated to earn a passive income online, so you come across my website to learn more about Stash Invest with hopes. However, you just can’t resist the thought of “Is Stash A Scam?” Did I just read your mind?
In this review, I will share all my findings online and my experience from the official app. It should be enough to let you make a better decision if you read to the end.
Before we dive deep, there is something I like to tell you:
First of all, I am not referring you to join Stash by my referral link, and you won’t see me selling how great this platform is. What I share today is an unbiased and honest review and to evaluate whether it suits my risk preference or not.
Secondly, you deserve a big run of applause for yourself. I can see you are doing your researches before really joining Stash. I believe this is the first step to filter out all the bad ones and pick up the perfect one for you. You are on the right track.
Without further ado, let’s explore Stash together.
Disclaimer: As the owner of Smileaffiliatesuccess.com, I have tracked down special deals for products, tools, and services mentioned herein. When you click my affiliate links on this page to make a purchase, I may get a small commission, and you will definitely get a great bargain. This is a win-win advantage for both of us.
What Is Stash?
-Summary of Stash-
Product Name: Stash
Founders: Brandon Krieg, Ed Robinson, and David Ronick
Product Type: Micro-Investment Platform
Price: $5 to open an account, $1 per month
Rating: 90 / 100
Recommend: For your investment for retirement, YES! If to generate a stable passive income stream, NO!
Stash is founded by Brandon Krieg, Ed Robinson, and David Ronick in 2015. It runs on both website platform and mobile apps to turn your spare changes into micro-investments such as a fractional share of stocks and more than 40 exchange-traded funds (ETFs).
It only takes $5 to create an account, and Stash will match you with the best plans for your investment. Before you join Stash, you are required to answer some quick questions, then Stash will connect you with the plan that you can handle.
It’s simple and easy, so lots of people join Stash to learn the basic concept of investment without much financial burden. As of July 2019, Stash had approximately 3.5 million users.
What’s inside Stash?
-The Future of Banking-
You can link your bank account with Stash, and it will offer access to tools and features that provide a smarter banking experience.
- Insight about your daily expenses and shopping advice.
- Recurring transfer to keep your Stash auto-funded and pay your recurring bills automatically.
- Mobile check deposit and an E-wallet to leave your debit card at home with ease.
- Earn pieces of stocks and funds back on qualifying purchases by stock-back reward program.
-Micro Investment-
- Stocks: Invest directly in a company you believe in by fractional shares.
- ETFs: Invest in a fractional share of ETFs that bundle securities (stocks, bonds, and/or commodities).
- Bonds: A balanced way to reduce risk with an investment by a form of debt.
-Retirement-
- Roth IRA: Earn money for retirement and pay nothing to the government
- Traditional IRA: Deduct the retirement contributions from your income to lower your tax burden
-Custodial-
The best gift for kids. You are able to invest on behalf of a child in your life, and they can take over when your kids reach 18 or 21 years old. They can use the money for the educational fee or any other opportunity. A custodial account allows a parent, guardian, or other family members/friends to do this investment.
-Education-
Stash created high-quality content to enrich people’s knowledge of investment and they’ve developed a simple, beginner-friendly investing philosophy called The Stash Way. Or, you can increase the knowledge of investment by achieving sets of challenges to earn points along the way, Stash will show the progress you’re making HERE.
-Other Minor Features-
- Auto-Stash: A set of tools that can help you save and invest automatically.
- Risk profile assessment
- Personalized guidance
- 200+ investment options
- Retirement calculator
- 256-bit encryption & transport layer security protocol to protect your information
- Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS)
For more details, feel free to check the below YouTube video.
How Do I Open A Stash Account?
You need to be at least 18 years old and $5 to open a Stash account. Besides that, Stash also requires you with the below:
- A bank account with a U.S. bank
- A social security number
- U.S. citizenship, a Green Card, or certain visas
Stash Pricing
- Stash Beginner $1 per month: personal investment account and FREE financial education.
- Stash Growth $3 per month: personal investment account, FREE financial education, and tax benefits for retirement investing.
- Stash+ $9 per month: personal investment account, FREE financial education, tax benefits for retirement investing, investing accounts for 2 kids, and monthly market insights report.
Can I Withdraw Money From Stash?
Yes, if you have balance in your Stash account, you can withdraw or transfer your money from Stash anytime you want.
If you purchase a fractional share of stocks and ETFs on Stash, you need to sell them first to get your money back. In this situation, Stash will hold your money for two days which required by SEC(U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission).
Who Is Stash For?
- People don’t have much knowledge about investment and want to start learning for the future.
- People that look for the easiest way to save money for retirement without any hassles.
- People that run out of money before month-end once in a while, Stash is able to save your spare changes.
If you are looking for ways to generate a stable passive income stream, sorry, Stash is not a good one for your needs. I will tell you my alternative to make money online in ONE minute!
Ugly Truth About Stash
TOP#1 Not For Experienced Investors
Stash might be good for beginners to get the first bite of investing, but it’s not for the experienced investors with more options. Meaning the experienced investors cannot handpick individual stocks they love to invest.
Dividends are not automatically reinvested, so this pushes away those experienced investors.
TOP#2 Not BBB Accredited
Stash is not accredited with BBB(Better Business Bureau), and as of this writing, Stash gets an F rating. To get accredited with BBB, there are some requirements a company needs to achieve. For example, a commitment to make a good faith effort to resolve any consumer complaints. I am not sure why Stash doesn’t work on this part.
TOP#3 Complaints
Let’s read some complaints on BBB, and it might give you some ideas about what kind of problems you will face if you join Stash. I suggest you check BBB before you join any online program and read the complaints on its BBB page. Most of the time, I filter out bad ones by only checking their BBB pages. Trust me!
It seems like the customer services from Stash aren’t ideal, especially to withdraw money. So, you can take note of this because it’s highly possible that you face the same issue in the future.
What I Liked About Stash
TOP#1 Low to Start
Will you say $5 dollars is expensive to start investing? I guess no! Although we are not Warren Buffett, we could start learning to invest no matter how rich we are.
As for the $1, $3, and $9 per month for a micro-investment, will you think it’s too costly? I still guess no! So, it surely reduces your stress to do investments, right?
TOP#2 Low Annual Management Cost
For an account that is less than $5,000, Stash will charge $1 per month. When your balance is higher than $5,000, you only need to pay a 0.25% fee each year.
Let’s do a quick calculation here, assuming your balance is $5,000, then your annual management fee is $5,000*0.25%=$12.5, which is very competitive!
TOP#3 Automated Features
What I love from those Fintech apps/platform is the automation feature, such as recurring transfer, recurring bills, and even the micro-investments. It simply takes the complexity out of your investing with Stash. Very easy for me!
Is Stash A Scam?
No, Stash is not a scam. It’s a legitimate platform that people could do micro-investments on both the website platform and mobile apps. You can learn basic investing knowledge and purchase a fractional share of stock and ETFs. Also, you can invest on behalf of your kids.
But, if you are looking for generating a stable passive income stream online, I would not recommend Stash to anyone because it’s mainly a platform of micro-investment for beginners or the seniors. If you agree with me on this, you will be interested in my way to make money online:
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I hope you enjoy this review and you are more than welcome to share ideas or leave your comments below. I will reply as soon as I can, thanks.
Hi Matt,
I have been looking for ways to buy bonds or another way to make passive money online. Stash seemed like a good option, and I was wondering if it operated internationally, but unfortunately it only seems to be available to US citizens. I do not live in the US. Are there any other options available internationally?
I was looking at the complaints, and there was one that struck me, someone who had 5 dollars withdrawn from his account without his approval. That is something that also makes me a little reserved about this.
Since I am a complete beginner in buying stocks, I wonder if you know of another good company that could be an option?
Thanks for another great review!
Hi Christine,
For non-US citizens but live in the U.S. legally, you could try Ally Invest. For non-citizens, to be honest, I am still on my way to find out all the opportunities.
Fintech companies are new since the 2010s, and it takes time to find the best one for yourself. I believe they all have some sorts of technical issues on the online platforms or mobile apps, so the best way is to know all pros & cons before you sign up with them. In this case, you may avoid Stash for the issue.
I have reviewed other fintech companies as below, they are all nice and decent.
–Acorns
–Betterment
–Ally Invest
–Wealthfront
Cheers,
Matt
Hi Matt,
An interesting company! I’m very cautious about linking my bank (or credit card) accounts to companies that I’ve not heard of before.
The primary reason for my caution is that if the company to which I’m linking my bank account is hacked my bank account is immediately compromised.
That aside, this looks like an interesting way to make saving for the future a bit easier and more convenient.
Cheers,
Martin.
Hi Martin,
Thanks for stopping by and leaving your honest feedback. I believe it’s an issue when you link your bank account to Stash. For this issue, I’ve checked the safety page of Stash. Here are what I got:
-Stash follows the highest standards for data protection. When you use Stash, your information is encrypted and stored on secure servers.
-Stash uses 256-bit encryption to protect all your information for personal data to transaction history.
I hope the above save your concerns.
Matt
Hi, Matt,
Thank you for this article, it was a time spent very usefully for me.
I find Stash might be a great platform to learn about investments but I really don’t like the idea of giving them my bank account information.
Taking into consideration those customers’ complaints, it’s really worth thinking twice before joining.
Also, investing on behalf of your kids should be based on strong trust for the Stash platform. How can we know that they will not disappear one day with all the money?
Hi Natalie,
Thanks for the feedback! Yes, I agree with your points about the trust of Stash. For this concern, I went to check on Stash and got the below feedback.
“No matter what, your investments are always yours. All Stash accounts are held by our trusted partner and custodian Apex Clearing, a registered broker-dealer regulated by FINRA. All investments held by Apex are protected by the Securities Investor Protection Corporation (SIPC). Stash Invest, Retire, and Custodial accounts are in the custody of Apex Clearing Corporation which is SIPC-protected up to $500,000 total, including $250,000 in cash balances. This protects against losses resulting from the failure of a broker-dealer. The $500,000 amount is standard for investment companies.”
I hope the above could solve your concerns. 🙂
Matt