 What's happening? It's Shane here. So the reason you clicked on this video is because you wanted to see the top 10 investing apps. And I'm too lazy to come up with a clever intro this time. So just smash the like button please. Now these are all going to be apps that are going to help you with personal finance and investing either directly or indirectly. Some of them are going to be investing apps. That's what they do. And then others are going to be apps that kind of help you manage your personal finances in general, which will then along the line help you to invest as well. So number 10 on the list is going to be Mint. And this is an app and a website that is basically known for helping you to budget. Now they do offer an investment account along with the budgeting tools, but it's very clear that Mint is a budgeting app first. And then everything else is kind of just something else that they threw in there. Now out of all of the apps on the list, I have been using Mint for the longest time. And by the way, all of these apps on this list are ones that I've either personally used or very close friends of mine have used and I've done extensive research on all of them in order to give you guys the best possible options. Now Mint is a really good option. If you want to keep a pretty detailed budget, it's relatively easy to set up. I even did a video on how to set up Mint in the past. Now there is some level of artificial intelligence in there where, you know, you do have to categorize some of the transactions at first. And then as the months go on, it kind of gets smart and it knows what categories you want certain things in. So for instance, it might automatically put you purchasing an ice cream at a gas station as groceries, but maybe in reality, you want to put that in your fun category. So just funny money. After a few months, it'll probably know that that's what you automatically wanted to do. And then it just automatically goes in that category, saving you a ton of time. Now if you didn't already know, Mint basically just pulls transactions from your bank account, your credit cards, and your debit cards. You set it up one time in theory. And it's basically good to go after that. You never have to reconnect them. Now on top of that, Mint is going to look at all of your spending habits and provide insights to you like it might tell you, like it told me that spend way too much money on food. There was a time in my life where I was going out almost every night to restaurants or going out to lunch almost every day. And so I was spending over $1,000 a month just on food alone. And Mint let me know that they basically made fun of me to the point where I had to change my ways. Now another thing on the app, I've never actually used this, but it does have a nice little bill pay feature that reminds you when bills are due. I personally just have all of my bills automatically set to be paid at a certain time every single month. So I never really had to use that feature. And I've tried so many different budgeting methods. I've tried, you know, Excel sheets. I've tried doing it just normally in real life using pen and paper, the envelope method. I've tried a bunch of different budgeting methods and Mint for the longest time was my favorite method. Then one day all of a sudden, you know, one of my cards disconnected from Mint. And so it wasn't capturing all of the data from that card. And I tried to reconnect it and it seemed to have an issue where I couldn't reconnect it. And so I tried to reach out to customer service. So I called the Mint customer service line. And they basically told me that I need to call their parent company, which is into it in order to get the problem fixed. So I called the parent company into it the exact number that they gave me. And they sent me right back to the Mint customer service line. So I do a ton of research on the internet trying to figure out what the heck is going on here. And someone tells me that I need to contact QuickBooks, which is another product that is under the parent company of Intuit. So basically long story short, the company really isn't putting that much support into their product Mint anymore. And they're putting almost all of their support into the QuickBooks product, which by the way offers some of these same services that Mint offers, but you have to pay for it every month. So this happened relatively recently. I hope they change it. It's been really disappointing because I tried to connect another credit card to it and it just wouldn't work for some reason. And so this has happened on two separate occasions and it just really messes up the entire budget when you don't have all of your credit cards connected to Mint. And I wasn't able to get any of the problems resolved. And it's really clear to me at this point that they don't care all that much about the customer experience. And it looks to me like they're basically trying to upsell people to QuickBooks. And I looked up a bunch of reviews online and other people are having the same exact problem. And this is just extremely disappointing. I really hope that they get this fixed in the near future because I used their app for so many years and I got so much value from it and I really loved it. But recently it's really gone downhill. However, I do have an alternative, which is going to be coming up at some point on this list. So stay tuned for that. Number nine on the list is going to be Acorns. And this is basically an app that you hook up to your debit card or your credit card and it just invests your spare change. So let's say you go to the store and you buy something that's $3.60 on your credit card or your debit card. And it'll basically take that extra 40 cents, you know, to round up to $4.00. And it'll invest that into your account automatically out of all the apps on the market that I've looked at. And I have looked at a ton of them. This one has to take the cake as being the very easiest one to use. You literally just set it up, you put your credit card on there or your debit card on there and boom, it's done. It's just automatically does it for you. You can even just forget the password probably and it'll still just keep investing for you for years. And I put a lot of value in apps and services out there that make investing as easy as possible because the earlier that you start investing the better. Realistically speaking, this is not an app that you're going to be using for the rest of your life, most likely. At some point, you're probably going to start investing, you know, parts of your paycheck, just automatically set it up and just have that invested straight into your brokerage account. But as a beginner investor, this might actually be the best app out there. It would probably take you, you know, 10 minutes to set up. You just hook your debit card on there. And then every time you use it, whether you're going to the store to buy, you know, a fidget spinner or you're going to buy something on Amazon, it'll just automatically round your purchase up. Now, they do have some other, you know, integrations into their app, which I think are pretty cool. So for instance, they partnered with a bunch of brands. And when you shop with certain stores, those stores will actually invest a tiny little bit of money into your brokerage account with acorns. And there's a bunch of cool little features like that. It's a neat app. I really like it a lot. Great for beginners. But there are a few downsides to it. And I'm going to go over those right now. So overall, they charge you $1 a month in order to use the service. And that probably doesn't sound like very much in the grand scheme of things, but there is a big problem with that. And that is you're probably only going to invest like maybe 25 bucks a month at most. I mean, think about it, how many purchases do you really make, you know, 20 cents here, 10 cents there, five cents here, 50 cents there, 80 cents there. I mean, it does add up on some level, but in one single month, you're probably not going to add up to that much more than maybe $25, let's say. So by investing $25 and a $1 service fee every single month, that means that they are charging you 4% on your investments. That is higher than any brokerage out there by a long shot. That is like, that's awful. And especially considering that let's say you go for an index fund and the market average is about 7% to 8% per year, if you adjust for inflation, that means that they are going to be taking a significant amount of your profit. And for that reason, I don't think that acorns is a viable long-term solution. But the reason that I kept it on this list is just because it's so good for beginners to just start investing. And it just has a really cool concept to it as well. It's just like investor spare change. Number eight on the list is going to be a very interesting app that I found, which is called Titan. So this is a very weird app, I have to admit, because they market themselves as basically a hedge fund for the everyday person. And they basically say, you know, hedge funds are not accessible for the everyday person because you have to have a certain amount of money in order to invest in a hedge fund. But this is basically a way for everyone to group their money together. And that way, you know, normal everyday people can invest in them. Now they're technically not a hedge fund. They're more of an algorithmic investing platform. But I mean, we're not going to get into the details here. So I think the real value that this app offers is the fact that you basically get access to people who are experts who are, you know, hedge fund managers, they are financial experts, and they can tell you why they're making some of the investing decisions that they're making. To me, this is extremely educational and it's kind of like getting free access to some of the smartest people in the world. So I think if you're the type of person that, you know, maybe you want to go into finance, you want to major in finance, work in a finance company, or start your own hedge fund someday, this one might actually be one that you can look into. Or maybe you're just the type of person who wants to get really serious about investing and you do want to, you know, try to stock pick, which I don't recommend. But if you're going to do it, you're going to do it. Now I do have some reservations about this company. And that's why they didn't make it higher on the list. First of all, they're a relatively new company, but they claim that their all time performance is 3% higher than the S&P 500. That is completely hypothetical. And the way they word it, in my opinion, is a little bit suspect. They word it in such a way where it seems like they actually beat the S&P 500 when in reality, they just ran a program model of what companies they should invest in based off of different things that they can hypothetically invest in in the future as well. And I see this with different companies all the time when they try to get you to invest in mutual funds or hedge fund marketing, or where they'll say, Oh, look at this mutual fund, it outperformed the S&P 500, you know, for 30 years now. Well, the thing is, is what they do is they start like 1000 different funds and then they cherry pick the ones that actually do outperform the S&P 500. In reality, very few of them do. Depending on the study you look at it's somewhere between 90 and 95% of the time, a normal index fund will actually beat a hedge fund manager. In reality, when you look at the studies, depending on which one you look at a normal, you know, just S&P 500 index fund will beat a hedge fund manager somewhere between 90 and 95% of the time. So overall, I think the idea behind this one is really cool. And I think if you are very serious about investing, you want to become a professional who's either a hedge fund manager, you work for a big company or something along those lines. This is one that you should look into. And maybe you should even, you know, open up an account and start with them. So number seven on the list is going to be stash. And this is another really well known investing app out there. And the way I like to explain stash to people is it's kind of like Robinhood, but it's even easier to invest than Robinhood. So what they do is they'll ask you a bunch of personal questions and a bunch of questions about what types of companies that you want to invest in, and then they'll make a portfolio for you around your personal beliefs. So this is a very interesting concept overall, in my opinion. So let's say you only want to invest in green companies, companies that are good for the environment, for instance, you can tell them that and then they will only make investments in companies that are, you know, certified as being really good for the environment and they're green. This is just one example of many different things that you could do based off of your personal beliefs. But as you can see, this is a really good way of getting young people into investing. The idea of investing and personal finance that a lot of young people have is that it's just greedy and it's just kind of icky. And, you know, they just don't want to have anything to do with it. But when you make a company where you can actually invest in things that you believe in, that makes it so much easier for someone to start. And on top of that, this is one of the easiest ones to sign up for. I'd say it's maybe the second easiest behind acorns. Now, with that being said, I did use this one for a little while and then I stopped using it just because of the fact that I can easily just do research on these companies investing them in myself anyways. So it does have a $0 account minimum. And so you can literally just invest $1 if you want to. However, depending on what type of service that you go for, it's going to cost somewhere between $1 a month and $9 a month. So unless you're investing a ton of money with them, these fees are definitely not going to be worth it. But with that being said, I did put it on the list just because of the fact that they have gotten a ton of people into investing that otherwise wouldn't have gotten into it. And if this is something that resonates with you, you should definitely check them out. Number six on the list is going to be Betterment. Now, Betterment is technically what's known as a robo advisor. And a robo advisor is kind of just like a financial advisor that gives advice to you on what to invest in based off of algorithms and all of that sort of thing with almost no or very little human interaction. So it basically tells you what to invest in based on algorithms and a bunch of other different signs from across the world. And there's no human intervention there. Now without a doubt, Betterment is one of the best robo advisors out there. There's no account minimum. So you can start investing with any amount of money. And they charge about 0.25% when it comes to the assets that you have on there. Now that is a tiny bit high. It's definitely not as bad as some of the other ones on the list. But they also have an option to have unlimited access to personal financial advisors for about a 0.4% fee. So Betterment really does provide a great service there. You have access to people who are true professionals, financial advisors, and they can give you advice on not just investments, but they can also give you advice on other areas of personal finance in general. Now, the thing here is, and this is why they didn't rank higher on the list, is I don't know if I trust robo advisors at this point. They're just too new in my opinion, and nobody really knows what's going to happen in the future with them. It sounds really good in theory because of the fact that, you know, there's no real people who are managing your money. And so therefore, they save a ton of costs by making an algorithm manage your money rather than a real person. So in theory, you can see why robo advisors, you know, might be a really good idea. But the problem with that is there is no track record for robo advisors. They haven't been around long enough for me to put my trust in them. And so for that reason, I'm going to step back from these and kind of just like wait and see what happens with them. Number five on the list is going to be Wealthfront. And up until very recently, Wealthfront was actually one of my favorite companies on this entire list. They probably would have made it into the top three. Now, technically, they are a robo advisor and they charge a 0.25% management fee. And on top of that, there's a lot of promotions out there that will give you free management under $5,000. Now, a lot of my viewers on this channel are young people who would probably be investing less than $5,000. And so if you're interested in trying out robo advisors, which are very easy to use, this would be a good option for you. The reason that I like Wealthfront so much is because they're integrating a bunch of different services together. So for instance, when I was looking at different savings accounts to put my emergency fund in, I decided to go with Wealthfront because of the fact that they offered a 2.57% interest on their savings account at one point. 2.57% interest on a savings account is just that's amazing. That's almost as much as you would get investing in bonds. And on top of that, Wealthfront is kind of positioning themselves and moving in a direction to basically just act as your own personal financial advisor. They're supposed to help you to kind of move towards retirement, for instance, you know, setting a target date, figuring out when you can retire and how much money you need to save and invest in order to do that. And it's clear to me that they're trying to integrate all of the services together just to make the best user experience possible. However, there are a few problems here with Wealthfront. And that's why they no longer rank as high on the list for me. First of all, that 2.57% interest on the savings account was taken down to 0.35%. Now, I know with the current situation, a lot of companies did take down their interest rates, but 0.35% is well below the industry average for online savings accounts. So when I see a company do this, it makes me lose a lot of respect for them because I realized that it was basically just a marketing ploy to get me to put my money with them. And then they took that away afterwards. Another thing that kind of annoys me with robo advisors in general is they talk so much about tax loss harvesting. And that's basically where it makes it very easy for you to deduct taxes based on your investments. Now, they market it like it's some kind of huge deal and it's going to save you so much money. But in reality, it doesn't usually save you that much money unless you have a ton of money invested. And then on top of that, it's very easy for you to do it yourself or just have your accountant do it. But overall, this is a company I was very excited about just a few months ago. Unfortunately, they have kind of knocked down a little bit on my rankings. But hopefully after this whole, you know, pandemic stuff is over, they return to what they were before. Number four on the list is going to be M1 Finance. Now, this is a very interesting one because they're kind of a hybrid between a robo advisor and a traditional investment firm. I think M1 Finance offers you a really good mixture between automating things so that you don't have to spend that much time on research or, you know, making the moving your money from one account to the another or anything like that. But you still have a good amount of control over your money and where your investments are going. They also have pretty much zero fees on their platform or very close to zero, which is awesome. And I honestly think that M1 Finance might kind of be the dark horse on this list. They could end up being, you know, number one a few years from now, or they could end up being off the list. They are very easy to sign up with. And that's kind of the main point of this list in general is apps that are just super easy for you to sign up. They have a really good user interface. They just make everything seamless. So if you are going to go for a robo advisor where you're not going to have to spend that much time or money or anything like that, I would probably go with M1 Finance. Number three on the list is going to be personal capital. Now, when Mint stopped working for me, I basically started searching for an alternative to it and personal capital is what I found. They basically offer some of the same budgeting tools that Mint offers. It's a little bit different, but it's more or less the same. They're very easy to use. They have 24 seven customer service and I made sure to test out the customer service. They're actually really good. And with that 24 seven customer service, you actually have access to a team of financial advisors that alone is just a huge selling point. Being able to talk to someone, just call someone up on the phone or talk to them or email them and ask them questions about personal finance and retirement and all that sort of thing is invaluable. Now they offer a ton of other service such as guidance and education on retirement planning. This is another company that I see moving in that direction of just being that full service, a big picture where they just take care of all of the customer's needs in one place. I'm really enjoying personal capital right now. I think they're great and I would recommend you trying them out as well. Number two on the list is going to be an oldie but a goodie, which they're not really that old at all actually, but it's going to be Robinhood. And I don't think I need to say too much about Robinhood. It's probably the most well known investing app out there. They have an account minimum of zero. They have zero dollar trade fees on just about everything. They were the first ones to do this to make it ridiculously cheap and ridiculously easy for just about anybody out there to invest. On top of that, when you start an account, they give you free stocks so they even incentivize you to start investing. I think Robinhood has single-handedly caused hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people to start investing that maybe wouldn't have otherwise. You know, I'm a huge fan of Robinhood. I think they changed the personal finance and investing game forever. Ever since they came onto the scene, all the other companies have just been trying to catch up to them and offer the same level of value and service that they do. The platform is extremely user-friendly, very easy to use. It'll probably take you 5, 10, maybe 15 minutes at most in order to set up an account. Now, I honestly think for people that have been investing for a while, there are other options that are as good, if not just a little bit better. But if you're a beginner, Robinhood is an amazing platform and what do you have to lose? You start an account, you get a couple of free stocks, you know, you don't you don't have anything to lose. Number one on the list is basically tied with Robinhood and that's going to be Webull. So Webull came around right after Robinhood and I would say they're probably Robinhood's biggest competitors because they offer very similar service. Basically, no trade fees, $0 account minimum, so you can start investing with $1 if you want to. And all of the other bells and whistles are very similar to the same as Robinhood. Now, on top of that, I believe they offer the best sign up bonus out of any of the investing apps. And that is if you invest $100 with them, you can get two free stocks valued up to $1400. That's even better than what Robinhood offers. And so for that reason, I decided to put them number one on this list because that just incentivizes people who wouldn't have invested otherwise to start investing. But overall, check out my videos right here. I made them just for you. Go ahead, smash the like button, hit the subscribe button, ring the notification bell and then comment down below any thoughts, comments, criticisms or whatever your opinion is on different apps that you've used. Thank you so much for watching and bye for now.