 What's happening guys? It's Shane here. So last year I did the video about my favorite investing slash finance apps and it did really well, but a lot has happened since then in the investing community. Today, Robinhood cracks down on trading GameStop shares as the Reddit Rebellion dominates discussion on Wall Street. And I've also spent a lot more time using and researching a lot of these different apps. There's so many at this point. There's some new ones that have come onto the market that I wasn't even aware of. And so that's what this video is. It's going to be an update on my 2020 version. So without further ado, let's jump right into it. First one on the list is going to be Acorns. And I have to say this is probably the easiest investment app to use. So basically what you do is you hook up your debit card or your credit card to Acorns. And then every single time you buy something, let's say you go to Starbucks and you get a coffee for $4.50, it actually rounds it up to $5. And it will invest about 50 cents into whatever you choose to invest in. It takes like 10 minutes to set it up super easy. So if you're looking for the easiest possible way to just get started investing, this one can be great. The only problem is they charge you about $1 a month in order to invest. And chances are unless you're just buying stuff left and right, that $1 charge is going to be a heck of a lot more than what normal brokerages would charge you for commission. So for that reason, I'm going to go ahead and put Acorns into C tier. C for costs a lot. Next one on the list is going to be Betterment. And this one is going to be a robo advisor. So if you don't know what robo advisors are, that's basically kind of like an algorithm that invests for you. And sometimes they'll even give you financial advice. They have little to no human intervention whatsoever. Some of the robo advisors have a little bit and then some of them have quite a bit more, but this one doesn't have all that much intervention. Now robo advisors are still relatively new. I would say that Betterment is one of the better ones out of all the robo advisors. There's so many of them these days. So I'm going to go ahead and put this one into B tier B for better than average. Next on the list is going to be M1 Finance. Now M1 is sort of like a robo advisor brokerage hybrid. So it's a good kind of combination between having that automated investment. So you don't have to spend too much time on it, which you know, time is the most valuable currency as they always say. And then also having a little bit more control over where your money is going. They also have pretty much zero fees on their platform, which is awesome. I used M1 Finance. I really liked it. I think it's probably the best robo advisor. I liked it so much that I actually started investing my Roth IRA into M1 Finance. So I moved my Roth IRA over from Fidelity, which is also awesome, into M1 Finance just because of the fact that I love how hands off it is. I don't have to do anything with it. So M1 Finance is going into S tier S for shares are bought automatically. All right. So the next one on the list is going to be mint.com. This is one that I used for years. I absolutely loved mint.com. It was great for budgeting, just keeping things simple and budgeting. And I made an entire video about mint.com because I liked it so much. Basically what happened is the company moved away from their free product, which was, you know, mint, into kind of not really providing any support for it. Like you would call and, you know, they wouldn't have any support. They would tell you to call another number. And then the other number would tell you to call back to the original number, just really awful support. There was a lot of bugs with it. And you could just tell that the company decided into it is the parent company. They decided to move away from their free product of mint. And so this used to be an amazing product. It looks like they're still kind of going down that route of not really providing much support for it. So for that reason, it is going into D tier D for disappointed. Next one on the list is a really good alternative to mint.com, which is personal capital started using this one last year. Huge fan of personal capital. It's very similar to mint. Not quite as detailed, but it's kind of like a wealth planning site. Very easy to use, good budgeting tools, customer support is great. I've been really enjoying personal capital. They are going to go into S tier S for super useful. Next one on the list is going to be a very controversial company. They have been in the headlines all throughout 2020 and into 2021 Robin Hood. So I used to be a huge fan of Robin Hood. I still maintain that they changed the investing game forever when they basically made fees almost nothing. All of the other brokerages kind of tried to copy them. Robin Hood basically made it to where the average investor could invest for very low fees and also get into investing extremely easily. Okay. So they changed the game forever. You got to give them credit for that. But unfortunately they were involved in a huge controversy this last year. A lot of people probably know about it. You know, they blocked the buying of a GameStop stock when it was going up, when hedge funds were losing billions of dollars to average normal people investors. And that actually helped the hedge funds out and hurt normal people. Now there's a lot more to it than that. You know, there are certain stipulations that they have to meet as a financial company. You know, the CEO of Robin Hood came out and he kind of explained what happened. And you know, there's a lot more to it than that. But they seem to be the scapegoat for the entire situation. Also, there is a lot of limits to Robin Hood and how you can use it, how they make money is a little bit sketchy as well to say the least. And you know, I've just been, I haven't been using Robin Hood as much. I think I really like using Webull, which is kind of the main Robin Hood competitor. It's a little bit more difficult to use than Robin Hood, just slightly more difficult. But there's just so much more that you can do on Webull. So overall, I'm going to have to go ahead and drop Robin Hood down into B tier B for blocked GameStop stock. Next one on the list is going to be Stash. And this is a really interesting company. So basically what Stash is all about is let's say you really believe in something like let's say you really believe in like augmented reality. Okay, you can invest in companies that are surrounding that entire technology, right? So you can really get down to what you believe in. Let's say you are really into like sustainable energy. You can invest in companies that are sustainable energy friendly, right? So you have a choice in what types of companies that you invest in. And then they sort of like make everything else automated for you. So this is a new thing that I see a lot of people really getting into is they don't care as much about the profits. Like they're willing to maybe take a few hits on when it comes to the profits, but they want to invest in things that they really believe in. So that's why I think Stash has been so popular, especially with the younger crowd. So, you know, Stash is kind of a dark horse candidate. They could potentially be even worth more in the future. But at the same time, I could see some of these other companies kind of copying what they do relatively easily. So I'm going to go ahead and put Stash into B tier, B for belief and investing in what you believe in. Next on the list is going to be Titan. And, you know, this one is really interesting because last year when I went over them, I wasn't a huge fan of them, but they have done really, really well, especially over this, this, you know, 2020 and this last bull run that happened. Titan has really performed well. So I got to give them props for that. But basically what Titan is or I guess kind of the way that they market themselves, which I don't know, to me, it's just a little bit sketchy. But the way they market themselves is like you have access to hedge fund managers and they invest for you, but they sort of like educate you on how they're investing. So the way they market themselves is they're bringing hedge fund investing to the general public. So if you're the type of person who wants to get really serious about investing, like maybe you want to go into the finance industry, maybe you should invest on this one just so you can kind of see their thought process behind their stock picks. Now I'm not really into like hedge fund investing and like mutual funds and that sort of thing. I think mutual funds are great. It's just that index funds are better. The reason for that is because index funds do just as well as mutual funds, if not a little bit better, but there's less fees. But with that being said, you got to give Titan their props. They did great over this last year. I'm going to go ahead and put them into B tier. Next on the list, we're going to be talking about wealth front, another robo advisor. This one is, you know, they all have their own kind of little flavor to them. They're not all exactly the same. This type of robo advisor offers some other services kind of like wealth management as well. So it's not just about investing, but it's about the full financial picture. That's kind of what wealth front is trying to do for you. So they're kind of integrating like your full financial picture together, so that you sort of just have one platform to go through that will kind of make a plan for you. So I've used wealth front's emergency fund for a while. I thought it was really good. It was like 2.57% at one point. And then a drop down like ridiculously low when stocks dropped and it hasn't really recovered. So that was a little disappointing. But if you want a service that just invests for you, makes everything super, super easy, you got to give it to wealth front. They are great. You just put your money in with them. You set it to be automated and they'll just do all of the work for you. And they'll also give you really good financial tips along the way. They also do what's known as cash loss harvesting and they can do that automatically for you, which can save you a little bit of money when it comes to tax time. So overall, really big fan of wealth front. I'm going to go ahead and put them into S tier S for superior robo advisor. Next one on the list is going to be Weebel. And this is my favorite company for beginners. Okay. So if you're a beginner, you've never invested before. I think this is the best company to start with. The reason for this is not only because they're very easy and beginner friendly, they've got a great interface on their app. But on top of that, they offer you a free promo just for signing up. And it's probably the best promo in the entire business. Depending on when you sign up, you know, as long as you invest about $100, they're going to be somewhere between like 1400 and $1800 in free stocks. Usually it's like two to four free stocks. Sometimes they run promos and it's a little bit more, but it's like a ridiculous value. You get so much just for starting off investing with them. And because of that, so many people that probably never would have invested have started to invest. And, you know, sometimes it's not about how good the return is. It's more about just getting people to start investing, right? Getting people excited about investing at an early age, right? So if this gets people excited about investing at like 18, 19, 20 instead of the average person who probably doesn't even start investing until they're like 35 years old, then that is a great thing. You can also check out their link down in the description below. I think right now it's about $1800 up to four free stocks, which is awesome. Very user friendly, takes like 15, 20 minutes to set up. Love Webull. I actually have multiple accounts with them because I use them for some of my videos here on YouTube. This one clearly goes into S tier, S for Easiest Way to Buy Stonks. Next on the list is YNAB, also known as You Need a Budget. It's another budgeting app. This one charges a certain amount every month. It changes depending on the promo. It's like seven to like $12 per month just to have a budgeting app. There is an entire community of people who really love YNAB and I just don't understand it. It seems like a cult to me. You know, I don't see how this app can be better than the free ones. I mean, it's just very easy to set up like a free or you know, app that's a budgeting system. I don't understand it. You can also just, you know, budget using paper. There's a lot of different systems. You can use like the envelope system, Google Excel spreadsheets. I've actually made several videos on my channel about these. So I don't get it. You know, there's a, there's so many people who really like YNAB. I just, I don't know, F tier. I'm sorry guys. F4 should be free. Next on the list is going to be public. And this is a new company. What I really like about public is they cater to long-term investing. Okay. So public is one of those companies that encourages long-term investing, which, you know, I talk about this all the time on my channel. The best type of investing is going to be long-term, you know, doing like day trading or swing trading. Most people end up failing with that. However, it's very difficult to fail if you invest for the long run and you diversify. It also kind of sets themselves up as like a social media type investing platform. So it's sort of trying to be like investing, like making investing cool and specifically making long-term investing cool, which I'm totally behind that mission. Really like public. I'm going to go ahead and put up public into S tier as well. S for social media for investment nerds. Next on the list is going to be Zach's trade. And they kind of encouraged like day trading, kind of like penny stock type of trading, which I'm not a big fan of personally. However, if you are into day trading, they are going to be one of the better ones. They've got really good research functions and just really good functionality in general. So if you're into day trading, this is going to be one of the better ones. I'll go ahead and put Zach's trade into C tier. Next one on the list is going to be ally invest. And I would say that this is a company that has done a really good job of kind of integrating a ton of different finance related services into one. So, you know, you've got the online bank account, for instance, they've got a great online bank account, then they've also got this investment platform. I think a lot of these companies are sort of moving towards trying to combine all of these services into one so that people don't have to go to like five different apps just to use their financial services. Ally has done a pretty good job of doing that. I'd say they're pretty close to being the best when it comes to combining all the services together. It's not quite there yet. I would say they're kind of a dark horse candidate. They could turn out really well in the future, but right now I'm going to go ahead and put Ally into a tier a for all around pretty good service. All right, next on the list is going to be cash app. This is a new one that's kind of burst onto the scene. And they are sort of a combination of being almost like a Venmo where you can send cash from one person to another. But at the same time, they also offer an investing platform as well. So I'm relatively new to this one, haven't really looked into it all that much. One thing that's a big positive that popped up when I was doing my research is people who got their stimmies, you know, their stimulus checks, a lot of them were saying that if they used cash app, they would get their money right away. Whereas banks would hold their money sometimes for several days before they would release it to them. So that's pretty cool that cash app was able to do that for them. But I was doing some research on this one, and it doesn't seem like they are FDIC insured. So if you're using it as a bank account, they're not necessarily insured the same way. And it wouldn't necessarily be as safe as normal bank accounts. So this one could do a lot better when I do this list next year. But right now I'm going to have to put them into D tier. Next one on the list is going to be another one where they're relatively new and they're trying to break into the investing game and just use a bunch of different finance related services. And that's going to be SoFi. Now SoFi is best known for being a debt related company. So they will help you if you want to consolidate your debt, especially if it's like student loan debt, for instance, and then refinance it. Now with SoFi, you are going to have free management and access to financial experts that can help you with your just finance situation in general. You also have some choice over whether you invest automatically, or you have more control over your investments. They've actually separated those two functions, which I think is pretty cool. So overall, I'm not going to put them in S tier just because they're just so new. And I couldn't do that with a new company. I think one of the most important things in the finance world is that, you know, you choose companies that have been around for a little bit just because of the fact that, you know, sometimes companies will offer some really good promo. And then a year later, they take it away. It's like a bait and switch. You see this all the time in the finance world. So for that reason, I'm going to go ahead and put them into A tier. But maybe this time next year, there'll be an S tier, we'll just have to wait and see. Now for my people who are international, I know sometimes like that's one of the most common comments that I get on my videos. When I talk about these investment apps, is people were like, Oh, what, what if I'm in Europe? What if I'm in Australia? Okay. So I did a little bit of research. Obviously, I haven't used any of these, but the ones that you should look into if you're in Europe would be eToro, DeGiro and Revolut. In Canada, it would be quest trade or wealth simple trade in the United Kingdom. Trading to 12 is really good. Free trade is also pretty good. Really like that name, right? Free trade. And in Australia, I would look into stake or self wealth. Okay. So those are the ones that I would look into if you are in the other English speaking countries that commonly watch my content. See, I don't forget about you guys. I care about you as well. All right. So if you enjoyed this video, go ahead gently tap that like button, hit the subscribe button, ring the notification bell, comment down below any thoughts, comments, criticisms, let me know which ones I got right, which ones I got wrong, and also share your experience with these different investing apps. And before you go, check out my other videos right here. I made them just for you.