Updated September 29, 2020 by Jonathan Crookham
stash Invest overview
Stash simplifies and automates the process of investing in stocks and ETFs for a slick, user-friendly experience. While its barebones simplicity may not endear experienced investors, critical stock information is provided in the streamlined app.
Is Stash for you? We think it’s best for:
New investors who want to invest with a hands off approach
3.9/5 OVERALL
Pros
+ Intuitive App
+ Easy to set up recurring investments
+ Diversification Analysis
+Signup bonus
Cons
– Monthly account fees range from $1 – $9
– Not all stocks and ETFs are available on the platform
Pursuit of Passive is not a financial advisor. These are the reviewer’s honest unsponsored opinions about products they actually use, not professional financial advice. While we’re not sponsored or affiliated with the reviewed service in any way, we may receive referral bonuses when you sign up using links in our pages.
- Tied to market – typical market risks apply
- App encourages diversification and automated investments which may help mitigate risk.
signup bonus
Get $20 to invest by signing up with this link and making your first deposit.
What is stash invest?
Stash simplifies and automates the process of investing in stocks and ETFs for a slick, user-friendly experience. While it’s barebones simplicity may not endear experienced investors, critical stock information is provided in the streamlined app.
ease of entry - signing up with stash
Quick signup
- Stash wants you to use their platform, so they’ve made signing up incredibly easy. It takes about ten minutes to start an account and you will need all of the typical information required to start a brokerage account including your social security number.
Simple interface
- Of all of the investing platforms I’ve used, Stash has the cleanest and most accessible app, which makes tracking your balances, automatic investing schedule, and holdings very easy.
No minimum balance
- You can start investing with as little as $5 and you can invest in fractional shares, removing common barriers to enter the stock market. With fractional investing you can invest $10 to buy a portion of a share in a stock like Apple or Amazon instead of having to shell our hundreds or thousands of dollars to buy a full share of the stock. After signing up for an account, you are not required to hold a minimum balance.
fees - how much does stash cost?
Here is where Stash lags behind some of its commission-free peers. To start investing with Stash, you will be charged $1 per month for accounts with less than $5000. However, Stash more than makes up for these fees with its sign-up bonus and features like its “stash party” which – if you take part by simply signing in to your account at 3pm CT every Thursday – provides 30-50 cents of free stock every week. That’s a minimum of $15 in stock per year, neutralizing the $12/year beginner plan cost. However, you don’t get to choose these stocks and you have to be sure to log in at the right time every week, so here at Pursuit of Passive, we’d still recommend Stash’s fee-less counterpart SoFi, which offers essentially all of the same benefits with no monthly fee.
features - what does stash have to offer?
Invest Account
- The Stash brokerage account allows you to invest in individual stocks and ETFs at your leisure or set up automatic investments. This recurring investments feature allows you to set a dollar amount and frequency to invest in any given stock or ETF available on Stash. You can invest on weekly, bi-weekly, or monthly frequencies. This is the primary feature of Stash and in my opinion, Stash currently does it better than any other platform as they’ve streamlined the process of setting up recurring investments and made accessing information regarding your “auto-stash” schedule very intuitive.
- Stash does not provide access to as many stocks and ETFs as larger platforms like Robinhood or TD Ameritrade. This is especially evident in their ETF offering which you can review here – a bit concerning, considering ETFs are the most practical place to designate recurring investments as they spread that investment among a frequently rebalanced portfolio of stocks, reducing the long-term risk of continuous investment.
Stock-back Debit card
- Stash offers a stock-back debit card that rewards you with stock in the company from which you make a purchase. This is a pretty unique offering, but the typical reward is only about 0.125% of the purchase amount. So for a $100 purchase from Amazon, you would receive about 12 cents in AMZN stock. This is quite underwhelming considering the variety of credit cards which offer upwards of 2% back on purchases. Even with Stash’s premium $9/month subscription which doubles stock back, this only amounts to 0.25% or 25 cents per $100 spent. Stash does offer period promotional stock-back bonuses for purchase from trending companies like Netflix and Disney which raises the stock-back to 2% of the purchase. While this is potentially worthwhile, Pursuit of Passive still prefers minimizing effort and maximizing returns by using rewards credit cards that provide broader benefits often at higher rates.
- The debit card also offers a round-up feature which rounds your debit card purchases up to the nearest dollar, depositing the spare change into your Stash account.
Signup Bonus
- $20 Signup Bonus when you add any funds to a new invest account with this link
- It’s also worth checking promotional websites like Swagbucks as they often offer a $30 signup bonus for accessing Stash from their website.
Diversification guides
- Stash reviews your portfolio and provides you with feedback on how well you have diversified your investments. You can choose to look at suggestions for sectors of stocks, ETFs, or bonds to add to holdings or ignore.
Education
- Stash has an abundance of articles to help familiarize its users with investing.
user interface - investing with the stash app
Stash has an incredibly intuitive app that gives you an great amount of control to view and adjust your investments. The app UI elevates Stash’s offering to truly deliver on their promise to simplify investing. Navigation within the app is straightforward and it’s easy to find pertinent information on your account when you’re on the go. Stocks and ETFs can be traded or recurring investments initiated with a couple of taps. You can easily review your Invest or bank account from the home screen or search for stocks. Stash’s app puts streamlined investing opportunities at your fingertips.
risk profile - is stash invest legit?
- Stash is a registered as a broker-dealer with SEC and FINRA, and is SIPC insured up to $500,000.
- Investing with Stash assumes the standard market risks. Investments are not FDIC insured and may lose value as the market fluctuates.
- Stash provides diversification guides and recommendations to help encourage investors on their platform not to put all of their eggs in one basket. This is beneficial in helping educate new investors and steer them away from potentially risky investing.
pursuit of passive's recommendation
Stash invest is excellent for a clean, simple user experience that let’s you set a portfolio in motion and sit back and watch. However, as we’ve reviewed, there are similar apps out there that offer comparable services at no charge. If the app UI is your number one criteria and you want to feel like part of an investing community, though, Stash may be worth the 12 bucks per year.
here's what others are saying about stash invest:
Check out Frugal Chic Life’s experience with the Stash platform:
