Making those first few plunges into investing can be tricky and it’s a challenge to find easy apps to use for investing. With the big institutions there are usually a series of clicks, ticks and hurdles to get past to even start investing. You can feel a little on edge, like you’re about to make a mistake or miss some crucial bit of information. There’s usually heaps of terms and conditions, disclaimers and warnings that are very dissuading.
When you are just getting started it doesn’t take much for you to stop and put the process on hold, until you’ve had some time to think about it. It’s only once your setup that you even start using their investing apo check your portfolio etc. The large institutions like Fidelity don’t help themselves with the range and number of complex funds they offer. These vary by complexity, cost, asset mixture, region etc., and as someone in their 20s and 30s you probably just want a simple, low cost and pre-made fund, tailored to your investment timeline. If you want to avoid heaps of paperwork, endless clicks and confirms then read on.
All In One Money Management
The problem with investing is that when you use someone like Fidelity, Vanguard, HL your investments feel completely disconnected from the rest of your finances. This is something which might have turned you away from investing. It’s usually recommended that you don’t invest anything you wouldn’t want to touch for the next 15-20 years. Therefore it can be helpful to have this disconnect. However, when it comes to feeling like you can easily manage the flow of funds into your investments and one day out of them, then you might be looking for something a little more accessible.
Disclaimer: This article should not be considered as financial advice. You are responsible for your own financial research and decisions. Please note this post contains affiliate links.
Andrew | Mr Money Side Up
Money Management With Wise
Wise started off as an awesome money exchange and international spending money service. I still bank and have a current account with a major high street bank, but I’m considering switching over completely to Wise. A by-product of this was that they made a killer current account and app for managing your money. There are great features: live instance spending notifications and spending insights.
There are also navigable security functions to approve payments, freeze/unfreeze your card. It’s a great card to use for spending money. It’s also really easy to link with money analysis apps such as Emma, Snoop and Money Dashboard. You might do this if you want to see all your bank accounts in one place. In this way you can track your net worth and paint a broader picture of your spending.
Wise launches ‘Assets’ to lets UK customers use their money invested in stocks
Now, for the real reason I wanted to write this article. I recently opened an investment account with Wise. Granted I only put £20 in just to test the waters out for you. I still have almost £40k invested with Fidelity and that’s not going to change anytime soon. However, I will probably use the account to invest surplus savings for the month or spare change.However, if I was starting from scratch, then Wise would have me as a customer already. If you are looking for easy apps to start investing with then this could be the one for you.
Wise Assets – The Easy App To Use For Investing
Wise has just introduced its multi-currency investment feature ‘Assets’ to UK customers. As a customer you will be able to move money from any of their 54 currencies into their first asset; the MSCI World Equity Index. Which is a broad portfolio of 1,557 of the world’s largest public companies included in the MSCI World Equity index, including Apple, Amazon, and Google, and is collectively worth more than £40 trillion. Wise has selected BlackRock to provide the tracking fund for this index.
This is part of the reason the fees are so affordable and transparent too. The current charges on my Wise assets account are a 0.40% service fee and a 0.15% fund fee to Blackrock. This already reduced in price from a 0.55% account fee since I opened the account. Which goes to show what a competitive player in the market Wise will be. This 0.7% is actually quite affordable when you think about it, as Fidelity for example will charge an account fee of 0.35%, with an ongoing portfolio specific fee or around 0.25% if you want something like a global index.
Why Wise Assets Is One Of The Most Easy Apps For Investing
It actually blew my mind how easy it was to start investing through a Wise account. It took less than 5 clicks to gain access to the MSCI World Index! It’s like a 3 step process:
- Confirm you want to open a Wise Investments account
- Open up a savings pot of these investments
- Move money from any of your currencies into your investment pot.
You can essentially tap ‘Cash’ on any of your balances or jars, then select ‘Stocks’, which will invest the money held into the chosen index fund. Within seconds I could easily transfer money into a separate investment savings pot. It’s incredibly easy to add or withdraw from those funds too.
This is coming from someone who tediously opened up a Fidelity Investment ISA and laboriously unpicked the complexity behind the thousands of funds available. The process of opening the account probably took a number of days. I even created a free mini ebook to guide people through the account opening process.
With Wise it’s one fund in a few clicks and just a few minutes. This is accessible investing at it’s finest. If I was starting all over again, this is who I’d be investing with.
Instant Access With Wise Assets
With the Asset feature, you will have instant access to your money, unlike traditional banking. You can hold your money in assets and spend or send the money in real time as you need it. All of which makes managing, saving, investing and spending your money a seamless process.
It always seems like any action with Wise seems simple and easy to follow, so I’m not surprised they have now made investing a frictionless process. You know, I’ve never once felt overwhelmed taking any financial actions with Wise, no matter the size of the amount.
By contrast, moving money between my traditional banking current account and my investments with Fidelity is tedious. It takes time. The time it takes for my money to be moved from my bank account into Fidelity, into cash and then into investments can take days. There are always a number of tedious steps. Until recently I feel like there werent’t many easy apps to start investing because there was and still is a disconect between your savings and investments.
The Wise Volatility Buffer
Investments held in Assets could be entitled to compensation from the Financial Services Compensation Scheme (FSCS) for up to £85,000. The value of investments and the income from them can rise or fall and there is no guarantee about it. Usually, capital is at risk and investors may not get back the amount originally invested.
More impressively, Wise will smooth out some of the volatility of investing by taking as much of a 3% buffer to any volatility. This means that if the stock market suddenly drops 3% you won’t register the impact. With Wise Assets, almost 97 percent of your money is available to use instantly and customers can switch the money they hold in stocks back to cash at any time.
Look, I’m not saying that this is the best option for you. In fact, I think there’s a benefit from slowing down when it comes to investments and having them ‘locked’ away. However, this is incredibly accessible and paperwork free.With just a few clicks you have been invested in one of the most diverse and robust index funds out there.
So What Now…
One of the best aspects of investing with Wise is that there isn’t any minimum investment. You could invest £1 if you wanted and because it’s linked with your cash balances it’s easy enough to do that.So, if you want to open an account and on that day you’re feeling particularly risk averse, you can just put £10 in. Then when you become more confident, it can be £100, or £1,000 or whatever suits your budget for that month.
Wise has made the whole process significantly less scary and intimidating and that’s why I wanted to share this with you. Like I say, until recently finding easy apps to use for investing wasn’t easy but there have been some great leaps forward. Whilst economically it’s never been harder to save money, there’s never been as much technology to help us combat this challenge. There are an abundance of new apps to help us save money and invest.
Luckily there are a great selection of innovative Fintechs disrupting the wealth management market. They are some seriously easy apps to use for investing. Within minutes you can have your finances tracked and analysed, ready to tackle your spending habits and cut your bills. Within clicks you can be invested in thousands of stocks or assets and do it within an entirely new community. So remember, to check out my Fintech For You page, to not only find unique ways to invest but to save money too.
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