6 Best Money Apps To Help You Manage Your Investments in 2024

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Technology accelerates the growth of many industries, and financial services is no exception. In the past few decades, retail investors have gained incredible access to low-cost, high-quality financial services via a multitude of platforms.

The fastest growth in recent years has been in the development of money-oriented apps, which allow customers to create and manage budgets, buy and sell investments, track their financial status and even file their taxes all from the screen on a smartphone. For 2024, here’s a variety of money apps that can best help you manage your investments, depending on your specific needs.

1. Betterment

If you’re looking for robo-advisory services, Betterment, one of the very first providers, is one of the top options in the space. It still charges just 0.25% for its basic robo-advisory package, with no minimum, as long as you set up recurring monthly transfers of at least $250 or have $20,000 in your account. If not, the fee is $4 per month.

However, the Betterment app now provides a wider range of financial options, from a high-yield savings account to crypto trading and a checking account. There is no charge for the savings or checking accounts — and no minimum balance requirement — but there is a charge of 1% plus fees of up to 0.15% for each crypto trade. If your balance reaches $100,000, you become eligible for one-on-one consultations with CFP professionals for a fee of 0.65% annually.

2. Fidelity

Fidelity Investments was one of the first low-cost brokerage firms, and it built its reputation on the performance of its no-load mutual funds. Since then, Fidelity has expanded into a complete broker, offering many different services, including:

• Stock, bond and ETF trading
• Crypto
• Options
• Health savings accounts
• Annuities
• Life insurance

In keeping with its reputation, the Fidelity app is incredibly user-friendly and chock-full of basic investment information to help out beginning and even experienced investors.

On the investment side, Fidelity offers zero-commission trading on stocks and ETFs through the app, along with access to its roster of mutual funds and other investments. Fidelity also offers fractional share trading with as little as $1 invested. The Fidelity Go robo-advisor charges no fees at all on balances under $25,000, with a 0.35% annual fee for balances of at least $25,000.

3. Empower

Empower is a retirement services giant that recently swallowed up popular financial services app Personal Capital. The company has retained the most popular features of Personal Capital, including the digital financial management app that offers two types of comprehensive services. The free version allows users to input all of their account information from various institutions so it’s all visible at one time on the app’s dashboard. This makes Personal Capital/Empower one of the few services that allows investors to get their complete financial picture all in one place.

Along with this free service, Empower also offers planning and analytics tools. For those willing to pay a tiered, annual fee ranging from 0.49% to 0.89% of assets — and with at least $100,000 to invest — Empower kicks into high gear, offering everything from professionally managed portfolios to teams of dedicated financial advisors, and even access to private equity.

4. PocketGuard

One of the first budgeting apps, Mint, officially shut down in Mar. 2024, so many users have been looking for a suitable replacement. According to the Wall Street Journal, the best current option for beginning budgeters is PocketGuard.

To most effectively use PocketGuard — the basic version of which is completely free — you should connect all of your cards and bank accounts so the app can import your transactions. After selecting which of these transactions is recurring, PocketGuard will then create a budget divided into various categories, from clothing to utilities to groceries.

Beyond setting up your basic budget, PocketGuard allows you to set up various savings goals and allocate a percentage of your monthly budget towards them. Similarly, you can also set up debt repayment plans, if this applies to you.

The automation of PocketGuard makes it a very helpful tool, although if you want additional features like unlimited budgets and savings plans, you’ll need to upgrade to the premium plan. This costs $12.99 on a monthly basis or $74.99 on an annual basis, billed at $6.25 per month. Bear in mind that PocketGuard is strictly a budgeting app. Unlike the others on this list, it doesn’t have an investment component.

5. M1 Finance

M1 Finance represents the next evolution in financial services apps. Investors who don’t want to do their own research into individual stocks can choose from more than 60 ready-made model portfolios, each of which allows automatic rebalancing. While similar to a robo-advisory service, there is no fee for the M1 version, which still requires investors to choose their own portfolios.

Those who prefer to pick and choose their own individual securities can create their own portfolios, which M1 Finance calls “pies,” that they can modify or rebalance with no fees. Even better, M1 Finance is still one of the few brokerages that allows investors to construct entire portfolios of fractional shares. Investment accounts carry standard SIPC insurance of $500,000, while M1 high-yield cash accounts have FDIC insurance of up to $3.75 million.

One potential drawback for some investors is that M1 Finance only has two trading windows per day, one in the morning and one in the afternoon. However, this restriction may actually help customers become long-term investors rather than short-term traders. In addition to its investment options, M1 Finance also offers a high-yield checking account, a credit card, and loans.

6. Binance.US

Binance.US is a newer, specialty app that only allows users to trade cryptocurrencies. While this is a highly speculative asset class that could result in the loss of your entire investment, it is also highly popular and offers the hope of stratospheric returns.

While Binance.US should by no means be your sole trading app, it does offer access to more than 100 cryptocurrencies, something no other app does. Even the Fidelity app, which “allows” crypto trading, currently only offers Bitcoin and Ethereum on its platform. Binance.US offers free Bitcoin trading on select pairs.

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