The Best Way to Invest $1k – 7 Investment Options To Grow Your Money

When you have $1,000 or less to invest, there may seem to be only a few investment options . But the good news is some of the wealthiest investors in the world started somewhere. And though it doesn’t get a whole lot of publicity, there are actually numerouInvestment Optionses available for your small amount of money. We list the best way to invest that $1,000 and make it grow into a bigger nest egg.

But before we get into the investment options, it’s important to realize there are some caveats to investing when you’re just starting out.

Make sure you’ve checked off your other financial goals before investing money into the stock market. Here are some points to consider first and can be read further in our How to Invest guide:

• Little Consumer Debt — You should be relatively debt-free.
• Diversify — For the amount you are starting to invest, aim for as much diversification as you can so you minimize the possibility of being wiped out by a single investment.
• Fees Matter — Watch out for fees. You should not pay more than 1% in investment fees annually.
• Create Regular Savings — $1,000 should be your starting point only — have a plan to make regular monthly contributions.

If your finances are in good shape, and you’ve completed this financial checklist, let’s move on to where to start investing your money.

Start with Acorns Investment Options

Acorns You don’t have to begin with large amounts when first starting off. In fact, with Acorns, you can start investing and actually make money with pennies.

Acorns is a somewhat a unique investing app which takes your spare change from every purchase you make. When you buy your favorite chicken burrito at Chipotle for $6.50 Acorns will round up to $7.00 and invest $0.50 from your checking account. Acorns can do this with every purchase you make. As you can imagine, this can start adding up very quickly.

It’s an easy and painless way to start investing with very little money. In fact, we recommend Acorns as our best microsavings service.

Acorns makes the service simple and does the investing heavy lifting for you. The service costs $1/month when you have under $5,000 and 0.25% per year after that.

We recommend using Acorns as the start of your emergency fund.

Use Betterment Investment Options for Retirement Planning

Acorns is great for someone just starting and setting your money away for a rainy day. But what about planning for retirement? If you are ready to get more serious you are best off with Betterment. Just like Acorns, we recommend Betterment as the best robo advisor.

Betterment determines your risk tolerance and then builds a portfolio of exchange-traded funds (ETFs) that are consistent with that tolerance. The entire service is automated, which means you invest your money and let the platform handle it for you. There’s no trading and no rebalancing; Betterment handles it all on your behalf.

There’s no account minimum with Betterment. Your fee will be 0.25% of the account balance per year. This will enable you to accumulate a steadily larger balance without having to pay ridiculously high fees.

Betterment is the perfect retirement account since it offers a combination of professional management, diversification, low fees and no account minimum.

Open an Investment Options with M1 Finance

If you’re more adventurous when it comes to investing, M1 Finance could be the best choice for you. M1 is based on creating mini-mutual funds or they call ‘pies’. But these aren’t your grandfather’s mutual funds. The pies are unconventional conglomerations of up to 100 ETFs and stocks.

The motif is typically based on a very narrow concept, such as solar heating in China or organic restaurants. The platform has more than 2,000 ETFs to choose from with hundreds of pre-made pies. Or for the adventurous, you can create your own.

The service is free to use and you can sign up to M1 Finance via this link. The beauty of M1 Finance is for very little fees you can be diversified into a mix of up to 100 funds.

Open a Traditional or Roth IRA Investment Options at an Online Broker

Betterment and Motif aren’t the only options available with retirement accounts. Both services do package investments up neatly and in a cost-efficient way for someone with just $1,000 to invest.

Though if you want to do it yourself, open an account with an online brokerage firm.

When you open a Traditional or Roth IRA, there are typically no account minimums required. You can open an account and begin investing money once you have a sufficient amount available that you feel comfortable investing it.

You can open an IRA at a number of brokerage firms. For example, you can open an IRA at E*TRADE with no minimum account balance. And there are plenty of other firms that will allow you to do the same thing.

Once you have at least $1,000 in an IRA, you can consider investing in diversified funds. For example, the Vanguard Target Retirement Funds not only has a $1,000 minimum balance requirement, but you purchase the fund based upon expected year of retirement. Assets within that fund will be consistent with your retirement time horizon.

In some cases, you can not only get free trades but cold hard cash. Not a bad return on your money without risking a cent in the stock market.

Buy U.S. Treasury Securities

If you are a more conservative investor, you can invest in U.S. Treasury securities through Treasury Direct. They might be boring, but boring is sometimes good. You can invest in a variety of U.S. government securities with as little as $100.

Treasury investments available include:

• Bills (maturities of less than one year)
• Notes (maturities from two to 10 years)
• Bonds (maturities of 30 years)
• Treasury Inflation Protected Securities, or TIPS (maturities of five, 10 or 30 years)

aI-Bonds are particularly interesting because not only do they pay regular interest, but they also make periodic additions to your principal to cover inflation. The adjustments are based on upward changes in the Consumer Price Index (CPI). You can earn interest tax-deferred while owning them and tax-free if used for higher education.

Open a Taxable Account

You can also invest in a variety of brokerage accounts. With $1,000 your investment options will still be limited, but opening an account is an excellent way to start. And there are plenty of options if you choose to go this route.

With Ally Invest you can open an account with no minimum balance. Stock trades are $4.95 per trade with Ally Invest.

Since a single transaction fee of $4.95 will represent 0.5% of your $1,000, you’ll have to be careful not to trade too frequently. These accounts are best used for buying stock in one or two companies that have consistent investment performances.

Open A Bank CD

If putting your money into investments that risk losing the principal is something you’re not comfortable with, you can always opt to keep your money in your bank. Though right now the returns are small, they’re the best places to start building a nest egg. If nothing else, you’ll never lose money on the investments you make.

Right now we recommend 1-year CDs as the best bang for your buck. Here’s a list of the best one year CDs.

If you are looking for other terms we list them on our best online CD rates page. ( Please follow this link for rates because the table bellow is just informational and may be outdated )

Summary of Best CD Rates for October 2022

Bank	1-year APY	3-year APY	5-year APY	Minimum Deposit
Goldman Sachs Bank	2.25%	2.35%	2.45%	$500
Synchrony Bank	2.25%	2.35%	2.45%	$2,000
Barclays	2.25%	2.20%	2.20%	$0
Comenity Direct	2.25%	2.35%	2.45%	$1,500
Citizens Access	2.25%	2.35%	2.45%	$5,000
American Express	0.55%	2.05%	2.15%	$0
Amerant Bank	2.35%	2.40%	2.40%	$10,000
Ally Bank	2.15%	2.10% – 2.25%*	2.30%	$0 – *Variable
Capital One Bank	2.30%	1.65%	1.60%	$0
PurePoint Financial	2.05%	2.20%	2.25%	$10,000
CIT Bank	2.20%	1.30%	1.70%	$1,000

Beginning an investment portfolio is a major step, whether it’s with a million dollars or just starting $1,000. That first step is to getting started, even if it involves a relatively small amount of money. Once you start the investment process, the combination of regular contributions plus investment returns will ensure a prosperous future.

You don’t need to wait until you have many thousands of dollars before taking the first step. Use these options to get started investing with as little as $10 today.

Investing Basics – Every investor has to start somewhere. Discover basic investments such as stocks and bonds, read about speculative practices such as trading on margin and shorting, and learn how to open a brokerage account to begin investing today.