Finance trend: Millennial Investors
How does paying for a salad bring you any closer to earning more money? Micro-investment companies such as Limitless and Clink do the trick, by applying a percentage of your expenses in ‘low risk portfolio’s’. Investing while spending: now we’re talking Millennial.
‘With every card transaction by a user’, Limitless explains on its website, ‘we calculate an agreed amount to be automatically transferred scaled between 20% and 2%, depending on the amount, from the current account at any bank to their investment account at the partner bank and invested into an appropriate selection of low cost mutual funds.’
Clink does the same thing, and calls it a “Set it and forget it” approach: setting aside a fixed percentage of recreational expenses by tracking credit card transactions.
The more you spend, the more you invest. Sounds like heaven?
Low-cost financial advisors have been on the rise for a while now. While banks and old school financial advisors cater to baby boomers with substantial savings, robo-advisors such as Betterment and Acorns have tapped into an underserved market by allowing clients to invest as little as one dollar, at lower fees than traditional financial advisors.
Now these aforementioned micro-investment apps are lowering the bar even further, by automating the whole investment process for its users. Investing while spending: it’s an offer no youngster will refuse.
These apps cater perfectly to Millennial needs. They combine convenience, transparency & personalisation. You can set saving goals & maximum amounts, you can track the money you make (or lose) in real-time, and you don’t have to do anything but wait while the magic happens.
But more importantly: these apps make Millennials feel as if investing isn’t so hard as they thought. This generation were teenagers when the economy went south, and the stock markets are generally viewed as something to better stay away from. On the other hand: Millennials need the money. They’re at the age where they have a greater need for financial services, since they buy houses, have children & start thinking about the future.
Millennials want to be empowered when it comes to their money (see also our latest column on Millennials and learning) and fintech are increasingly delivering that empowerment. Demystifying stock markets in an accessible and easy way, and at the same time helping you to not feel guilty about spending money on a new pair of shoes: now that’s the future of finance :-)
This column is a Trendwolves and B-Hive collab. Read the other columns following this link.
