Investing with Stash

Stash is an app and website dedicated to being both a bank account and investing experience, with a stock-back rewards program and individual or ETF selections ready to go.

I joined Stash on May 3rd after finding a promotion on InboxDollars. Stash, like Robinhood, offers individual investment options like stocks, and ETFs like any exchange, but also their own flavors of ETFs. I opted to go with mostly dividend-producing stocks and have received $0.34 to date with $60.00 in promotional credits ($50 for the bank account and $300 in monthly direct deposits and $10 for the investing account). I invested this credit along with $90.00 so far of my own with an auto-deposit monthly of $20.00, which I have chosen to place in many different Stash-specific ETFs.

Stash does have a $1/month subscription fee ($12/year if you want to do it all at once), but this allows you access to the personal investment account, bank account with a stock-back rewards program, financial education tools, and an interesting direct deposit where you can get your money up to 2 days earlier. For me, my money has been deposited 1 day earlier than I normally get it, which allows me to move it around that much quicker for where it needs to be. For now I’ve been directly depositing $150 out of what would normally go to my regular bank account (usually a total of $240), to my Stash account. This allows me to invest with Stash, move the money to another account, or pay debt directly from the Stash bank account.

Since investing with Stash I have made $16.79 in unrealized gains (I haven’t sold any of my stocks or ETFs), which is an 11.2% gain; much better than what my other stocks in other platforms have been doing during the same time frame. That’s a little over what I paid for a yearly subscription. And if it stays around 10%, or even drops down to 5%, I’ll still be doing quite well on top of that promotional credit.

Stash also has some great features, like purchasing fractional shares or selected monetary amounts in any of their offerings of ETFs or within the market, automatic transfers into selected ETFs/cash/stocks, round-up features and the stock-back rewards program I have mentioned already.

And that’s something to talk about. The stock-back rewards program allows you to use the card you get with your Stash bank account to purchase at promoted locations during the month and obtain a portion of the amount you spent in stock for that company. For example, spending $25 at Starbucks could net you 1-3% in Starbucks stock, or a $0.25 share of SBUX (for 1%). While that might not seem like a lot at $74.96 per share (as of this writing), if you go to Starbucks every weekday for a month and spend $25 a day, you’d be getting back at least $5.00 in SBUX. Double that if they’re promoting it at 2%. Triple that if it’s promoted at 3%! That can add up if you’re already spending at that location. The downside is that it rotates every month, and might not be at places you regularly visit.

Overall, despite not using half of what they offer, I like Stash because of the simplicity of investing in what I want, whether that’s searching for specific things and putting in $5 here or there, or if it’s choosing one of their ETFs and chucking $15 at it. My one complaint would be that the app is very confusing to navigate. I haven’t tried the website, so do not know if it’s any better, but there’s a lot stuffed into the app that could use an overhaul for ease of user experience.

My rating? 8.5/10. It’s a good idea, and a great combination, and getting direct deposit money earlier is nice even though I don’t know how that works. But hey, I’m just a beginner, so there’s always something to learn. Let’s see where this one takes us.

My investments and gains are as follows:

ETF or Stock	Amount Invested (Gain/Loss)
Cash to invest	$0.27
All That Glitters ETF	$26.00 (+$1.76)
Colossal China ETF	$18.02 (+$1.49)
Match the Market ETF	$17.00 (+$1.56)
AI’s Top U.S. Picks ETF	$13.05 (+$0.95)
Doctor, Doctor! ETF	$13.00 (+$0.88)
American Innovators ETF	$13.00 (+$0.61)
Bond, Junk Bond ETF	$10.00 (+$0.72)
DocuSign Inc (DOCU)	$5.00 (+$3.49)
Moderna Inc (MRNA)	$5.00 (+$2.85)
Paycom Software Inc (PAYC)	$5.00 (+$1.21)
Abbott Laboratories (ABT)	$5.00 (+$0.38)
Dropbox Inc (DBX)	$5.00 (+$0.34)
Inflation Defense: Short Term ETF	$5.00 (+$0.09)
Gilead Sciences (GILD)	$5.00 (+$0.06)
International Bonds ETF	$5.00 ($+0.06)

_{Stash has a referral program for which the link at the top of the page to Stash will take you to my referral page. For more information on the referral process, please see the Stash website or app.}