Investing With As Little As $100

Thanks to technology, you no longer need thousands of dollars to become an investor. The spare change from a takeaway coffee can get you started. We look at six micro investing tools that can help build your wealth with minimum effort.

Micro investing is turning mobile phones into investment tools, enabling you to get a stake in shares, property and fixed income with your small change. It allows would be investors with little starting capital to bypass the roadblocks that usually keep them out of the game, such as minimum investment levels, trading costs and market research.

It appeals especially to millennials – roughly those aged between 20 and 35 – who are comfortable using technology to manage their finances. Many older members of this cohort have been locked out of home ownership – a traditional path to building wealth – due to very high prices, especially in Sydney and Melbourne.

Most micro investing is facilitated by apps and it’s growing fast both offshore and locally.

Acorns, which enables people to invest in a range of exchange traded funds (ETFs) with their spare change, chose Australia as the first country outside the US to launch in February 2016. Since then it has signed up about 1.5% of the Australian population, with 340,000 users, 120,000 active monthly users and $100 million in funds under management. (See page 36.)