Acorns Early Review [2024]: An Easy Way to Invest for Your Children's Future (2024)

You may already know about Acorns, the modern financial platform that makes saving and growing your portfolio easier than ever. In addition to a variety of personal finance tools and products — including checking and investment accounts — Acorns also makes it simple to invest in the financial wellness of your kids through a custodial account.

Acorns Earlyallows you to fund and manage investment accounts for each of your children, all in one place. With automated contributions, hypothetical value projections, bonus investments, and a flat monthly fee, it’s easy to see why this platform is worth a look if you’re planning to invest on your child’s behalf.

What is Acorns Early?

To understand the value of Acorns Early, you first need to meet its parent company, Acorns.Acorns was founded in 2012 as a micro-investing app, aimed at helping its (now more than 9 million) users grow their “acorns” of today into the “oaks” of tomorrow.

CEO Noah Kerner indicates that the platform was founded with the goal of helping the average American save for the future, and from day one, Acorns has made it easy for investors to not only automate and simplify the saving and investing process but also to manage their investments as time goes on.

No matter your retirement goals, Acorns simplifies the efforts. With Round-Ups, for example, users are able to automatically invest spare change from their linked, everyday purchases. Although these micro-investments may only be a few cents each, using what is basically "found money" in this way can add up into big savings throughout the months and years.

In addition to helping you with saving for retirement, Acorns can also help prepare for your children’s future.

With Acorns Early, you are able to set up and manage Uniform Transfers to Minors Act (UTMA)/Uniform Gifts to Minors Act (UGMA) accounts for any number of children in your family. Early is also included with the Gold plan and allows you to start saving on your child(ren)’s behalf from day one, in addition to building your own investment portfolio.

How does Acorns Early work?

Similar to many of the best investment apps out there, Acorns Early can help you project your savings by year, establish and automate funding efforts, and even rebalance a portfolio according to your risk tolerance over time. The only difference between your everyday robo-advisors and Acorns Early is that Early is intended for kids.

Acorns Early accounts are custodial brokerage accounts, or UTMA/UGMA accounts. This means that the funds technically belong to the minor child, even though they are managed by a parent or other adult (custodian).

When the child comes of age (between 18 and 25, depending on the state), they will assume control of the portfolio and can spend the money however they’d like. Before that time, the custodian can withdraw funds as needed as long as they are used to benefit the child. For example, funds could be used to pay for educational expenses.

Acorns Early lets your child invest in the same exchange-traded funds (ETFs) and stocks that regular Acorns users can. Because time is on your child’s side, all Early accounts are automatically set up as an aggressive stock-based portfolio, while allowing for bonus investments through partners like Disney+ and ABC Mouse.

Lastly, you and your child(ren) can learn about money and investing basics from the platform’s financial literacy library, called Grow. This valuable resource covers a wide range of topics ranging from introductory money management to current events, investments, taxes, and more.

Who can use Acorns Early?

Acorns Early is designed to help build up invested savings on behalf of children who cannot yet invest on their own. Account custodians — those who open and manage the portfolio — can be any willing adult wondering how to invest money for a child, even if they’re not the child’s own parent.

Custodians can open accounts for multiple children on the same Acorns subscription too. Early accounts are available only on the Gold plan, which runs $12 a month.

In order to open an Acorns Early account for a child, you’ll simply need their:

• Full name
• Date of birth
• Social Security number

The account must be associated with an eligible U.S. state or territory (as this dictates when the child will assume ownership of the account), and you can begin investing in an Early account with as little as $5.

How to sign up for Acorns Early

It's simple tosign up for Acorns Early, and you’ll only need a few pieces of information to get started.

Once you’ve signed up for an Acorns account and subscribed to its Gold plan, you’ll want to visit the Early page on Acorns.com and click “Add a Child.” From there, you’ll be prompted to provide the child’s full name and date of birth.

You’ll also need to provide the child’s SSN. If you don’t have that available at the moment, you can skip this step and add it later. Just note that it must be submitted before you can start funding the account or investing on the child’s behalf.

Next, it’s time to set the transfer age for the account. Each state has its own rules regarding the age of transfer, which is either 18 or 21. Even if the transfer age in your state is 18, though, you can choose to remain custodian of the account all the way up to age 21. At that time, the portfolio will automatically transfer to the child’s ownership.

Once Early knows how long the child will have to invest and grow their savings, it can offer projections for the future. At this time, you can see the different contribution options available (if you’d like to automate these) and how they might impact the account balance over time.

Then, it’s simply time to choose your recurring contribution day and amount, and begin investing for your child.

You are able to make one-time contributions to the account whenever you’d like, in addition to recurring investments. You can also view the portfolio’s performance from your dashboard, as well as see its projected growth. Just note that you are unable to make any changes to the portfolio’s risk tolerance level.

FAQs about Acorns Early

Bottom line on Acorns Early

One of the biggest things your children have going for them, at least in terms of investments, is time. Through Acorns Early, you can easily save and invest for your child's future. It will be aggressively invested and grow exponentially over the years. Once they come of age, the money is theirs to do with as they please.

For $12 a month, you can sign up for an Acorns Gold Plan, which enables you to open Early custodial accounts for your children, other family members like nieces and nephews, or any other special child in your life. In addition to Acorns investment accounts for children, though, your Acorns subscription also grants you access to a variety of financial products, services, and educational resources for yourself.