I've felt for a LONG time that my book and Stockpile are meant for each other. Specifically, Stockpile is a great investing app if you want to use dividend reinvesting as a strategy for building wealth while teaching your kids and young adults about investing.
I use Stockpile with my family to teach my kids about investing.
Two things to note before we go on:
- This is not an affiliate review. I don't get anything for recommending them.
- There is a recurring $4.95 monthly fee to use Stockpile. This fee covers one adult and up to five kids with unlimited stock purchases and sales. Other than the membership fee, it's fee-free. Here's a breakdown of their fees.
Designed for families
Stockpile is a brokerage, one that's focused on families and long term investing. With an award-winning custodial implementation, they make it simple to setup "sub-accounts" for children, with permission to see what they have invested and make decisions on their own with parental approval.
How empowering is it for a child to login to their own brokerage account, without fear that they're going to f-something up? (Very empowering.)
They also make it easy to get started with gift cards. You can purchase gift cards for your children that allow them to put the money towards any company they want. I know after my kids have a birthday, there are a lot of unused toys, and sometimes I wish I could turn those toys into company stock!
The app also has a section for learning some investing basics. These are very short, well written, snippets of information on investing and the stock market. These short pieces really hit the spot and are written for the right audience (families teaching their children about investing).
So, there's a great custodial implementation, a way to get kids excited to invest more with gift cards, and good educational information inside the app for everyone to learn more. This is the foundation of the app built for families to invest together.
It's also important though that the app is designed to help build wealth not actively trade. This is a pet-peeve of mine... the idea that the way to invest is to trade, not accumulate. If you turn on any financial news channel it's like as sports game, you get a play-by-play as if there's a way to win this investing game if only you make the right decisions... all day long. But we're not traders. We're investors. That's an important distinction when it comes to building an app and designing features for the target audience.
Designed to build wealth, not trade
This is a not-so-subtle difference in focus between Stockpile and the brokerages you're used to. Stockpile is designed for investors just getting started and looking to build wealth. They have a few features that support this goal.
Dollar-denominated stock purchases
No need to purchase a whole share, you can purchase $50 (or whatever) of any of the 4,000+ stocks and ETFs on the platform. Stockpile (and everyone else) calls this fractional share purchases – the ability to purchase less than whole shares.
My favorite example of the power of dollar-denominated purchases is Apple. It's currently up over $200/share. At a traditional brokerage you can't buy Apple unless you have $200 (or whatever the current price is). And if you want two shares, you need double the current price. With Stockpile, if you have $50 to invest you can buy $50 of Apple. Sure, you don't have a whole share, but if you think it's a good investment, your $50 will grow just the same as a whole share will grow. And, you get your share of the dividend too, so each quarter you get to purchase a bit more. This is very powerful over the long time horizon your young adults have.
Dollar denominated purchase also make it easy to get started. Get started with $10, or $5, if that's what you can. Stockpile makes investing approachable for those of us without a lot of money to invest. The important thing is the lesson of investing. And, nothing beats actually doing it, and doing it with real money.
Trades settle at the end of the day
This feature takes a bit of getting used to... the idea that you place your order during the day not knowing what price they'll execute at... and then trades settle at the end of the day.
Timing the market doesn't matter, what matters is time in the market.
This is a great way to avoid the idea that you can time the market. It's not timing the market that matters, it's time IN THE MARKET that matters. Over a long time horizon, a few pennies one way or another because you purchased at market close isn't going to make a difference. Better to get into the habit of dollar cost averaging and not paying attention to the exact price at which you buy your shares.
Of course, Stockpile supports setting up a recurring investment so you can buy automatically on a regular recurring basis. It's not something I use, but if it's your thing knock yourself out.
Dividends are easily reinvested
Most brokerages support reinvesting dividends these days, so it's not a big deal but it's worth pointing out since that's what I really care about. The settings in Stockpile are actually quite simple, and FWIW it's easy to find where to setup dividend reinvesting. Keep in mind, it's a "global" setting... either you're reinvesting all the dividends you earn, or none. You can't pick and choose to reinvest some dividends and not others.
Supports cryptocurrencies
While crypto is still somewhat controversial, in my opinion it doesn't hurt to have a little in case it does become something bigger than it is today. It's nice that Stockpile lets you do this in the same app as you'll hold the stock you purchase.
I'm not a financial advisor, so I'm not going to tell you to have a certain percentage of your portfolio in crypto. And, for the most part, crypto doesn't pay dividends (there is the concept of staking which acts similarly) so we'll call crypto outside the scope of this review (and outside the scope of my book!).
Conclusion
The best way to learn is by doing. I remember when I was 13 and I first learned about the idea of getting a dividend and having my money earn money. It was life changing (clearly it was - I wrote a book).
I remember when I took my kids to an Apple Store and explained how they owned a (very) small part of the store because they own Apple company stock. Getting kids stock in the companies they love will keep them interested in investing... and at that age, interest is perhaps more important than picking the "best" investment.
If you want to get started with Stockpile, head over to their gift card page where you can pre-purchase membership for one, two, or three years, and get some free stock in the process. Those bundles are a great way to start with Stockpile.
And if you're not sure where to start with all the choices of companies to invest in, you definitely should read my post on the Dividend Aristocrats.
