3 Ways to Invest Your Money During Coronavirus — Even If You Only Have $5

Investing sounds exhausting. You have to follow the stock market and read The Wall Street Journal and watch CNBC and pretend like you care who Warren Buffett is. You have to nod knowingly when people use terms like “capital gains” and “liquidity.”

It’s all so much work. Better to blow your extra cash on new shoes or mixed drinks instead, am I right?

Wrong.

Here’s a secret the stockbrokers won’t tell you: Investing doesn’t have to be that much work at all. You don’t actually have to know anything — or do much at all.

Here are some of our favorite ways to invest right now…

1. Spend $5 to Own a Piece of Amazon, Google or Other Companies

Take a look at the Forbes Richest People list, and you’ll notice almost all the billionaires have one thing in common — they own another company.

But if you work for a living and don’t happen to have millions of dollars lying around, that can sound totally out of reach.

That’s why a lot of people use the app Stash. It lets you be a part of something that’s normally exclusive to the richest of the rich — buying pieces of other companies for as little as $1.

That’s right — you can invest in pieces of well-known companies, such as Amazon, Google or Apple, for as little as $1.

The best part? When these companies profit, so can you. Some companies even send you a check every quarter for your share of the profits, called dividends.

It takes two minutes to sign up, plus Stash will give you a $5 sign-up bonus once you deposit $5 into your investment account.

2. Claim up to $200 in Free Stock

Although your paychecks are over $1,500, you might still feel like you don’t have enough money to start investing. But guess what? You really don’t need that much — and you can even get free stocks (worth $5 to $200) if you know what you’re doing.

Whether you’ve got $5, $100 or $800 to spare, you can start investing with Robinhood.

You’ve probably heard of Robinhood. Both investing beginners and pros love it because it doesn’t charge commission fees, and you can buy and sell stocks for free — no limits. Plus, it’s super easy to use.

What’s best? When you download the app and fund your account (it takes no more than a few minutes), Robinhood drops a share of free stock into your account. It’s random, though, so that stock could be worth anywhere from $5 to $200 — a nice boost to help you build your investments.

3. Invest 15 Cents Into the Stock Market

Yeah, we know what you’re thinking: 15 cents? How’s that going to do me any good?

Well, that leftover change from your morning coffee and evening grocery hauls could turn into more than $1,000.

That’s what happened when Penny Hoarder reader Jeremy Kolodziej opened an investment account with Acorns. The app’s round-up feature bumps each of your purchases up to the nearest dollar and puts the spare change into the stock market, which helped him mindlessly save $1,076 in about 20 months.

“It’s a virtual coin jar,” he says. “You don’t even think about it.” He used the spare change to pay for two vacations.

Plus, Acorns invested the money for him, allowing him to grow his savings — without studying stock prices or managing trades.

The app is $1 a month for balances under $1 million, and you’ll get a $5 bonus when you sign up.