The finance industry has come up with some of the most innovative and highly advanced products in the world today. This has been true for several decades, with many titans of Wall Street – and other financial epicenters worldwide – producing highly effective services that improve customer service. These are multi-billion-dollar, multi-national corporations for a reason!
Do you need to acquire 5,000 shares of Tesla or 10,000 shares of mining ETFs to fund your retirement? Not quite. In today’s economy, the average person does not have this kind of money lying around, making it hard for John Smith or Jane Doe to put together a handsome nest egg. However, there are plenty of financial products on the open market, which can ensure your money grows steadily.
Mobile applications, exchange-traded funds (ETFs), digital platforms, and artificial intelligence (AI) stock trading – the sector has produced plenty of financial products to help save and grow your money. What are they? Will they play a pivotal role in the great 2021 economic recovery? Are they for you? We’re here to help take some of the mystery out of smart investing.
Here are five innovative financial products to help save and grow your money:
1. Robo-Advisors
Robo-advisors are the future of personal finance and investing. With many young people joining the equities arena, the conventional face-to-face financial advisor will inevitably become a relic of a bygone era. Instead, millennials and Generation-Zers will turn to Robo-advisors.
A Robo-advisor is a digital platform that gives customers automated and algorithm-driven financial planning services with little supervision. All you need to do is open an account, answer a few questions, and provide some information about your current financial situation and growth goals.
By giving the Robo-advisor this data, you receive:
- Account services
- Security features
- Portfolio management
- Investment education
- Robust goal planning
- Low fees
Ultimately, Robo-advisors are great for individuals with small accounts, minimal time, and little capital. With such promising features, an automated investing platform could be one of the chief investment trends in 2021.
2. All-In-One Checking and Investing Account
How much dead money do you have in your checking account? Chances are, most of your money is resting comfortably in a checking account and not doing anything, which means it is being eaten away by inflation. Is it time you got something for it?
Many people like to have enough money in their checking account to cover their bills, day-to-day transactions, rent, and unforeseen events. This is understandable, so perhaps an all-in-one checking and investing account is the right option for you.
An all-in-one checking and investing account functions like an everyday account. You can deposit money, you can pay your bills, and you can have your paycheck directly deposited into the account. The difference? You receive returns on your money by automatically having your balance invested in a diversified portfolio of ETFs
This is also great if you are a novice investor, allowing you to tap into investment opportunities while maintaining the flexibility of a checking account.
3. Commission-Free Investment Trading
For many years, one of the chief deterrents for people getting involved in the world of investing had been the fees. Depending on your bank or investment service, you could be paying as much as $15 per trade, which forces you to put down a hefty sum of capital on a stock. And some investors are not comfortable putting up that much cash on equities.
But all of that has changed in the last couple of years, thanks to commission-free trading. After the rise of these services, most of the big banks began to give their customers zero-fee trading, which is a great way to entice newcomers to the stock market. The industry dismantled the barrier to entry, and now anybody can access stocks on the Dow Jones Industrial Average or the Nasdaq Composite Index.
4. Weekly Income ETF
The industry launched a unique exchange-traded fund (ETF) this year: the SoFi Weekly Income ETF (TGIF). This fund gives holders a weekly income by investing in the US dollar, as well as investment-grade and non-investment grade bonds. You are paid a weekly dividend of five cents per share, instead of the more common monthly or quarterly payment.
Since its inception in October 2020, the ETF has not experienced too much volatility. So far, its low has been $99.49, and its high has been $103.13. Should these stable conditions continue into the new year, the Weekly Income ETF will grow in popularity as a safe investment option, particularly for new investors.
5. Cryptocurrency
Is cryptocurrency a flash-in-the-pan or a viable, long-term investment option? It depends on whom you ask.
That said, because of the technology (blockchain) behind this innovation, cryptocurrency – whether bitcoin or Ethereum – is likely here to stay. Digital currencies remain a popular investment product that can help you grow your money since many of them are designed to combat inflation. The advantage of bitcoin is that its total supply is fixed, so the virtual currency’s purchasing power increases over time if demand continues to rise.
As cryptocurrency becomes more prevalent, the finance industry will produce more innovative products, like ETFs or crypto bank accounts, that can help grow your money over time.