Entrepreneurs, particularly those with young families, don’t have the luxury of focusing only on making their business a success. They are tasked with managing their family’s financial well-being while hacking new business growth.
As they grow their companies, they’re simultaneously looking out for their family’s financial well-being, even as finances and business challenges change and evolve.
Running a startup and starting a family, concurrently, presents unique challenges. Yet, an emerging range of digital resources can make family financial wellness easier to manage for an entrepreneur than ever before.
Build a healthy financial future
Creating a family financial wellness plan that meshes with the needs of the young entrepreneurial family can be a challenge, especially when you consider the fact that 77 percent of startup businesses rely on the personal savings of their founders for initial capital needs.
But new and innovative approaches to building a healthy financial future can help. Today, a slew of social-impact entrepreneurs have created app platforms designed to take away one of the biggest pain points of savings by making it frictionless, with options like rounding up change to go into a savings fund when you make a purchase and small recurring automatic transfers.
Some of these platforms give families 24/7 access to and simplify investment and savings options that were once exclusively the terrain of big investors and the ultra-wealthy.
Below are a few favorites:
Fundrise
Fundrise opens the doors for the Average Joe to invest in multi-million dollar real estate projects, from apartment buildings to large-scale commercial buildings, for as little as $500. Compared to the typical entry point of hundreds of thousands of dollars for such investments, Fundrise’s initial investment minimum makes real estate investing available to millions of people who were previously locked out of such opportunities.
Robinhood
Robinhood (recent glitches notwithstanding) promises to level the playing field for people interested in getting in on investments without paying the standard brokerage house fees. Because Robinhood doesn’t charge a trade fee and allows purchases of fractional shares, small investors can more affordably purchase stocks and make trades. It’s also one of the few brokers that allows investors to trade cryptocurrency.
Acorns
Acorns links to your financial accounts and allows you to micro-invest in a diversified portfolio across more than 7,000 stocks and bonds. What sets Acorns apart is the ways in which you can deposit money. Aside from traditional deposit, you can use passive savings approaches like recurring auto deposits and rounding up change from your purchases. There are no account minimums or commissions.
Bumped
Bumped rewards your loyalty as a customer by offering you free fractional shares in dozens of big-name companies. After downloading the Bumped app, linking up your credit card, and selecting some retailers and restaurants that you frequent, each purchase automatically gives you a few cents back in the form of company stock. You can maintain a portfolio of these fractional shares and watch them grow, or you can sell them off and transfer the funds to your linked bank account.
NestEgg
NestEgg provides unprecedented access to protected, high-yield child trust funds that have long been available only to the wealthy. NestEgg allows any family member to quickly and easily create a flexible trust fund for as little as $4.00 a month (as opposed to the traditional model of working with a banker and/or attorney to create a trust with a standard $250,000 entry point).
Families can round up on purchases to contribute to the NestEgg funds, schedule auto-deposits, and even crowdfund and invite others to contribute their spare change via a simple mobile app. Trust funds are uniquely protected from creditors, legal action, the government, and other family members–making them the most secure and stable choice for long-term child savings.
For entrepreneurial families on a budget, apps like these can help create future financial wealth by giving them the power of starting early and saving regularly, even in small amounts. Technology is allowing formerly exclusive tools to be democratized.
Brett Foster is CEO and co-founder of NestEgg, an app that allows parents on any budget to start a trust fund for their children and even invite friends and family to contribute. Brett comes from a background in financial technology, military intelligence, and social impact advocacy.
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