I used to think investing was only for rich people in fancy suits. It seemed complicated and even a bit scary. I remember feeling nervous about the idea of putting my money—especially the little I had—into the stock market. But I learned that you don’t need a lot of money to start investing. In fact, you can begin with just a few dollars. In this article, I’ll share my personal journey of starting small and give you simple tips on how to start investing with little money. My goal is to make investing feel simple and not scary, even if you’re a total beginner (or even a 7th grader like I was when I got interested!). By the end, you’ll see that investing can be friendly, easy, and even fun.

Start Small: Even $5 Is Enough to Begin

One of the biggest myths about investing is that you need thousands of dollars to get started. Good news: you can start with as little as $5 or $10. These days, many investment platforms allow something called fractional shares, which means you can buy a piece of a stock or fund rather than the whole thing. For example, some brokers let you invest $10 into a stock that normally costs $100 per share. You’d own a small slice of that stock, and you get to enjoy the same proportionate benefits as someone who bought the whole share. This makes it possible to invest in big companies or funds even if you don’t have a lot of money.

When I first heard this, I felt relieved. I realized I could buy a “slice” of Apple or Google without needing hundreds of dollars. My first investment was around $20, split across a couple of stocks and a fund. It felt empowering to know I was a part-owner of real companies, even if my part was tiny. Yes, $5 really does matter. Investing small amounts is actually a great habit, because it teaches you consistency. Over time, those small amounts add up. Experts note that investing even small amounts regularly is a smart habit, and your money can grow over time. Think of it like planting a seed: a little seed can still grow into a big tree with time.

Starting small also helps you learn without fear. If you invest $5 and the market goes down a bit, you might lose a few cents – no big deal. You gain experience and confidence with very little risk. I used to check my $5 investment and get excited even if it grew by just 10 cents, because it proved to me that the concept works. And if it went down a bit, I didn’t panic because we’re talking pennies. This way, I built up my bravery to invest more later.

Tip: Some platforms have no minimum to start, so there’s really no barrier. For instance, certain investment accounts for kids and teens allow you to begin with as little as $1. And many index funds or mutual funds have low or even no minimum investment required, meaning even if you only have a modest amount, you can still own pieces of hundreds of different companies through a fund. The key is to take that first step with whatever amount you’re comfortable with – even if it’s the cost of a snack. In investing, a little can turn into a lot over time.

Use Beginner-Friendly Apps to Make It Easy

When I started, I didn’t go to a stuffy stockbroker’s office or study complicated charts. Instead, I downloaded a beginner-friendly investing app on my phone. Today, there are many apps designed for newbies that make investing as easy as playing a game on your phone. These apps have simple menus, colorful charts, and explain things in plain language. They guide you step by step, so you don’t feel lost. In fact, technology has made investing more accessible and less intimidating than ever. You can start with just a few taps and a few dollars.

For example, I tried an app called Robinhood. It let me buy my first stocks with only $5 to $10. Robinhood doesn’t charge trading fees, and it even offers fractional shares so I could buy a portion of an expensive stock like Amazon or Tesla with just a tiny amount of money. Seeing that I could invest in a big-name stock with the price of a sandwich was really encouraging. Another app I explored is Stash, which is super friendly for beginners. Stash actually lets you start investing with just a few cents (literally $0.01!) by buying small pieces of stocks and ETFs. It also has lots of educational content built into the app to teach you as you invest. I loved that, because whenever I stumbled on a word I didn’t know, the app would have a simple explanation ready.

There are other great apps out there too, like SoFi and Acorns, which are known for helping beginners. SoFi has an automated investing option with no account minimum, so you can begin with $5 and it will build you a diversified portfolio (fancy term for a mix of investments) right away. It also provides educational articles and even access to financial advisors if you have questions, which can be super helpful when you’re just learning. Acorns is another cool app especially for young investors; it’s designed to be very “hands-off” and beginner-friendly. You don’t need to know a lot about the stock market because Acorns does the work for you (more on Acorns in the next section).

The best part about these beginner-focused apps is that they remove a lot of the scariness. There are no complicated forms or intimidating jargon thrown at you right away. Many of them even have practice modes or dummy accounts where you can try investing without real money to see how it works. And because they cater to new investors, they often celebrate small milestones – like your first $10 invested – with little badges or confetti on the screen. It might sound silly, but those small celebrations kept me motivated and made investing feel approachable and fun.

Important: When choosing an app, always make sure it’s from a reputable company (read reviews and maybe ask a parent or mentor if you’re not sure). But rest assured, some of the most popular beginner apps have millions of users and are well-established. They truly have changed the game, making investing accessible to almost everyone. In fact, these micro-investing apps have revolutionized how people start investing, allowing users to begin with just a few dollars and gradually build wealth without feeling overwhelmed. Thanks to them, my own start in investing was smooth and exciting, not scary at all.

Invest Your Spare Change (Yes, Really!)

A simple coin jar for spare change – just like saving coins in a jar, some apps invest your digital “spare change” automatically.

One of the coolest discoveries I made was that I could invest my spare change. Remember how you might save loose coins in a piggy bank or jar? (I had a jar where I tossed pennies and dirhams from my snacks and it slowly filled up.) These days, apps can do that for you automatically – and invest the money for you!

Here’s how it works: Suppose I buy a soda for $3.39 at the store. A spare-change investing app will round up my purchase to $4.00 and take that extra $0.61 and invest it for me. I don’t even notice the money is gone because it’s such a small amount – literally coins. But over dozens of purchases, those coins start to add up. It’s like a digital version of the coin jar, except instead of just sitting there, the money is working in investments and potentially growing.

The app Acorns is famous for this “round-up” feature. When I linked Acorns to my debit card, every time I bought something, it rounded up the purchase and set aside the spare change. Once the round-ups reached $5 total, Acorns would automatically invest that money into a mix of stocks and bonds for me. I remember looking at my Acorns account after a few months and being surprised that I had invested around $30 without even trying hard. (In fact, Acorns says the average user invests over $30 a month just through these round-ups!) That’s $30 I likely would have otherwise frittered away on snacks or small toys. Instead, it was now invested in the market, growing little by little.

Using spare change apps made investing feel effortless. I didn’t have to budget a lot or think about it constantly. The app did it in the background, and I still got my coffee or snacks. Plus, it was actually fun to check the app and see that my $0.61 + $0.45 + $1.20… had turned into, say, $10 of investments over time. It felt like found money, except I was finding it by investing!

To a beginner (especially a young person or student), this method is a game-changer because you hardly miss the small amounts being stashed away. Yet, you learn the habit of investing regularly. Even if all you did was use a spare change app, you’d be doing something very smart: paying yourself first in tiny increments. And trust me, those tiny increments can grow. It’s the same idea as saving coins in a jar until it’s full, except the jar’s contents might increase in value because it’s invested in things like index funds (instead of just sitting as coins).

Several banks and financial apps offer round-up features now. Another one I’ve heard of is Chime, a banking app that also offers round-ups into savings or investments. Even some traditional banks have options to sweep your spare change into savings. The concept is simple: small change, big impact. By using these tools, I realized that investing isn’t just for people with lots of cash – anyone can do it, one coin at a time.

So, if you’re feeling hesitant about investing, try this out. It’s practically zero effort. You get to say “I’m investing” without even noticing a difference in your daily spending. Over time, you’ll see that you might have a few tens or hundreds of dollars invested, all from digital nickels and dimes that you never missed. How cool is that?

Start with Simple Funds: Index Funds and ETFs

When I first heard terms like “index fund” or “ETF”, I almost tuned out – they sounded like complicated financial jargon. But I promise, they’re not as scary as they sound. In fact, index funds and ETFs (exchange-traded funds) are some of the most beginner-friendly ways to invest, especially when you have little money. I’ll explain in super simple terms:

• An index fund is basically a basket of many different stocks or bonds. Instead of you trying to pick one or two companies to invest in, an index fund lets you own a tiny bit of lots of companies at once. For example, one famous index fund is the S&P 500 index fund, which includes 500 of the biggest companies in the stock market. If you invest in that, you’re effectively investing in all those 500 companies in one go.
• An ETF is very similar, except it trades on the stock market like a regular stock. You can buy and sell an ETF throughout the day. Many ETFs track indexes too. Think of an ETF as just a more accessible form of an index fund. For instance, there are ETFs that track the same S&P 500. You could buy a share (or a fraction of a share) of that ETF and boom – you own a piece of those 500 companies.

Why are these good for beginners? Because they automatically give you diversification – a fancy word that means “don’t put all your eggs in one basket.” When you buy an index fund or ETF, you’re spreading your money across many investments. This way, if one company in the fund has a bad day, it’s not the end of the world; the other companies in the basket help cushion the fall. Financial advisors often remind us that spreading out your investments helps reduce risk, so you’re not putting all your eggs in one basket. For a new investor, this is reassuring. You don’t have to worry that one wrong pick will ruin everything.

I found index funds very comforting when I started. Instead of trying to figure out which single stock might be a winner (which felt like guessing a needle in a haystack), I just bought an index fund that basically was the haystack – it had a bit of everything. It kept things simple, and I didn’t have to constantly check on one company’s performance. Experts also recommend these kinds of broad, low-cost funds for beginners because they’re simple and usually have lower fees. In fact, one of the first things I read was a piece of advice saying most people (especially when starting out) are better off with a long-term, buy-and-hold approach using diversified funds, rather than trying to trade stocks frequently. That sounded good to me—I wanted something easy and not time-consuming.

The great thing is you can start in index funds or ETFs with very little money now. Some fund companies used to require a few thousand dollars to buy into a mutual fund, but with the rise of ETFs and modern apps, those barriers are gone. As mentioned earlier, many funds have no minimum investment or very low ones. And because of fractional shares, you could even buy say $5 or $10 worth of an ETF that costs $300 per share. You’d get a slice proportional to your $5. So truly, nothing is stopping you from owning a nice diversified chunk of the market.

To give a personal example, one of the first ETFs I bought was a total stock market ETF. It’s like an index fund that includes almost every stock in the U.S. market. I put in a small amount (around $50 I had saved). That single investment gave me exposure to hundreds of companies. I felt proud knowing I’m invested in everything from tech companies to healthcare firms to energy companies, all through one fund. And I didn’t have to do any research on each company; the index took care of that. This kept my investing journey stress-free and super simple. I would just check it occasionally and watch how the overall market’s ups and downs made it go up a bit or down a bit, but over time it generally went up.

So, if you’re starting with little money, consider index funds or ETFs as your first investments. They are like starter packs for investors – giving you a mix of things so you don’t get hurt by any one thing. It’s exactly what I did, and to this day, I’m thankful I chose that path instead of risking it all on one trendy stock I heard about online. Remember, slow and steady can win the race in investing. Index funds and ETFs embody that philosophy perfectly.

Set Clear Goals for Your Investments

When you’re beginning with investing (especially if you’re young), it’s super helpful to ask yourself: Why am I investing? What is the goal? I know, I know – you might think, “Well, I want to make more money, obviously!” But try to be a bit more specific. Having a clear goal gives your investing a purpose and can keep you motivated, even when things get bumpy.

In fact, one piece of advice from experts really stuck with me: “Don’t start by asking, ‘What should I invest in?’ Instead ask, ‘What am I investing for?’”. This was a game-changer in my mindset. For example, when I started, my goal was to save up for a new laptop for school and, in the longer term, to start building a college fund for myself. Those goals gave me a reason to put money aside and invest it rather than spend it on short-term things. Every time I saw my investment account grow, I would imagine it getting me closer to that new laptop or helping pay for future college tuition. It made the whole process more meaningful.

Your goal could be anything that matters to you: maybe saving for a car by the time you’re 18, or saving for college, or even something smaller like a new bike or gaming console. If you’re an adult beginner reading this, common goals might be buying a house, building an emergency fund (though that should be separate from investing, actually), or retirement in the far future. Many people indeed start off investing specifically for retirement – basically putting away money now so it can grow and take care of them later.

Once you have a goal, you can decide how to invest based on that. For a short-term goal (say, 1-2 years away), you might not want to take much risk because you’ll need the money soon. For a long-term goal (10+ years away, like college or retirement for a young person), you can afford to take a bit more risk with stocks or stock funds, because you have time to ride out any ups and downs. I learned about something called “time horizon” – that’s just a fancy term for how far away your goal is. If your time horizon is short, you invest conservatively; if it’s long, you can invest more aggressively since you have time to recover from any drops. In my case, the laptop was maybe 2 years away, so I invested in pretty safe, balanced funds for that. College was nearly 10 years away at the time, so I put some money into a stock index fund for that goal knowing I wasn’t touching it for a while.

Setting goals also helped me stick to my plan. When the market had a down day and I saw a few dollars less in my account, I didn’t panic-sell everything, because I reminded myself, “Hey, this is for College 2030 (or whatever year) – I’m not using it now.” It kept me focused. Likewise, when I felt the itch to spend my savings on something silly, I’d recall my goal and it kept me disciplined to leave the money invested.

One more thing: your goals can change, and that’s okay. You might start investing for a bike, then realize you really want a laptop, or later on you’ll set new goals like a home or retirement. The important part is at any given time, know why you’re investing. It gives your money a purpose. As one investing guide I read put it: figuring out what you’re investing for can help all the other pieces fall into place, like what kind of account to use and what to invest in.

So take a moment to think about your goal. Write it down even. It makes the whole idea of investing feel more concrete and personal. In my case, it turned investing from an abstract concept into “This is the laptop/college fund.” Suddenly, I had a personal stake in it beyond just numbers on a screen, and that made me excited to keep going.

Keep Learning and Stay Patient

Jumping into investing is like starting a new hobby or sport – there’s a learning curve, and that’s totally fine! When I began, I encountered lots of new terms (what on earth is “dividend” or “P/E ratio”?), but I learned as I went along. The key is to keep learning and to be patient with yourself and your money. You don’t have to know everything at once; I certainly didn’t.

I treated my early investing experience as a hands-on learning project. I would invest a little, then read up a little. Sometimes I’d see something in my app, like “Your ETF gained 2% this month” and I’d wonder how ETFs work, so I’d watch a short explainer video or ask an adult. Little by little, terms started making sense. Remember, it’s okay to ask questions. I often talked to my dad and older brother about what I was doing with my $5 and $10 investments. They were happy to explain things like basic stock market concepts. If you don’t have someone to ask, there are a ton of beginner-friendly resources online (including videos made for young people) that break down investing concepts without jargon.

One thing I had to learn was to be patient and think long-term. Initially, I checked my investing app every day (because it was new and exciting!). If I saw my $50 turn into $48, I’d feel a bit bummed, and if it went to $52, I was overjoyed. But over time I realized the day-to-day moves aren’t that important – what’s important is the long-term growth. Historically, people who invest for many years tend to see good results, as the value of their investments grows with the economy. There’s a famous concept called compound interest, which basically means your money can start earning its own money if you give it time. For example, the $2 interest you earn can start earning additional interest, and it snowballs. The earlier you start and the longer you stay invested, the more this compounding can work for you. Knowing this made me less obsessed with short-term ups and downs. I adopted a bit of a “set it and forget it” mentality for the core of my investments, only peeking occasionally to see the progress.

Of course, learning as you go also means making a few mistakes and learning from them. I certainly did. I once invested in a single company just because I liked their video games, without researching. That stock didn’t do well and I lost a bit of money. It stung, but I learned the importance of research and diversification from that experience – and it was better to learn that lesson with $10 than with $10,000! Every misstep taught me something and made me a better investor moving forward.

As you continue your investing journey, stay curious and keep improving your knowledge. Read simple articles (you’re already doing that by reading this, so bravo!), watch YouTube channels aimed at beginner finance, or even play simulation games or stock market games for students. Some apps have built-in quizzes or badges for learning milestones. I remember earning a badge in one app for reading three articles about investing – it was silly, but it did motivate me to keep at it.

Finally, be patient with the results. Investing is not a get-rich-quick scheme, and you shouldn’t expect to make a fortune overnight with $5 or $50. In fact, as one financial expert told a curious new investor: even if a stock grows 10-20% in a year (which is huge), if you only put $10 in, that’s a gain of only $1-2. Big growth in percentage doesn’t mean a lot of money right away when you start small. And that’s okay! The idea is that over time, as you add more money regularly and those investments hopefully grow, the effect becomes bigger and bigger. Growing your investment takes time, so think of it like watching a tree grow. You don’t see a tree get taller in one day, but check back in a few years and you’ll notice a big difference. With consistency, your small investments can turn into a significant sum years down the line.

In short: keep learning, stay consistent, and be patient. If you do that, you’ll look back one day and be amazed at how far your little starting amount has come. I know I am – and I’m still learning and growing every day as an investor.

Final Thoughts: You Can Do This!

Starting to invest with little money is one of the best decisions I made, and I hope you feel more ready to make that decision too. It turns out investing isn’t some exclusive club for millionaires or math geniuses. It’s for everyone – including someone with just a few dollars, like how I started. The world of investing has become super welcoming to beginners: with friendly apps, spare change tools, fractional shares, and simple funds that do the hard work for you.

Always remember, everyone starts somewhere. Even the greatest investors began with their first dollar. What matters is beginning the journey. Don’t be afraid to start small, because small steps can lead to big results over time. As the saying goes, “the best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago, the second best time is now.” The same is true for investing – starting early, even with a tiny amount, gives your money more time to grow.

I started with $5 here, $10 there, using the techniques I just shared: an easy app, spare change round-ups, buying into index funds, and setting my goal. I’m so glad I did. Not only have I made some money, but I also gained confidence and knowledge. What once felt scary now feels empowering. Money doesn’t control me; I control it by making smart choices.

Now it’s your turn. You can do this! Download a beginner-friendly app, fund it with a few dollars, maybe try out a spare change investment feature, and consider a simple index fund to get started. Invest for a purpose that matters to you, and keep learning as you go. Before you know it, you’ll be proudly watching your investments grow and feeling like a financial whiz, even if you’re nowhere near an adult yet.

Investing with little money is simple, not scary – and you’ve got all the basic ideas to get started. So take that first step, no matter how small. Your future self will thank you. Happy investing!

Small investments add up over time; Fractional shares let you invest $10 in a $100 stock; Spare change round-ups (like Acorns) can invest $0.61 from a $3.39 purchase and average $30/month invested without effort; Many beginner apps have no minimums and make investing easy and accessible; Index funds/ETFs help spread out risk (don’t put all eggs in one basket) and are ideal for less experienced investors to keep things simple; Always start with a goal – ask “What am I investing for?”; Historically, patience pays off as long-term investors are rewarded with growth over time.

Check this out: 

How to Launch a Cleaning Business and Earn £500,000 Annually

Starting a Vending Machine Side Hustle: Steps to Achieve $900 Monthly Income

A Guide to Profitable Reselling Businesses: From Zero to $20,000 a Month