Our Take

Stash's all-digital experience focuses on helping younger investors manage their money effectively so they can be set up for future financial success. To further this mission, Stash has built its platform around educating users on a wide range of investment and financial topics. Stash is also free from complicated financial jargon while preserving investment flexibility—by allowing you to either select the investments yourself or choose the fully automated Smart Portfolio option.

There have been two big changes at Stash leading up to 2024. One is the hiring of a CEO, Liza Landman, and several more additions to the leadership as Stash evolves from its roots as a cofounder-run operation. The second is the dropping of cryptocurrency as a tradable asset in 2023. We’ll explore Stash in more detail so you can determine if this platform is the right fit for you.

Pros & Cons

Account Overview

Account Minimum	$5 for Smart Portfolio
Fees	Monthly subscription tiers at $3 and $9
Goal Setting	Retirement, wealth building, money management, rainy day
Available Assets	ETFs
Interest Paid on Cash Balances	0%
Customizable Portfolio	Yes, only based on investor profile with reasonable exclusions
View Portfolio Before Funding	Yes
Customer Service	Chatbot, email, phone
Financial Advisor Available	No
Cash Management	Banking, Stock-Back card, early payday
Tax-Loss Harvesting	No
External Account Sync/Consolidation	No
Mobile App	Android, iOS

Account Setup

Stash makes the account sign-up process simple and straightforward. As you begin onboarding, you’ll enter personal information and have the opportunity to select the first stock you’d like to invest in from a menu. You also have flexibility to save the investment selection until later in the process. When selecting goals, Stash provides six options including retirement, budgeting, saving for the unexpected, building wealth, earning stock rewards, and financial advice. Once goals are selected you’ll be prompted to pick the subscription plan and add a credit card to enroll. 

Stash’s subscription-based model is rare within the robo-advisor industry, as most providers charge a fee percentage for the assets held on the platform. Stash offers two subscription options; Growth and Stash+. Stash Growth is a $3 monthly subscription that includes digital advice tailored towards new investors, a personal investment account, Stock-Back card access, the option to utilize early payday, digital advice for personal finances, a smart portfolio, and a retirement portfolio. Stash+ is the premier tier for $9 per month. It includes everything on the Growth tier supplemented with digital advice for family finances, market insights, and two kids' portfolios. Both tiers also include life insurance, but the coverage is not significant. 

The subscription plan determines which accounts you can open. Overall, Stash offers a relatively limited number of investment account types, including personal brokerage, traditional individual retirement account (IRA), Roth IRA, and custodial. After you’ve chosen the subscription plan, you can link your bank account to invest with Stash. Before your funds are invested, you’ll be able to view your allocation to ensure you’re comfortable with the portfolio. Stash also provides a diversification analysis tool that evaluates how well your self-selected investments are diversified on the platform.

Goal Planning

Stash provides several goal-planning options to choose from, including:

• Retirement
• Building Wealth
• Saving for the Unexpected
• Budgeting
• Earn Stock Rewards

Stash generally lacks financial calculators and tools that help you assess your goal-planning progress. However, you can educate yourself about a variety of goal-planning best practices through Stash’s Learn portal, which covers a broad range of investment and financial planning topics. This information isn’t specific to your financial situation, but many of the articles may generally be relevant to your goal profile.

Another way to evaluate your goal progress is through Stash’s diversification analysis tool, which gives you further insight into your portfolio allocation and the opportunity to receive investment recommendations based on your portfolio makeup. There are also “Potential” and “Idea” sections of your account that allow you to adjust a few financial levers to explore potential outcomes. Stash is purely digital, so there are no human financial advisors to assist with planning. 

Account Services

Stash provides bank services that can help you to more effectively manage your money in one place. One of the unique features of Stash’s bank account is a Stock-Back card that gives you a percentage of your spending back in the form of stock instead of the more standard cash-back option. This allows you to set aside further funds for investing without more money coming out of your pocket. 

Stash also supports auto deposits and round-up transfers through its Auto-Stash tool. You’ll be able to use these funds to place trades for stocks and ETFs in four daily trading windows. As mentioned, advice is digitally delivered throughout the product in the form of educational articles curated from the information you share on the platform. Human advisors are not available for consultations. Since Stash is built for uncomplicated investing, margin accounts are also not offered as part of the platform.

Cash Management

Within Stash’s Smart Portfolio, automatic sweeps into the portfolio occur once cash exceeds $1. Money market funds are not offered, and this makes sense as the balance of cash will never be large enough to generate much in terms of interest given the active sweep into the market portfolio. As part of the banking product, Stash gives you more control over your cash flow by offering mobile deposits and budgeting tools. You’ll also have access to the early direct deposit feature for your paycheck, which creates more financial flexibility by allowing you to manage these funds up to two business days ahead of when you might normally expect to receive the money.

Portfolio Construction

Stash provides the option to select your own investments or to use its fully managed service, Smart Portfolio. If you’re looking to create your own allocation, you’ll find that the investment catalog is large, allowing you to choose from nearly 4,000 stocks, ETFs, and real estate investment trusts (REITs). You can also take advantage of fractional share investing for more investment options.

The Smart Portfolio is built by Stash’s investment research team and generally follows a passive, risk-optimized approach to building wealth. The portfolio features a sliding scale to adjust the risk level to your preferences, goals, and financial situation. The asset allocation is invested in ETFs and is broadly invested across domestic, international, and bond holdings. In January 2022, Stash added crypto as part of its Smart Portfolio diversification strategy but dropped it in 2023 as Stash leaned further into passive investing principles.

Smart Portfolio is Stash's robo-advisor, and it is limited to ETFs as the asset used. Investors can access a fuller range of assets in the self-directed accounts, but that is outside of the robo-advisor program.

Available Assets

Individual Stocks	No
Mutual Funds	No
Fixed Income	No
REITs	No
Socially Responsible or ESG Options	No
ETFs	Yes
Non-Proprietary ETFs	Yes
Private Equity	No
Crypto	No
Forex	No

Portfolio Customization

Stash gives you the option to have complete control over your portfolio creation, a unique feature compared to other robo-advisor offerings. However, this flexibility comes with minimal portfolio management options compared to the Smart Portfolio. The automation within the self-directed account is limited to automatic investments according to allocation rules, dividend reinvestment, and the round-up and stock-back features. There is no rebalancing function, so we don't consider it a robo-advisor. Smart Portfolio is fully managed without the option to adjust the allocation outside of changing the overall risk level. You can request some reasonable restrictions, but the program will make decisions based on the survey responses that establish your risk profile and timelines.

Portfolio Management

Stash’s approach to portfolio management depends on whether you build the allocation yourself or use the Smart Portfolio option. While you’re afforded a lot of flexibility if you pick your own investments, Stash effectively leaves the ongoing portfolio management up to you. There’s no automatic rebalancing that occurs for this portion of your money. The diversification analysis tool can suggest ways to improve your allocation, but the decision on whether to take action will be up to you. If you are using Stash in this way, it is essentially just a normal brokerage account rather than an automated portfolio offering from a robo-advisor. 

Smart Portfolio is the fully automated investment strategy where you turn over the management to Stash. Stash reviews your account quarterly for rebalancing opportunities and further ensures your portfolio is weighted properly when withdrawals or contributions take place. No tax-loss harvesting or other tax optimization features are available.

It is important to note that the Smart Portfolio is only available for use within your personal brokerage account. This is a meaningful limitation of the platform, especially considering that most other robo-advisor offerings provide this functionality specifically for retirement and other longer-term accounts. Stash also doesn’t support account aggregation with external investments, so you won’t be able to see how the allocation fits in with your larger financial picture.

Key Portfolio Management Features
Automatic Rebalancing	Quarterly (Smart Portfolio only)
Reporting Features	Tax reporting, statements, performance
Tax-Loss Harvesting	No
External Account Syncing/Consolidation	No

User Experience

Desktop

Stash is generally geared towards newer investors and the desktop experience reflects this focus. The site provides simple, straightforward navigation with engaging material, prompts, and functionality. Email communication is also timely and informative, providing updates on market conditions, deposit activity, and financial topics tailored to you. Overall, you’ll find Stash’s desktop platform intuitive and easy to use.

Mobile

The mobile experience is built for both iOS and Android users and provides easy navigation, transacting ability, and functionality. You’ll be able to use the app to manage all aspects of your account without needing to use a computer. 

Stash was originally created as a mobile experience with desktop functionality added later. While the experiences are now similar, some users may prefer the mobile option given the ease of use and functionality that is a bit more robust (such as debit card support).

Customer Service

Stash is primarily a digital-only experience and the support options reflect this aspect. You’ll be able to get in touch with a human support team member via phone and email. Otherwise, the online chatbot and informative FAQ site will be able to address a broad range of questions. Since Stash doesn’t provide human guidance, no financial advisor consultations are available.

Security

Stash has robust security features in place to ensure your data and information remain safe, including:

• Two-factor authentication
• 256-bit encryption
• Biometric entry (fingerprint scanner or face recognition)
• Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) and Securities Investor Protection Corporation (SIPC) coverage
• Debit card locking/unlocking
  

Education

Stash prides itself on providing outstanding education content to help new investors better understand investing and financial topics. The “Learn” section of the dashboard contains a variety of articles that are engaging and easy to understand. Since Stash users tend to be younger or newer investors, much of the content is curated towards this audience. The quality of the material and ease of use gives Stash users the opportunity to meaningfully improve their investment knowledge.

Commissions and Fees

As mentioned, Stash’s subscription-based model is uncommon in the robo-advisor industry, where a percentage fee for assets under management (AUM) is the usual approach. For investors with larger deposit amounts, the fee savings are significant compared to the AUM model. However, for investors with smaller deposits, the effective fee rate is higher than other robo-advisors that use a flat fee percentage.  The expense ratios on ETFs are relatively low on average which puts more money in your pocket to invest. Stash’s banking service also lets you avoid paying hidden fees typically seen in traditional bank institutions. There are some miscellaneous fees, such as for transferring your account out of Stash, but the large majority of fees are covered by the monthly subscription cost.

Category	Fee
Management Fees	Monthly subscription tiers at $3 and $9
Termination Fees	$75 transfer-out fee
Expense Ratios	0.07% average for Smart Portfolio

The Bottom Line

Stash is a great option for new investors who would like to learn about investing while having the flexibility to create their own portfolios or use an automated portfolio management service. The educational content is excellent and easy to understand. The banking product also gives users more control over their financial lives in one place. Overall, Stash is a strong option to help newer and younger investors manage money effectively, and the subscription model means it gets cheaper in real terms as your investment account balance grows.  That being said, experienced investors who prefer more robust portfolio management or people who value human advice will not find a match in Stash. There are also some key limitations in that you can only deploy the robo-advisory part of Stash inside taxable investment accounts with no tax optimization. Your tax-protected retirement accounts cannot be enrolled in Smart Portfolios. If you want to have a robo-advisor look after an IRA, you will have to keep looking.

How Does Stash Help You Save Money on Taxes?

Stash doesn't really assist you in saving money on taxes. There is no tax-loss harvesting in Smart Portfolios and tax optimization via tax-advantaged investments is not prioritized. Many of Stash's users are on the newer end of their investment journey, so it is possible there just isn't a lot of concern over taxation on additional income.

How We Review Robo-Advisors

Providing readers with unbiased, comprehensive reviews of digital wealth management companies, more commonly known as robo-advisors, is a top priority of Investopedia. We used our 2023 consumer survey to guide the research and weightings for our 2024 robo-advisor awards. To collect the data, we sent a digital survey with 64 questions to each of the 21 companies we included in our rubric. Additionally, our team of researchers verified the survey responses and collected any missing data points through online research and conversations with each company directly. The data collection process spanned from Jan. 8 to Feb. 9, 2024.

We then developed a quantitative model that scored each company to rate its performance across nine major categories and 59 criteria to find the best robo-advisors. The score for each company’s overall star rating is a weighted average of the criteria:

• Account Services: 10.00%
• Account Setup: 5.00%
• Customer Service: 5.00%
• Fees: 15.00%
• Goal Planning: 21.00%
• Portfolio Contents: 17.00%
• Portfolio Management: 17.00%
• Security & Education: 5.00%
• User Experience: 5.00%

Additionally, during our 2023 research, many of the companies we reviewed granted our team of expert writers and editors access to live accounts so they could perform hands-on testing. Through this all-encompassing data collection and review process, Investopedia has provided you with an unbiased and thorough review of the top robo-advisors.

Read more about how we research and review robo-advisors.

Separately, our research team conducted a survey of 205 U.S. adults aged 18 to 72 who are current clients of one of 18 robo-advisors. While the information collected did not influence the development of our ratings model, it was instrumental in gathering the valuable insights published in Investopedia's 2023 Robo-Advisor Consumer Survey.

Participants in our 2023 Robo-Advisor Survey opted in to an online, self-administered questionnaire from a market research vendor. Data collection took place between Aug. 30 and Sept. 15, 2023, with 11 video interviews conducted with volunteer respondents from Sept. 7 to Sept. 17, 2023. Multiple quality checks, including screeners, attention gauges, comprehension evaluations, and logic metrics, among others, were used to ensure only the highest quality responses were included.