Griffin Review: Invest where you shop

Griffin It is a mobile investment platform based on the concept of linking your spending and investing. The fintech, founded in 2017 by Aaron Frog, Beau Starr, and Robin Frog, has grown to more than 500,000 registered users and 1 million app downloads.

How does griffin work?

There’s no shortage of automated micro-investing apps on the market, but Grifin is somewhat unique. Here’s a closer look at how it works:

Link your accounts

After registering with Grifin, the first step is to link your accounts. This includes the credit or debit cards you use most often, as well as your checking or savings account. This way, Griffin can see your transactions every week and withdraw the funds needed to invest. Griffin Plaid is used to link your accounts. It is a secure, third-party platform used by thousands of fintech companies and banks to transfer money.

Simple weekly investment

By linking your accounts, Grifin will monitor your spending at publicly traded companies (your local farmers market won’t count). At the end of the week, it adds up the number of qualifying purchases you’ve made and withdraws $1 per transaction from your bank account. So, if you make 12 qualifying purchases, Giving will withdraw $12 and invest it in the businesses you shopped at. It all happens automatically, so apart from making sure you have enough money in your account to invest, there’s no work.

Adaptive investing

Grifin technology is built on the concept of “adaptive investing”. By linking your investment purchases to where you shop, Grifin adapts to your lifestyle, as your shopping habits evolve. According to Griffin, the technology is “Designed by nature to create healthy habits around the spending you already make; No need to time the market, no need to pick and choose stocks.”

But Grifin automation doesn’t require you to give up all control. Its investment settings let you pause your investments for a week if you want to take a break, adjust the investment amount for each transaction (between $1 and $99), and block companies you shop but don’t want to own shares in.

Also, Grifin assigns a risk level to individual companies: conservative, moderate, or aggressive. Griffin will only invest in companies that are at or below your risk tolerance level.

What stocks can I invest in?

You can buy and sell more than 400 individual stocks, however Griffin It works with over 3,500 companies because many stocks have multiple subsidiaries. Take whole foods, for example. Amazon owns it, so if you spend money at Whole Foods, Griffin will buy stock in Amazon.

Here is a list of just a few of the 400+ companies you can invest in through Grifin:

• 3M Company
• Abercrombie & Fitch
• Adobe
• Amazon
• American Express
• Bank of America
• Best buy
• Capital One
• coca cola
• Dollar General
• Honda
• Kellogg
• Lowe Microsoft
• Motorola
• Papa John’s
• Planet Fitness
• Ralph Lauren
• Shopify
• Starbucks
• TD Bank
• Uber
• United Airlines
• Verizon
• Wendy
• Wayne Resorts
• Zillow
• Zoom in

How are dividends handled?

If the stock(s) you own carry dividends, they will be paid into the investable cash portion of your portfolio, where you can manually reinvest them by purchasing stocks. Griffin does not automatically reinvest dividends via DRIP.

Are there any fees?

Grifin charges a monthly subscription fee of $5, or $60 annually, although you can cancel at any time. There are no other commission fees of any kind. You’ll need to decide if the membership fee is worth it, but transparent pricing is refreshing.

How does Griffin compare?

Grifin isn’t the only beginner-friendly investing app on the market today. Two similar apps include M1 Finance and Acorns, although they both work somewhat differently. Acorns is an all-in-one savings platform that pools spare change from your purchases and invests it in low-cost ETFs, based on your risk tolerance. They don’t offer individual stocks like Griffin, but they tend to be more diversified and better suited to a long-term investing strategy. M1 Finance is a hybrid investment app. You can create portfolios of individual stocks and ETFs using fractional shares and automated contributions. It’s more customizable than Grifin or Acorns, but it’s also a little more complex, which could be a good or bad thing, depending on the individual investor. All three platforms operate on a fee-based model with no trading fees.

You can start with Griffin By downloading its app on iOS or Android, then opening an account. You’ll have to provide your email address and some personal information (including your Social Security number), as it’s a regulated investment service. From there, you’ll connect your bank account and cards so Griffin can start tracking your spending transactions. Setup should take no more than 10-15 minutes.

Safety is always a concern for financial applications. Grifin’s brokerage services are provided by Alpaca Securities, LLC and Apex Clearing Corporation. Both entities are registered with the Securities Exchange Commission (SEC) and are members of FINRA and SIPC. As mentioned earlier, Grifin uses Plaid, a trusted third party to connect to your bank accounts.

Grifin does not provide a customer support phone line on its website, but you can email it [email protected] If you need help.

Is it worth it?

If you’re looking to build a regular investing habit and are looking for a low-barrier entry point into stock investing, Grifin is worth considering. By combining your investing habit with your regular spending, you won’t have to put much thought into your asset allocation or portfolio construction.

However, I cannot recommend Grifin as a primary investment platform for most investors. Investing in individual stocks is considered high risk, as it may be difficult to achieve optimal diversification. My concern is that Griffin considers any individual stock “conservative,” regardless of industry. Most novice investors should choose a diversified, professionally managed portfolio (such as ETFs) rather than individual stocks if the goal is to build a serious long-term investment plan. Platforms such as Acorns, M1 Finance or other low-cost brokers or robo-advisors are better suited for this purpose.