Just a few short years ago I began taking on more responsibility at work, which lead to me bringing home bigger paychecks and enjoying cushy employee perks.  That extra income and those perks got us to a point where we *finally* had a bit of financial breathing room.  We took full advantage and began to get our financial act together.

Life was awesome! But the financial progress we were making came to a grinding halt the day I lost my job.

The Importance of Diversifying Your Income

During my exit interview I was fed the line “you’ll be an asset to any future employer.” But a full year after getting fired I was still unemployed and struggling to pay bills. The pressure was mounting, life was getting harder by the day, and something needed to give.  All because I didn’t have that paycheck coming in.

My only source of income disappeared when I lost my job and I was screwed.

I wondered how different life would be if I’d started the small business I’d always talked about or maybe bought my first rental property before losing my job?  I’d have given anything to have another source of income during these desperate times.

The “don’t put all your eggs in one basket” advice made sense for investing because a diverse portfolio helps smooth out turbulent times in the stock market. But I hadn’t really heard talk about the need to diversify my income.

Having multiple streams of income would definitely have softened the blow of losing my job.

Why Multiple Income Streams Matter

If your full-time job is your only source of income, you’re flirting with financial disaster. If you don’t know someone personally, you’ve probably heard stories of people losing their jobs with no warning at all. Unless you’re out of debt and you’ve stashed a big chunk of money in an emergency fund, having different types of income streams provides not only some cash each month – but it may buy you more time to find a new job.

If you’re still hard at work at your 9-5, diversifying your income means additional money comes in each month because you’re earning money from multiple sources. And the more money you have coming in, the more money you can put to work. The most efficient way to reach financial independence is to have your money making you more money!

Different Types of Income

Before we talk about great ways to put your money to work, let’s review the two main types of income.

Earned Income

Earning an income implies you are actively doing something to receive that income. The most common type of earned income comes from working a full-time or part-time job. Each day you go to work, you’re trading your time and energy for money. And many people have a love-hate relationship with earned income; they hate their job but love payday!

Your full-time job is your biggest and most important source of earned income. As you consider different types of income streams, don’t neglect your full-time job in pursuit of side hustles or passive income opportunities. Remember, your full-time hustle is your most important hustle!

In the pursuit of financial independence, walking past dollars to pick up spare change rarely make sense.

The pros of earned income?

• Even though it takes your time, it’s an easy way to make money. You also don’t need money to generate more earned income, you just need time.

The downsides of earned income?

• The biggest downside is giving up control of your time. And when you stop trading your time, you stop making money.
• Your earned income is also typically taxed at the highest rate possible.

Passive Income

Generating passive income is much more hands-off because it requires little to no effort on your part to keep making more money. And who wouldn’t want that? Having your money making you more money is the holy grail!

Investment income is the most common and easiest type of passive income to generate. Once you buy dividend-paying stocks, high-yield bonds, or deposit money into high-interest savings accounts, your money starts making more money without any more help from you.

The pros of passive income?

• You make money 24/7 – while you’re sleeping, on vacation, or when you’re at your full-time job or side hustle. No matter what you are doing, your money continues to make more money. And the passive income you make is taxed at a lower rate than the money you earn by going to work.

The downsides of passive income?

• It takes money to make money. And if you don’t have a lot of capital to invest, it takes a long time to build a substantial amount of passive income.

There are plenty of click-bait headlines and misleading articles adding to misconceptions about passive income. Remember, to truly be passive it requires little to no effort to maintain the income stream.

Blogging and podcasting are NOT examples of ways to make passive income. Driving for Uber and being an Instacart shopper doesn’t create passive income either. If you are a real estate investor who leaves all the work to a property manager, your profits qualify as passive income. But any landlord will tell you that while there are days where your profits feel passive, dealing with tenant and property problems is definitely work.

Different Types of Passive Income

There are many ways to improve your financial situation and diversify your income streams through passive income. Below are a few different ways to get started.

Interest Income

Interest income is generated when your cash is out there earning you money.  Most people earn a little bit of interest income from their checking and savings accounts.  Here are a few ways I’m earning interest income, and some other options for you as well.

Checking and Savings

• T-Mobile Money’s tagline is “Not Another Bank. A Better One.” Everyone is eligible to sign up for T-Mobile Money regardless of their cell service provider, but T-Mobile customers get a whopping 4% on their first $3,000 and 1% on everything else. Non-T-Mobile customers get a flat 1% interest on deposits.  As a T-Mobile customer myself, I’ve been using this service for a couple of months now and have been pleased with the experience and love the 4% interest I’m earning on my emergency fund stash.

• Marcus (by Goldman Sachs) offers an online savings account currently paying 2.25% Annual Percentage Yield.

• Beam is an online bank account that pays 2% interest but allows you to earn up to 4% through gamification.  You can read my in-depth review of Beam right here.

• CapitalONE 360 offers a savings account paying 1% with no games or balance limitations.  This is where my family has done our primary banking for years.  We’ve been very pleased and I can recommend CapitalONE without hesitation.  Use this link to create your account and get up to $100 in bonus incentives.

• Depending on the amount of money you have to invest and your timeline to keep it invested, Certificates of Deposit (CD’s) are becoming popular again. Ally currently offers 2.75% interest for a CD with a 1-year term and no minimum investment.

• Stashing some funds in a money market account is another way to earn interest. Money markets are interest-bearing accounts usually paying more than traditional savings accounts. For a $100 minimum deposit, you can open a money market account at CIT bank and earn 1.85% APY. Higher opening deposits can earn you a higher rate at other online banks such as Capital One or Ally.

Lending

• If you have a paid for property you plan to sell, you might hold the mortgage and act as the bank for a new buyer. You’ll typically get paid a down payment and then principal and interest payments for a period of time before a large “balloon payment” is made to pay off the property. I’ve not done this myself, but it’s a good option for some if you’re looking to generate some passive interest income.

• Peer-to-peer lending may come with higher risk but you’ll be rewarded with higher interest rates too. An initial deposit of $1,000 sets you up to invest on LendingClub’s platform. Depending on the loan grade, interest rates on loans varies from almost 6.5% to just over 27%.  Tempting, but a bit too much risk for me personally.

Dividend Stocks

When you own dividend stocks, you get paid a portion of the company’s earnings for each share you own. You can earn dividends when you purchase individual stocks paying dividends or through a dividend mutual fund.

Want an even simpler option? Buy index funds!

Real Estate

Rentals are one of the most popular and stable ways out there to earn income, but remember it might not be a passive income stream! Renting out a room or your whole house on Airbnb falls into that same category. It’s not really passive income if you are spending time booking guests, meeting with them, and cleaning up after they leave. If you hire the work out, it becomes a much more passive form of income.

You might consider investing in real estate investment trusts (REIT’s) too. They give you many of the benefits of investing in real estate without the hassle of owning physical property.

Capital Gains

If you sell an appreciating asset like your home or stocks that are worth more than when you bought them, you might consider your profit to be passive income. Just keep in mind the IRS has its own definition of passive activity when it comes to paying taxes.

Profit From Product Creation

Writing blog posts or a book, recording a song, developing an app, taking photos, or creating an e-commerce store are all active ventures. But after you put in the initial work, when people pay for the use of your property or buy your product – it becomes a form of mostly passive income.

Adding display advertising, getting paid per download, or using affiliate marketing probably take more work than buying a CD or dividend stock – but they’re meeting your goal of different types of income streams too.

Camp FIRE Finance has started to dabble in this by selling some FIRE merchandise on Amazon.

Bank Bonus Hacking

Sticking to one bank is a thing of the past! Opening bank accounts for the bonuses they pay out is another passive income opportunity. While many require a direct deposit, a minimum balance, and leaving the money in the account for a certain time period – you and your money may be able to make hundreds (or even thousands) of dollars each year from opening new bank accounts.

Credit Card Hacking

We’re not talking about hacks that lead to fraud – but those putting money in your pocket for little to no work! There are plenty of ways to “hack” credit cards and earn passive income through sign-up bonuses, cash back, and other rewards.

Some cards offer bonuses of up to $500 cash back after meeting a minimum spending requirement. Others offer 6% cash back on grocery purchases or 5% on rotating categories throughout the year. You have to pay off your monthly balance each month or credit card hacking can cost you money, rather than making it!

In the past year alone I’ve used credit card travel hacking to take my family of six to Hawaii for a week, and my wife and I spent two weeks in the Mediterranean, visiting places like Athens, Santorini, and Rome.

For the European trip, we used rewards from our American Express Hilton Honors (150,000 bonus points) and Delta SkyMiles (40,000 bonus miles + statement credit) cards to cover airfare and hotels.

Putting Passive Income To Work For You

You probably see the importance of diversifying your income streams now, in addition to your investment portfolio. Don’t neglect your full-time job because it is such an important income source, but embrace the saying “expect the unexpected” too.

Adding different types of passive income is incredibly important in your goal of reaching financial independence.

The post Diversify Your Income with These 7 Types of Passive Income appeared first on Camp FIRE Finance.

What is Acorns?

When I was younger (in my 20’s) I had a difficult time leaving my saved money alone.  Save, spend my savings, repeat. I’m pretty sure I’m not the only person that’s struggled with that cycle.  A couple of years ago I stumbled onto Acorns, a service so awesome and simple that I was upset with myself for not thinking of it first.

Acorns is like a piggy bank for adults.  The concept is easy to understand and simple to use.  Defined as a ‘micro-investing’ service, Acorns allows you to invest your spare change into a portfolio of index funds.  This is done by connecting your checking and credit card accounts to your Acorns account.  Whenever you make a purchase using your connected bank accounts, that transaction gets rounded-up to the nearest whole dollar amount and this ’round up’ is invested.

A $4.75 purchase gets rounded-up and you invest $0.25.  Simple.

In addition to round-up investments, you can also make lump sum deposits into your Acorns account, or even set up a recurring investment – like $25 every other Friday.

Investing Your Spare Change

Money makes its way into your Acorns account in one of three ways.

1. Through transaction round-ups
2. With lump-sum deposits
3. From recurring deposits

Acorns Round Ups

Round-ups can be done automatically on 100% of your transactions or, if you prefer the manual approach, you can log in to your Acorns account and manually approve specific transactions that you want to round up, and exclude those which you don’t.

That’s too much work for me so I’ve automated the process and all my transactions get rounded-up automatically.  On those occasions when an even dollar amount is spent you can direct Acorns to either ignore it or round it up by a full dollar (I’ve chosen to do a full dollar round-up).

Acorns also offers you the ability to look back at historical transactions from each one of your linked accounts and choose whether or not you’d like to round them up.  I happened to create my account mid-month and chose to round-up all of my transactions from the beginning of the month.  Doing this allowed me to start with about two weeks of historical transnational worth $24.25 in round-ups.  I only looked back about two weeks, but you can go back as far as you’d like to.

To round-up historical transactions, simply click on the “Round-Ups” tab from the app menu, scroll through your transactions and touch the transactions you’d like to round-up.

Lump Sum Deposits

In addition to the transnational Round-ups, Acorns also offers users the ability to do single, lump-sum deposits.  These deposits can be done at any time and for any reason.  There isn’t a limit on the number of deposits you can make via this method.

Personally I like to use this feature to lock in any ‘savings’ that I get in my day-to-day life.  For example, during the work week I usually eat out for lunch, which costs be about $10 each time.  This adds up quickly, so when I bring my lunch from home I like to do a lump-sum deposit to capture that $10.00 that I saved by brown bagging it.

To round-up historical transactions, simply click on the “Invest/Withdraw” tab from the app menu, type in the lump-sum you’d like to save, and click the ‘invest’ button.

Lump sum deposits are available only with the $2.00 and $3.00 per month plans.

Recurring Deposits

The last way for money to find its way into your Acorns account is through a recurring deposit.  This is as straightforward as it sounds.  You can schedule a lump-sum amount to be deposited on a regular daily, weekly, or monthly basis.

To schedule a recurring investment, click on ‘Settings’ from the app menu and then select ‘Recurring Investment.’

Once you’ve created your account and chosen how to get the money flowing, all that’s left for you to do is sit back and watch your spare change add up. Due to the “micro-investing” nature of the Acorns program, you’re dealing with small numbers that will build slowly, much like an acorn growing into a mighty oak (yeah, I went there!). So this isn’t huge money we talking about here, but that’s exactly why I like Acorns so much.

Because you’re investing spare change, it’s a painless and easy way for you to do *something,* which is great for those of us looking for creative ways to squirrel away cash.

Recurring deposits are available only with the $2.00 and $3.00 per month plans.

Investment Portfolio Options

Round-ups are moved into your Acorns account in $5.00 increments.  So if the value of your last six round-ups is $4.15, that money will remain in your bank account until you’ve got another $0.85 in round-ups.  Once that $5.00 threshold has been met, the money will flow into your Acorns account and get invested in your portfolio.  There are five portfolios available to you which range from Conservative to Aggressive.

Here are the five Acorns Smart Portfolios options, with more details and screenshots below:

1. Conservative
2. Moderately Conservative
3. Moderate
4. Moderately Aggressive
5. Aggressive

Conservative Acorns Portfolio

The Acorns Conservative Portfolio “seeks to provide investors with current income and preservation of capital.”  The investment breakdown looks like this:

• 40% Government Bonds
• 40% Corporate Bonds
• 12% Large Company Stocks
• 4% International Large Company Stocks
• 2% Small Company Stocks
• 2% Real Estate Stocks

Moderately Conservative Acorns Portfolio

The Acorns Moderately Conservative Portfolio “seeks to provide investors with current income and capital appreciation.”  The investment breakdown looks like this:

• 30% Government Bonds
• 30% Corporate Bonds
• 24% Large Company Stocks
• 8% International Large Company Stocks
• 4% Real Estate Stocks
• 4% Small Company Stocks

Moderate Acorns Portfolio

The Acorns Moderate Portfolio “seeks to provide investors with capital appreciation and current income.”  The investment breakdown looks like this:

• 29% Large Company Stocks
• 20% Government Bonds
• 20% Corporate Bonds
• 10% Small Company Stocks
• 6% Real Estate Stocks
• 3% Emerging Market Stocks

Moderately Aggressive Acorns Portfolio

The Acorns Moderately Aggressive Portfolio “seeks to provide investors with capital appreciation.”  The investment breakdown looks like this:

• 38% Large Company Stocks
• 14% Small Company Stocks
• 10% Government Bonds
• 10% Corporate Bonds
• 8% Real Estate Stocks
• 4% Emerging Market Stocks

Aggressive Acorns Portfolio

The Acorns Aggressive Portfolio “seeks to provide investors with capital appreciation.”  The investment breakdown looks like this:

• 40% Large Company Stocks
• 20% Small Company Stocks
• 20% International Large Company Stocks
• 10% Real Estate Stocks
• 10% Emerging Market Stocks

When creating your Acorns account, you’ll be asked a series of personal questions.  The answers you provide are used to recommend an investment portfolio.  Acorns recommended a Moderate Portfolio for me, but my risk tolerate is pretty high so I chose to go with an Aggressive portfolio instead.  To change portfolios, select ‘Settings’ from the app menu, then choose ‘My Acorns Portfolio.’  Swipe left and right to see your options.

Signing Up For Acorns

Creating an account took me less than five minutes to complete from my mobile device (the process was just as quick and easy on a PC).  While signing up you’ll need to do and provide the following:

1. Provide a valid email address, which later serves as your account login ID
2. Create a robust password
3. Agree to Acorns’ terms and conditions
4. Answer several questions about yourself, like what’s your income, net worth and employment status?
   • Acorns uses this information to recommend an index fund portfolio which your round-up will be invested into
5. Link your bank accounts to your Acorns account
   • Through the Acorns secure interface, you’ll provide your bank account username and password
6. Lastly, you’ll be asked to provide your personal information like name, phone number, mailing address, and social security number

This personal information is required by law whenever you open a financial account, so don’t be alarmed when you’re asked to provide your social security number.

Acorns User Interface

You can access your Acorns account via a web-based app or through a mobile device app on your tablet or smartphone.  The mobile app is superior to the web interface in terms of functionality and ease of use, so that’s what I’m going to focus on here.

From this dashboard you’re able to access the following:

• Round-Ups is where you’ll be see historical transactions in your account
• The Invest/Withdraw tab allows you to make lump-sum deposits and set up recurring deposits to your account
• History tells the story of your Acorns account, including
  • total amount invested and withdrawn
  • Dividends earned
  • Total account gain/loss
  • Found Money
  • Referral bonuses
• The Performance tab shows you how your portfolio is performing.  You can view this in 1 day, 1 month, 6 month, 1 year, or All time historical views
• Found Money is a new Acorns feature where you can earn money by shopping with Acorns’ partners
• Grow is the Acorns blog and news portal
• Invite Friends, Get $5 is the Acorns referral program
• Settings is where you can manage all aspects of your Acorns account

Other features

Found Money and Grow are two features I want to point out, and are both relatively new to Acorns.

Found Money is a shopping portal that will add money to your Acorns account when you shop and buy with retailers that Acorns has partnered with.  Acorns has several well-known partners and while I’ve not personally used this service, it does look intriguing.  If I ever decide to ‘cut the cord’ on my cable TV then I’m sure I’d sign up for Hulu – why not sign up via Acorns and have 20% of my Hulu bill automatically invested back into Acorns for me?

Grow is Acorns’ blog/magazine and is geared toward new investors.  The financial content on the site is well-written and easy to grasp.  Recently Acorns integrated the Grow content into the mobile app, which is a nice addition.

Acorns Pricing and Fees

The basic Acorns account costs $1.00 per month.  There is also a $2.00 per month option and coming in 2018 there will be a third account option that will cost $3.00 per month.  Here’s a breakdown of what you get.

Acorns $1.00 Per Month Plan

For one buck per month here’s what you’ll get:

• Automated investing (aka round-ups)
• Smart Portfolios (access to one of the five portfolios I mentioned above)
• Grow Magazine
• Found Money (currently over 200 brands that will add money to your account when you shop with them)
• Here For You (a fancy way of saying, ‘Acorns customer service’)

Acorns $2.00 Per Month Plan

For two dollars per month you’ll get everything that comes with the $1.00 plan, plus the following:

• Your IRA (Acorns will recommend an IRA that’s right for you)
• Recurring Contributions
• Anytime, Anywhere (this is the lump-sum deposit feature)

Acorns $3.00 Per Month Plan

For $3.00 per month you’ll get everything that comes with the $2.00 plan, plus something called “a new way to grow.”   Apparently more on this will be revealed sometime in 2018.

Uless you’ve got a million dollars or more invested with Acorns, this is their pricing structure.  I have nowhere near $1,000,000 invested with Acorns so I’m not sure what that pricing looks like.

Students (under the age of 24) can use the service for free if they register using their .edu email address.

Acorns Fees

$1.00 per month isn’t going to break anybody’s bank, but when you look at those fees as a percentage of your account balance, Acorns can be relatively expensive for some.   For example, if you’ve only got $10.00 in your account then that seemingly small $1.00 fee becomes a 10% fee.  That’s insane.

Acorns wasn’t designed to be your main investment vehicle, so as long as you’re using the service as a way to make your own savings more efficient by capturing your spare change, then personally I’m okay with the fees.

Is Acorns Safe?

Acorns provides bank-level security on their servers, which are also protected with physical security. The website and app are secured with 256-bit encryption and, in the unlikely event that something does happen, rest easy knowing that your money is SIPC insured for up to $500,000.

For good measure, your account has multi-factor authentication and automatic logouts should you leave your account open for too long without any activity.

Summary

I give Acorns a rating of 4 campfires out of 5.  I withheld one campfire because the fees can be disproportionately high if you have a low balance.  Also the tax documents can be a hassle; I don’t like dealing with the extra paperwork for the relatively small amount of money I keep with Acorns.

But those are minor problems for me.  overall I really like Acorns and think that you will too.  The mico-investing nature of the service means you’re not going to rapidly accumulate wealth, but it also makes saving painless.  The small dollar amounts with no minimum investment required is a great way for beginners to dip their toes into the waters of stock market investing.

Ready to get started?  You’ll get a $5.00 bonus for using this Camp FIRE Finance link when you create you Acorns account.

Other FinTech Reviews

Check out some of the other personal finance products and services that we’ve reviewed.

The post Acorns Micro Investing App Review appeared first on Camp FIRE Finance.

BEAM HIGH INTEREST BANKING APP

BEAM, the long-awaited mobile banking app that has been promising high interest rates has launched (currently in beta) and yours truly was part of the group that got a chance to use the app and service first.

This is my full review of BEAM, the high interest rate mobile banking app.

Before I get into my review of the BEAM high interest rate banking app, let me address some of the main questions that you might have about the service:

Is BEAM Legitimate?  Which Is To Ask, Will My Money Be Safe With BEAM?

I’m not sure.

BEAM claims that any money you deposit with them will actually be held by Evolve Bank & Trust, an FDIC insured institution since 1934 based in West Memphis, Arkansas.  I’ve reached out to Evolve Bank & Trust and they have denied a direct partnership with BEAM.

I was told that the connection is through another customer of Evolve’s named Synapse Financial Technologies. The number I was given for Synapse went directly to voicemail, but the company did reply to an email where they directed me back to the BEAM Terms & Conditions as the place to find all of the answers to my questions.

That’s not good enough.

Quite frankly, BEAM can say whatever they want to say. What I’m looking for is confirmation from the institution holding my cash (Evolve Bank & Trust), that my funds are safe and protected by FDIC insurance.  The only thing I received from Evolve was a denial of a direct partnership with BEAM.

Your money and mine could very well be insured under Evolve’s FDIC protection, but other than a claim on BEAM’s website I’ve been unable to verify this.  That makes me nervous and I’m not going to use the service because of it.  Someone else can be the guinea pig.

Maybe this has been a case of something being “too good to be true.”

You Do Not Need To Switch Banks To Use BEAM

BEAM is a “supplemental” bank account.  Think of BEAM as a place to park your cash where it can grow faster than it otherwise would.

Beam is not meant to replace your primary checking account.  Instead it is a “higher-earning supplementary account” where you can park your cash and earn 2-4% APY.  Nothing more, nothing less.

• Beam is NOT a traditional checking or savings account
• Debit cards and check books won’t be issued
• Direct deposit isn’t available
• Bill pay isn’t available

Features normally associated with traditional bank accounts could be part of BEAM’s future if there is sufficient demand for them.

What Interest Rate Will I Receive?

The base APY for a BEAM account is 2% (compounded daily) but you can boost that that rate up to 4% by earning something that BEAM is calling a Billie.

A Billie can be exchanged for a higher interest rate; it’s an interest rate booster.  You can earn Billies in two ways:

1. If you refer a new user to BEAM, you’ll earn 3 Billies
2. Each day between 6:00 and 7:00 PM you can login to the BEAM app to claim a Billie

Using BEAM Billies To Boost Your Interest Rate

Here’s an example of how you can earn and use Billies to boost your interest rate with BEAM.

Suppose that you have an account with BEAM and I use your referral code to sign up for the service as well.  Now you and I both have accounts.

Because you referred me, you received 3 Billies, and as a new user, I have none.

Later that day at 6PM we both open the app and claim our daily Billie.

Now I’ve got 1 Billie and you’ve got 4 (three for referring me + your one daily Billie). You and I can now “deposit” our Billies to boost our APY.

What is a Billie Worth?

The value of a Billie changes daily, so it’s impossible to say how much a single one will boost your rate, but for the sake of our example, let’s say that one Billie is worth 0.25%.

So we both deposit one Billie and now our BEAM account is earning us 2.25% (2% baseline APY + the 0.25% from our Billie deposit).

In this example, that would be the end of the road for me because I only have one Billie, but you’ve still got three Billies to play with (thanks to your referral credit). So you deposit your three remaining Billies, boosting your rate up to 3%:

• You started with a 2% APY and your first Billie deposit boosted you to 2.25%
• Billie #2 took you to 2.5%
• Deposit #3 boosted you up to 2.75%
• Finally, Billie #4 took you to 3% APY.

If you don’t want to deal with Billies or engage with your bank account at all then you will get a 2% APY, which is still probably double what you’re getting today.  But if you’re willing to open the app for a few moments each day to claim your Billie between 6-7pm, then you can boost your rate a little bit.

Using the BEAM App (for iOS)

Currently BEAM is available only via an iOS app. At the time of this post (April 2018), the app is 67.7MB and requires iOS 9.0 or later to run. Android users will get their version of the app soon, but there aren’t any plans to develop a web-based product.

Using the app is simple enough.  You can download it via the App Store and it takes just a few minutes to get it set up.

Identification

When first setting up your account you’ll need to validate your identity by providing your Social Security Number and a photograph of your driver license or passport.  You can use the BEAM app to take a picture of your identification and submit it.

Federal regulations require all banking institutions to validate your identify, so don’t be surprised by this step.

Connecting your other bank(s).

In order to move money into BEAM, you’ll need to connect the BEAM app to your bank.  This process is simple and took less than two minutes to complete.

Within the app, simply select Banking –> Add Account –> Search For Your Bank –> Login To Your Bank Within The BEAM App.

Transferring funds into BEAM

Once you’ve connected your bank, you simply transfer over the money that you’d like to save with BEAM.  That’s it.

Transferring money on your app is simple and intuitive, but the process of actually moving from one bank to the other can take up to 48 hours to complete.

Moving cash out of BEAM

Getting money out of BEAM is simply the reverse process you used to get money into BEAM.  Again, it can take up to 48 hours for the transfer process to clear.

Summary

I’m giving BEAM a 1 out of 5 ranking because I’ve been unable to confirm FDIC protection of my deposits. Not only that, but the bank BEAM has claimed to partner with for this FDIC protection has denied a direct relationship.

The connection from BEAM to Evolve’s FDIC insurance comes via a third party named Synapse Financial Technologies. I’ve been unable to personally speak with anyone at Synapse, but I did receive an email from them that referred me back to BEAM’s terms and conditions. I was also told in a roundabout way that my inquiries to BEAM, Evolve, and Synapse are annoying and that they aren’t in the business of managing these types of inquiries.

Because of this, I do not feel at all comfortable depositing any of my money with BEAM.  Nor do I feel comfortable referring my readers to this service. In fact, I’ve disconnected my primary bank account from the application and have uninstalled it from my phone.

If the application had a way of terminating my account altogether, I’d do so.

Things Could Be Fine

In the end, if everything turns out to be legitimate (and it very well could) I still don’t like the Billie program and the fact that any boost to my APY resets back to 2% each day.

While 2% is still double what you’ll get from most major banks, the 1% incremental difference isn’t enough of an incentive for me to go thorough the effort.

Here’s what I don’t like:

• Billies. I’m not a fan of working to boost my APY each day, and I’m really not sure why BEAM is requiring it? Most users won’t like jumping through hoops.
• Manually depositing Billies. If I have accumulated Billies, I wish that BEAM would automatically deposit them for me to ensure that I get the highest possible APY each day.
• Why does the value of a Billie change every day?  That’s odd.
• I don’t like that my APY resets daily.  If a Billy lasted for a month, or even a week, that would be great.  But reverting daily is a disappointment.
• The flimsy connection to FDIC insurance

Here’s what I like:

• The account is free, with no minimum balance required
• The base 2% APY is double what most major banks pay
• The app is simple and easy to use
• Getting money in and out is easy

I will update this review as I continue to learn more about the product and service. The ability to earn a decent APY on my cash would be great. But at this point (delayed launches, poor communication, partners denying partnership) there are just too many red flags for me.

In the meantime, please let me know if you have any questions that I can answer.

Leave your questions and comments below.

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