(EXPIRED) $1,000+ Acorns promo back again

Acorns has once again brought back its popular promotion to earn a large referral bonus when you get enough friends to sign up for the service: get $5 per person you refer plus $1,000 when you refer 12 friends in August. Each friend just has to invest at least $5 and keep it there until at least September 15th. If you can persuade a dozen people to give Acorns a shot, you’ll get $1,060 total. That’s a bonus worth pursuing if you can.

The Deal

• Get $5 per person you refer who opens an account and deposits at least $5. Refer 12 people and get a bonus $1,000.
• Your friend also ets a bonus $5 for signing up and investing $5

Key Terms

• Those you refer must sign up on or after 8/01/2018, have an account in good standing and make their first investment by 8/31/2018.
• Bonuses are paid out by 9/15/2018.
• Referrals who close their account before 9/15/2018, or make an investment that results in a chargeback, will not qualify for the promotion
• See full referral terms here

Quick Thoughts

Acorns isn’t necessarily the best type of long-term investment, but when they run these monster referral bonuses, it’s worth considering — just $5 each invested by 12 people instantly grows to $1,120 in a month (you’d get $1,060 and each friend also gets $5 from Acorns) plus whatever is left of everyone’s initial $5. That’s not a bad deal at all.

Since Acorns is a micro-investing platform, they need your Social Security Number to open an account (like other bank / investment accounts), so that will certainly make some people uncomfortable with it. That’s understandable. We certainly recommend locking up your digital kingdom.

The good news is that Acorns isn’t new. For what it’s worth, we’ve written pretty extensively about the service over the past year. Stephen has shown how you can really leverage some of their “found money” offers by linking a credit card (similar to other card-linked offers), shopping through their portal, or even just by clicking some of their links (with no purchase required on some!). See these posts for some examples of ways to leverage Acorns that are really independent of investing with them:

• Get Free Money From Acorns Found Money & Boost Your Savings
• 60+ retailers where Acorns Found Money offers the highest cashback (surely some of these have changed and are no longer the highest, but this goes to show that the Found Money offers are worth considering)
• Possible way to still earn 1% on Visa gift card purchases from GiftCards.com
• (EXPIRED) Stacking for a great deal on Sam’s Club membership
• (EXPIRED) Up to 55%+ back on Hawaii resort with new stacking Hilton offer

The fee for investing with Acorns is high ($1 per month unless you have a massive balance with them), but you get $5 when you sign up and invest $5, so you’ve probably got at least the first few months of fees covered on their dime unless your portfolio takes a huge hit. If you are then able to refer 12 people, your fees would be covered for quite a while should you choose to continue — or you can withdraw at any time. There is no requirement to keep the $1,000 bonus (or any of the bonus money) invested. Those you refer need to keep their money in through September 15th at minimum — but, again, the minimum is $5, so I’d recommend they start there.

I’ve been investing since January, and and I’m down $5.82 total in terms of gain/loss on a $200 initial investment that I had put in for the heck of it (though less than 3 referrals at $5 each covers that loss and the $1 per month I’ve paid thus far). My IRA is up on the year, so I’m not too enthused about Acorns from a long-term investment strategy, but it can make sense for these promos at least. And for folks who would otherwise spend all of their money and not invest at all, something like Acorns might not be a bad way to get started with the habit of putting some money “out of sight, out of mind”.

If you’re new to Acorns, feel free to use one of our referral codes with our thanks – you’ll get $5 as will we when you invest at least $5:

• Greg’s link
• Nick’s link 
• Stephen’s link

Where to get your code

Based on past promos, I believe brand new accounts will also qualify for the $1,000 referral code (so if you open an account, you can also participate by referring 12 people this month). You can find your referral link under the “Invite Friends” button in the top right when you log in. My link shows the $1,000 bonus when I click “Invite Friends” as shown below:

Where to share your code

Our spam filter automatically blocks comments with a link. If you would like to share your referral link with others, head over to our Frequent Miler Insiders group and post your link in the comments on this deal as a reply to my first comment on the post (referral links not posted following this direction will be deleted). This helps us keep the thread open for discussion below the referral links replies and below this post here at Frequent Miler. Thanks!

Bottom line

It won’t be easy for everyone to get a dozen friends to sign up, and whether or not that interests you will surely vary from person to person. But this is a pretty easy nearly-cash bonus (it gets deposited in your investment account, but you can then cash it out). Even if you offered to split the bonus with your friends, it would work out to be a pretty good ROI for everyone.

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