You might assume that when you file for Social Security, the government automatically gives you the biggest check possible. That’s a dangerous assumption. For millions of married couples, relying solely on their own work record could mean missing out on substantial income. There is a specific provision — often called the “spousal benefit” — that allows a lower-earning spouse to collect checks…
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Tanyapong Thamavaranukupt, co-president of Thai fintech Ascend Money, sees spending patterns—like magazine subscriptions or mobile bills—as a signal of creditworthiness, particularly in markets like Southeast Asia which have both a large underbanked population and underdeveloped financial institutions.
“We don’t rely on traditional data to make our loan decisions,” he told Fortune. Instead, Ascend Money’s lending service, Ascend Nano, relies on data from the company’s digital wallet, a service used to store and transact money, and make payments. “We can see what types of transactions users make, where they use their money, the type of phone they’re using,” he explains.
That can build a risk profile of a customer that doesn’t rely on traditional evidence, like financial statements, payslips, or a credit bureau assessment. Take a magazine subscription: Tanyapong suggests that a user who regularly reads a publication might be slightly more educated, and so may have a higher income–and so may be a safer person for Ascend to lend to.
Tanyapong reckons that about 20 million Thais, out of a larger population of 70 million, should be able to access a loan. Yet the country’s formal banks are only lending to about 5 million customers. That leaves around 15 million Thais who can’t get access to financing even though they may be creditworthy. “It’s not because they’re not qualified,” Tanyapong says. “It’s simply because the traditional players … use the exact same model that’s been there for the last 30 years.”
Micro- and small-sized businesses often don’t have financial statements, meaning they can’t convince banks to offer them a loan. Many traditional lenders also rely on credit bureaus, which don’t cover many underbanked people, again denying them access to financing.
Financial access is a regional problem. Around 225 million people in Southeast Asia lacked access to a formal bank account in 2021, according to calculations by the Center for Impact Investing and Practices. Around 350 million couldn’t get access to formal financing. Furthermore, the SME Finance Forum in 2018 calculated that more than half of the region’s SMEs couldn’t get access to financing.
Those that need money then turn to informal lenders, who can charge exorbitantly high interest rates. Tanyapong says Ascend Money’s nano loans can help get people out of the informal lending market, where loan sharks can charge as much as 20% interest per month. (Ascend Nano, by comparison, charges just 2%.)
Ascend isn’t the only company in Southeast Asia trawling customer data to build risk profiles. Grab, Southeast Asia’s most successful super-app, has tried to use data gleaned from its ride-hailing and GrabPay services to assess creditworthiness. Other regional platforms, like the Philippines’ GCash and Vietnam’s Momo, also use data collected from their digital wallets to help extend loans to users.
Ascend Money is the fintech arm for Thailand’s CP Group, a major conglomerate with interests in retail, agriculture, and manufacturing. Ascend started with payments and money transfer, but low margins pushed the company to expand to other financial services. Ascend Nano was one of the company’s first initiatives, providing “nano finance,” tiny loans that can be as little as $20, to consumers and small enterprises in Thailand.
Ascend Money’s work providing financing to Thailand’s unbanked and underbanked populations helped get the fintech company onto Fortune’s 2025 “Change the World” list, which recognizes businesses that do good through their business models.
Ascend Nano’s ties to the broader CP Group also help it find new customers. Tanyapong notes that many of their clients, particularly those that run small roadside stalls, buy their products wholesale from the broader conglomerate. “Based on their purchase history, we can give them a credit line to buy from CP Makro [the CP Group’s cash-and-carry wholesaler],” he explains, continuing that customers have managed to grow their business by up to two times their working capital.
Tanyapong spent 15 years in Thailand’s finance industry, including stints at GE Capital (Thailand) and KrungSri Ayudhya Bank. He then led retail banking at Krungthai Bank, one of the highest-ranked Thai companies on the Southeast Asia 500, at No. 57. He joined Ascend Money as its co-president in 2016.
Small-scale lending is a competitive market. The top 5% of services capture half the region’s users, according to a 2025 report from Bain, Temasek, and Google. The rest is served by a “long tail of smaller, aggressive apps” in markets with high demand for “fast credit.” Half of these services close within two years.
Ascend is also looking at other, “nano-” versions of financial services, including insurance and investing. “We often find our customers don’t even have insurance,” Tanyapong says. “We have more than ten million motorcycle drivers, and they’re always getting into accidents.”
Automatic investing apps make it easier for regular people to become excellent investors. They can be great “set it and forget it” options for buy-and-hold investors who aren’t interested in short-term trading.
Building wealth typically requires regular savings and a disciplined approach to investing. Unfortunately, these things are easier said than done.
Below, we break down our top three automatic investment apps of 2026 before sharing a few more apps that didn’t quite make our list but may still be worth considering.
After reviewing more than two dozen top brokers and micro-investing apps, we’ve narrowed down the best automatic investment apps to these three.
Acorns is one of the original automated investing apps ever created. They were the first “spare change” app, where you could round up your spare change and invest. Then they started focusing on automated investing as well.
Acorns takes your roundups and automatic investing and puts it into low cost index funds so that you can see long-term growth. This is a simple “set and forget” approach, which is what most people looking for automatic investing apps are looking for!
The downside to Acorns is the fees. Sadly, Acorns isn’t free – and you’ll pay a monthly fee of anywhere from $3 to $12 per month depending on what plan you select.
Bonus: Right now, Acorns is offering a $20 bonus when you register an account and make your first $5 investment. Get stared here >>
M1 Finance frequently tops our “best of” investment lists. The top-notch interface, low fees, and customizable investment pies make it a great choice for investors seeking a disciplined, but unique investment experience.
M1 Finance allows users to opt into “Auto-Invest”. With auto-invest, M1 Finance’s algorithms will rebalance your portfolio anytime you have at least $25 in cash in the account. This “smart” rebalancing automatically keeps investors more in line with their stated goals.
M1 Finance also has a monthly fee of $3 per month until you have $10,000 in assets.
Since M1 Finance supports Roth, Traditional, and SEP IRAS it allows many investors to automate tax-advantaged investments. It also supports individual and joint brokerage accounts.
Charles Schwab Intelligent Portfolio is a free robo-advisory service for people with at least $5,000 in their accounts. The Intelligent Portfolio app makes it easy to set up recurring transfers to the account.
Users select from several different pre-designed portfolios that invest in 51 broadly diversified, low-cost ETFs. Whenever money hits the account, Schwab automatically invests the money to rebalance the portfolio.
However, the app also follows tax-loss harvesting laws to help minimize taxation (only for taxable accounts with balances over $50,000). This type of efficient investing is somewhat complex to do manually, so it’s nice to see the robots taking over complex but routine tasks.
The only major drawback to the Intelligent Portfolio’s app is the high cash position. Most portfolios hold between 6-30% of the portfolio in cash which can be a drag on the overall performance of the portfolio (especially when the investment horizon is several decades).
Charles Schwab Intelligent Portfolios was also voted a best robo-advisor in The College Investor’s annual investor survey.
Grifin is an automated investing app that turns your everyday purchases into stock investments. For example, if you make a purchase at Amazon, Grifin will automatically invest $1 in Amazon stock. Spend money at Starbucks, it will invest $1 in Starbucks stock, and so on.
Grifin makes automatic investing easy for over 400 individual stocks.
Grifin charges a monthly subscription fee of $5, or $60 annually, though you can cancel at anytime. There are no other commission fees of any kind. You’ll need to decide if the membership fee is worth it, but the transparent pricing is refreshing.
Stash is another long-time investing app that has focused on making things simple and easy. It’s probably the most direct competitor to Acorns, minus the round-up feature.
With Stash, you setup your investing goals and portfolio, and as you deposit funds, it will automatically invest to match your portfolio. They also put a premium on making it easy to invest – they simplify investing terms and make things easy.
However, you’re going to pay a monthly fee to invest with Stash. You’ll pay $3 to $9 per month depending on what plan you enroll in.
Promo offer: You can get $5 from Stash when you sign up and make your first deposit of at least $5 into your Personal Portfolio! Get started here >>>
While we chose just true top automatic investment apps, there were a few that just missed the cut. These honorary mentions deserve a shout-out as they can be a good fit for certain investors.
Webull is a great app for automating active trading. With no commissions and a wealth of information, it’s a top choice for active traders. But it’s also a great place for investors looking to automate their buying.
Automating active trading may seem like an oxymoron. But in this case we mean that it allows users to set up buy and sell prices that the app then handles. This is far easier in Webull than in most apps. However, this brokerage doesn’t support fractional shares at this time.
Public offers DRIP, but it doesn’t offer an obvious way to set up recurring investments at this time. Part of this may be intentional. Public wants users to buy into the social aspect of stock market investing. And automated investing doesn’t fit with that. However, we’re watching this rising star that already promotes fractional share investing and commission-free trading.
These days most investment platforms allow some form of recurring investments. However, great automation is about more than just allowing users to automatically transfer funds to their accounts. To create our list, we considered five major criteria:
Micro-investing apps specialize in investing tiny amounts of money. They often give users the ability to buy fractional shares using just a few dollars at a time. They may even connect to your checking account and “roll-up” transactions to the nearest dollar and skim the extra into your investment account.
The idea behind micro-investing apps is that a little bit of savings goes a long way. In some ways, this is true. However, most people will need to invest more than spare change to achieve their long-term financial goals.
And while the fees for these apps may seem low on the surface (usually $1-3 per month), when you compare them to relatively small investment balances, they can be shockingly high. For most people, setting up a $20-$25 per week auto-transfer into one of the apps listed above will yield better results than micro-saving.
If you’re serious about building wealth, we recommend employing some sort of helpful automation to keep you on track with achieving your goals. Simple steps like setting up recurring transfers to your investment accounts can ensure you’re moving in the right direction.
People who enjoy playing around in their investment account, reading investment news, and researching new stocks probably don’t need to employ specific investing automation technologies (beyond regular savings). If this is you, you can likely trust yourself to buy new stocks and keep yourself invested.
However, those who aren’t disciplined about tracking investments and buying new shares should consider automatic investments. Life happens, but most people want to stay invested even when they can’t stay attuned to their portfolio. For those in this category, automatic investment apps are a great fit.
Editor: Clint Proctor
Reviewed by: Claire Tak
The post Best Automatic Investment Apps Of 2026 appeared first on The College Investor.
Katkin thinks that Powell was already well aware of the support he would get by making this investigation public.
“He announced that he’s being criminally investigated, and then he already had this video ready to go that he released to the public,” Katkin said. “It seems there was already a lot of political support for his stance here. Immediately, Senator (Thom) Tillis has announced that he’s going to try to put a hold on any future Trump nominees to the Fed, unless this criminal investigation ends.”
The move comes a little more than four months before Powell’s term as Fed chair comes to an end. Traditionally, once the Fed chair leaves that position, they resign from the board as well. However, Katkin thinks this move may actually force Powell to remain through the end of his term in January 2028.
“It would be typical for most chairs to actually resign from being a governor when their chairmanship ends,” he said. “That’s what they usually do, even though they’re not required to do that. I think Trump actually just made that impossible. He probably has to stay on and not resign because he doesn’t want to look like he was pushed out, or like he had to leave because he’s actually a criminal.
“I think it makes it necessary for him to stay, so it seems very counterproductive to me. If Trump wanted to get rid of him, probably the best thing to do would have been just to be nice to him and compliment him for doing such a good job. He probably would have just resigned in May, but I think he’s likely to stay on the Fed for longer than that now.”
Communication is the smartest investment organizations can make to improve performance, culture, and leadership.
Republic Polytechnic (RP) rolled out a campus-wide artificial intelligence (AI) transformation strategy, pledging to redesign curricula, upskill staff, and broaden partnerships with technology firms as Singapore pushes to build a deeper pipeline of AI-skilled talent.
RP said the initiative aims to embed practical and responsible AI use across teaching and learning, while giving students hands-on exposure to tools and practices they are likely to encounter in the workplace.
Under the plan, AI competencies have been progressively integrated into all diploma programmes, and by Academic Year 2027 at least half of the discipline-specific modules within each diploma will incorporate applied AI skills, RP said.
The approach will extend to continuing education and training (CET), with AI competencies infused into specialist and part-time diplomas to help adult learners use sector-specific AI tools for productivity, analysis, and decision-making, including opportunities in selected programmes to develop or deploy AI applications relevant to their industries.
“Our goal is to create an environment where every learner is empowered to succeed in the AI era,” said Jeanne Liew, RP’s principal and chief executive, adding the polytechnic wants learners to build the “confidence, judgement and skills” to navigate fast-changing technologies.
RP said academic staff are integrating AI into curriculum design and delivery, using AI-enabled tools to help generate lesson plans, assessments, and learning activities, freeing time for mentoring and deeper discussions.
Assessment practices have also been revised so learners are evaluated on process, use of AI tools, and their ability to work effectively alongside them, with an emphasis on critical thinking, ethical reasoning, and creativity.
Learners are trained to evaluate the accuracy, bias, and relevance of AI-generated responses, RP said.
RP said it has signed memorandums of understanding with AI Singapore, Autodesk, Microsoft and ST Engineering, alongside an existing collaboration with Nvidia, to bring capabilities such as generative and agentic AI, edge computing, cybersecurity automation, and AI-enabled design tools into classrooms and labs.
Beyond students, all 1,200 staff will undergo AI capability development; more than half have already reached baseline proficiency, with all staff expected to do so by end-2026.
RP’s move underscores intensifying competition among education providers to deliver job-ready AI skills as companies demand both technical fluency and safe deployment.
The shift toward assessing how learners use AI, rather than only final outputs, signals a pragmatic response to generative AI’s rapid adoption, anchoring classroom use in verification, bias-checking, and accountable decision-making.
These five are great starting points for nearly surefire bets for 2026.
Finding stocks that are nearly unstoppable is a great way to pick investments. These companies are dominant in their industry with massive competitive advantages that make them very difficult to dethrone. Over the long term, stocks like this have proven to be the best investments time and time again, and filling your portfolio with these winners is a genius move.
If you have $5,000 to deploy (or any amount, for that matter), I think these five are a great starting point.
Image source: Getty Images.
Nvidia (NVDA +0.04%) is the world’s largest company by market cap. It got to this point thanks to its dominant graphics processing units (GPUs), which are the go-to choice for nearly everyone in the artificial intelligence (AI) arms race to power generative AI workloads. While there are other competitors in the realm, Nvidia is the only one that has told investors that it is “sold out” of production capacity, while competitors are still trying to convince clients that their products are viable Nvidia alternatives.
Today’s Change
(0.04%) $0.08
Current Price
$184.94
Market Cap
$4.5T
Day’s Range
$183.02 – $187.12
52wk Range
$86.62 – $212.19
Volume
138M
Avg Vol
186M
Gross Margin
70.05%
Dividend Yield
0.02%
That’s a great place to be in, and with global data center capital expenditures projected to reach $3 trillion to $4 trillion annually by 2030, according to Nvidia, it’s a nearly unstoppable stock. Nvidia’s reign as the world’s largest company is just getting started, and if this year is as good as analysts think it will be, it’s a no-brainer stock to buy now.
Nvidia is a fabless chip designer, so it doesn’t actually manufacture its GPUs. Instead, it sources components from different suppliers and farms out assembly work to various businesses. The most important component in the GPU is the chips, and those come from Taiwan Semiconductor Manfuacturing (TSM +2.49%). Taiwan Semiconductor is the world’s largest chip manufacturer and has risen to this level due to its excellent execution and cutting-edge technology.
In 2026, its newest chip node, 2 nanometer, is expected to hit the market, and this could drive massive revenue growth for the company due to its energy efficiency improvements. As long as there is increased demand for computing chips, Taiwan Semiconductor will continue to be an unstoppable stock. I think there are plenty of signs of that, making it a great stock to scoop up in 2026.
Amazon (AMZN 0.38%) is dominant in multiple areas. It owns a massive chunk of the e-commerce market and has also built a thriving advertising business based on the information it collects. Additionally, Amazon operates the largest cloud computing business, which is seeing a resurgence of growth thanks to more AI workloads coming online.
Today’s Change
(-0.38%) $-0.94
Current Price
$246.44
Market Cap
$2.6T
Day’s Range
$245.97 – $248.93
52wk Range
$161.38 – $258.60
Volume
1.6M
Avg Vol
45M
Gross Margin
50.05%
Amazon didn’t have the greatest 2025, and lost to the market. But it could bounce back strong in 2026 if its finances carry their momentum from 2025 into 2026. Investors should never count Amazon out, and I think it’s a great stock to scoop up for 2026.
MercadoLibre (MELI 1.31%) is known as the Amazon of Latin America, but that’s selling it a bit short. While it duplicated Amazon’s e-commerce presence and delivery footprint in Latin America, it also created a fintech ecosystem that enables consumers in this region to purchase items online. This makes MercadoLibre even more dominant than Amazon, as it has its fingers in multiple parts of an online transaction for goods.
MercadoLibre stock is down around 16% from its all-time high, and sits at an incredibly low valuation for its success.
MELI Price to Free Cash Flow data by YCharts
I think MercadoLibre is an excellent stock to scoop up for 2026, as it’s a bet on Latin America continuing to thrive.
Last is Alphabet (GOOG +1.14%) (GOOGL +1.04%), and it proved in 2025 why it’s unstoppable. Many thought Alphabet had lost the generative AI battle and that its Google Search engine was on the way out. However, Google’s generative AI model, Gemini, emerged as one of the top picks, and the Google Search engine started to regain market share thanks to its integration of AI search overviews, which combine generative AI with traditional search results.
This allowed Alphabet’s stock to rally throughout 2025, positioning it nicely for a strong 2026. While 2026 won’t be as impressive as 2025, I still believe Alphabet is well-positioned to capitalize on the massive AI infrastructure build-out and solidify its model at the top of available options.
Are you tossing around the idea of launching a freelance business as your primary source of income? Perhaps you want to add some freelance work to round out your resume. Or, maybe you’re looking to make some money on the side to boost your retirement, save for vacation, or get ahead financially. Whatever the reason you’re exploring the highest-paying freelance jobs, you’ll want to carefully…
Here’s my investing journey (so far) 👀
I’ve been investing for the past seven years, and I’ve made quite a few changes over those years.
Here’s my investing journey breakdown –
➡️ 2018 to 2020 – TD mutual funds ($25 per month at first)
➡️ 2020 to 2021 – TD eSeries index funds ($250 per month, up to $7,000)
➡️ 2021 to 2024 – Wealthsimple Invest ETFs (switched to $1,000+ per month, up to $50,000)
➡️ 2024 onwards – Wealthsimple Trade ETFs (switched to $2,000 per month, up to $100,000)
For me, it was important to get started, and grow my knowledge and confidence over time. I’m in a great place now – I’m investing on my own in passive ETFs, and I’m paying very low fees.
You can hear more about my investing journey on our YouTube channel!
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