How to start investing in shares with little money

You can start investing in shares with very little money, here's how to do it.

Tristan Harrison

Author Bio Tristan Harrison has a decade of experience as an ASX share investment writer and was previously a business, tax and audit accountant for seven years. Tristan has contributed to The Motley Fool since October 2016. He has an advanced diploma from the Association of Accounting Technicians and is currently enrolled in the Chartered Institute Management Accountant (CIMA) program. Tristan's goal is to help Australians learn about great ASX shares that can help grow their portfolio, wealth and dividends over the long-term. Areas of Expertise ASX dividend shares and passive income strategies ASX growth shares and ETFs Business and company financial analysis Franking credits and personal tax topics Personal finance Education Advanced diploma from the Association of Accounting Technicians Enrolled in the Chartered Institute Management Accountant (CIMA) program Social Media X/Twitter Favorite Investment Quote "Live within your income and save so that you can invest." — Charlie Munger

Published December 20, 2019 12:40 pm AEDT

Investing is one of the best things you can do for your long-term wealth.

But investing in property can take a lot of money to start investing. If you're going to invest in property you probably need a deposit of at least 10% of the purchase price (which could cost a lot in lenders' mortgage insurance). Even a 10% deposit amounts to tens of thousands of dollars. This is too much to save for people just starting out.

One option is to consider using an investment app provided by RAIZ Invest Ltd (ASX: RZI) (previously called Acorns).

What Raiz does is "invest spare change automatically from everyday purchases into a diversified portfolio." You can choose to round-up purchases to the next dollar amount – so that extra $0.30 is invested for you – and/or you can set recurring daily, weekly or monthly investment amounts to set aside more.

Raiz invests in exchange-traded funds (ETFs) on the ASX. ETFs are diversified portfolios of many shares which you can buy in a single investment. However, Raiz does come with fees and the ETFs would also presumably be charging fees too.

The best investing for little money

You can take matters into your own hands by investing as little as $500 through a share broker like Commonwealth Bank of Australia's (ASX: CBA) CommSec, National Australia Bank Ltd's (ASX: NAB) NABtrade or any other provider.

That's one of the best things about shares – you can invest with very flexible amounts. You could decide to invest $500 or $10,000 (or more) per transaction. Bigger amounts mean you're paying less in brokerage in percentage terms for each investment.

Which shares should you invest in? Well, that's what people spend lots of time thinking about. You could go for some of the brightest growth prospects on the ASX like Pushpay Holdings Ltd (ASX: PPH), Altium Limited (ASX: ALU) and Webjet Limited (ASX: WEB).

Or, if you want to play it safe you could go for businesses with reputations of performing better than the market when it drops such as Washington H. Soul Pattinson and Co. Ltd (ASX: SOL), Magellan Global Trust (ASX: MGG) and Ramsay Health Care Limited (ASX: RHC).

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