Review

You want to start investing but the barriers feel insurmountable. Traditional brokerages want $1,000+ minimums. Every trade costs $5-10 in commissions, which destroys any return on small purchases. The interfaces look like they were designed for day traders, not beginners trying to buy their first share of a company they believe in. You're told to invest early and often, but the system seems designed to exclude anyone without substantial capital. The old brokerage model was built for a different era—when trades required human brokers, when stock prices weren't available in real-time to regular people, when investing was something only wealthy people did. Commission structures reflected costs that no longer exist in an electronic trading world. Minimums existed to make small accounts not worth the paperwork. The complexity was a feature, not a bug: it justified financial advisors taking 1% of your assets annually. For years, the finance industry's advice to young people was 'start investing early' while the industry's practices said 'but not with us.' The math of compounding works the same whether you're investing $50 or $50,000, but only one of those amounts was welcome at traditional brokerages. Millions of potential investors were effectively locked out. Robinhood changed the math completely. No commissions. No minimums. Fractional shares let you buy $5 of Amazon or Apple. The mobile-first interface strips away the intimidation factor—buy and sell with a few taps, see your portfolio at a glance, get news about companies you own. Suddenly investing looks less like filing taxes and more like using any other modern app. Crypto, stocks, ETFs, and options all trade in the same app. Robinhood Gold ($5/month) adds extended-hours trading and Morningstar research. IPO Access gives you first dibs on companies going public—previously a privilege reserved for institutional investors. Sign up through a referral link and you get free stock to start. If you've been putting off investing because the barriers felt too high, they aren't anymore.