I recently wrote an article on how new, small-budget investors might underestimate how significant the transaction fees that brokerages charge can be, compared to the value of the securities they own. But there is also a class of investors who might think they are avoiding all of this hassle by using a simple robo-advisor service such as Acorns. You’re not really trading with these services, so you’re not really incurring those fees, right?

Wrong! Because Acorns charges $1 per month just to keep an account open with them, even if you leave all of you money in your account and never switch between the portfolios they offer.

But $1 a month isn’t much, right? It doesn’t seem like it. You can’t even get a can of soda from a vending machine for that much. However, Acorns is geared toward small investments such as “round-ups”; and when you’re dealing with small amounts of money, $1 can put a real ding in your rate of return.

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