You don’t need thousands of dollars to start investing. In fact, you don’t even need hundreds. With just $100, you can build a diversified portfolio on SoFi and start gaining exposure to thousands of companies in the United States and around the world.
The key is understanding how fractional shares work, choosing a simple mix of ETFs, and consistently adding money over time. Here’s a straightforward approach to putting your first $100 on SoFi to work.
Why $100 Is Enough to Get Started
One of the biggest advantages of investing on SoFi is fractional shares. Fractional investing allows you to purchase a portion of a share rather than needing enough money to buy an entire share.
For example, if an ETF costs $250 per share, you don’t need $250 to invest in it. You can put $10, $25, or another amount toward the ETF and own a fraction of a share.
This means the price of an individual share doesn’t have to determine what you can afford. Instead, you can focus on how you want to allocate your money.
That makes $100 in SoFi enough to create a portfolio spread across several different investments.
The Best ETFs for $100 in SoFi
A simple portfolio can consist of four ETFs: VTI, VO, SCHD, and VXUS. Each serves a different purpose, giving you a combination of broad U.S. market exposure, large-cap stocks, dividend-paying companies, and international stocks.
VTI: Vanguard Total Stock Market ETF
VTI is designed to provide exposure to essentially the entire U.S. stock market. It includes thousands of companies across large-, mid-, and small-cap stocks.
That means you aren’t relying on a handful of companies. Your investment can benefit from the performance of established businesses such as Apple, Microsoft, Nvidia, Amazon, and Alphabet, while also gaining exposure to smaller companies.
VTI also has a very low expense ratio of 0.03%, making it an inexpensive way to gain broad market exposure.
For a beginner, VTI can serve as the foundation of a portfolio because of its diversification.
VO: Vanguard S&P 500 ETF
VO is intended to provide exposure to large U.S. companies through the S&P 500. It focuses on some of the biggest and most established businesses in the American economy.
The fund has a 0.03% expense ratio and gives investors concentrated exposure to large-cap companies.
The trade-off is that it is less diversified than a total-market ETF such as VTI. Because the largest companies make up a significant portion of the S&P 500, the fund can be more heavily influenced by mega-cap stocks and technology companies.
SCHD: Schwab U.S. Dividend Equity ETF
SCHD takes a different approach. Rather than focusing primarily on broad market exposure, it emphasizes established U.S. companies with strong dividend characteristics.
The ETF holds roughly 100 companies and focuses on businesses with a history of financial strength and dividend payments.
Its expense ratio is 0.06%, which remains relatively low compared with actively managed funds.
SCHD can provide an income-oriented component to a portfolio, although dividends should not be viewed as guaranteed returns.
VXUS: Vanguard Total International Stock ETF
VXUS adds international diversification to your portfolio. While VTI, VO, and SCHD focus on the United States, VXUS provides exposure to companies outside the U.S.
The fund includes thousands of companies across markets in Europe, Japan, the United Kingdom, China, India, Australia, Brazil, and other countries.
Its expense ratio is 0.05%.
International stocks have not always performed as well as U.S. stocks in recent years, but diversification isn’t necessarily about picking whichever market performed best recently. Holding international investments can help reduce your reliance on a single country’s stock market.
How to Split Your $100 in SoFi
Once you’ve chosen your ETFs, the next question is how much money to put into each one.
One simple approach is to make the portfolio more income-oriented as you get older. For example, you could increase your allocation to SCHD over time while maintaining substantial exposure to broad-market ETFs.
For someone who is 30, an example allocation could look like this:
- $40 to VTI
- $20 to VO
- $30 to SCHD
- $10 to VXUS
That gives you 40% broad U.S. market exposure, 20% additional large-cap exposure, 30% dividend-focused exposure, and 10% international exposure.
At age 40, you could increase the SCHD allocation to 40%. At 50, you could increase it to 50%, depending on your personal goals and risk tolerance.
These percentages aren’t universal rules. Your investment allocation should reflect your time horizon, financial goals, risk tolerance, and overall financial situation.
The most important point is that the exact percentages matter less than actually getting started and continuing to invest consistently.
How Fractional Shares Make $100 on SoFi Work
You don’t have to worry about whether you can afford a full share of an ETF.
Suppose one ETF costs several hundred dollars per share. With fractional investing, you can still put $10 or $20 into it and receive a corresponding fraction of a share.
For example, you could allocate your $100 like this:
- $40 to VTI
- $30 to SCHD
- $20 to VO
- $10 to VXUS
The number of whole shares you own isn’t the important part. What matters is the amount of money invested and the percentage allocated to each investment.
This approach allows even a relatively small amount of money to be diversified across thousands of companies.
How to Buy ETFs on SoFi
Once you’ve decided how to allocate your $100, purchasing the ETFs is relatively straightforward.
Start by opening the SoFi app and selecting the Invest section. From there, use the search function to find the ETF you want to purchase.
Search for the ticker symbol, such as VTI, VO, SCHD, or VXUS, and select the appropriate ETF.
On the ETF’s information page, select the Trade button and then choose Buy.
When entering your order, you can choose to purchase based on dollars rather than whole shares. This is the option you’ll generally want when using fractional shares.
For example, instead of entering one share, you can enter $40. SoFi will calculate the corresponding fraction of a share based on the market price.
Review the order details, including the amount, estimated shares, and account you’re using. Once everything looks correct, confirm the purchase.
Repeat the process for each ETF in your allocation.
Building a $100 ETF Portfolio
With four purchases, you can turn $100 into a diversified investment portfolio.
For example, a $100 portfolio could give you exposure to:
- Thousands of U.S. companies through VTI
- Large-cap U.S. companies through VO
- Dividend-focused companies through SCHD
- Thousands of international companies through VXUS
That’s considerably different from simply buying one individual stock and hoping it performs well.
The real power comes from what happens next. Your first $100 doesn’t have to remain your only investment. Adding another $100, $200, or $500 later allows you to build on the foundation you’ve already created.
The Most Important Part: Keep Investing
The biggest mistake a new investor can make is waiting for the “perfect” amount of money before getting started.
You don’t need to wait until you have $1,000, $5,000, or $10,000. Starting with $100 can help you establish the habit of investing and give you experience with how your portfolio behaves when markets rise and fall.
Over time, consistent contributions and compound growth can become much more important than the size of your first investment.
If you start with $100 in SoFi and continue adding money regularly, each contribution builds on the previous ones.
Just remember that investing involves risk. ETFs can lose value, and past market performance doesn’t guarantee future returns. Before investing, consider your own financial situation, goals, and risk tolerance and do your own research.
The goal isn’t to make your first $100 perfect. It’s to put it to work, keep learning, and build from there.
