Absolutely not! EarlyBird makes it easy to gift a contribution to any little one in your life, whether or not they are already an EarlyBird. All you’ll need is the parent or guardian’s phone number to get started.
Just their phone number! For recipients who do not have EarlyBird accounts, upon receiving the gift via text message to that phone number, they will complete an EarlyBird account to accept the gift and start investing the funds! For those that already have an EarlyBird account, they’ll simply accept the funds into their existing account. Funds will not be taken from your connected bank account until the gift has been accepted.
In order to make gifting financial assets as seamless and memorable as possible, and to process the financial contribution, there is a $2 per gift processing fee. This fee will only be charged to your connected funding source once the recipient accepts the gift.
Parents that open an investment account with EarlyBird have a monthly subscription fee of $1/mo. Gifts can be sent and accepted without requiring a parent to invest the funds if they choose.
Please send all gifts to the parent or guardian of the child, or whichever adult you suspect would like to be the owner and custodian of the EarlyBird account. An adult over the age of 18 is required to accept and complete an EarlyBird account.
Funds will not be transferred from your connected funding source, until the recipient accepts the gift. If they do not accept the gift, the transaction will remain pending until it is accepted, declined, or cancelled.
EarlyBird gifts are sent via SMS text messages (you’ll be included on them!), and are delivered in beautiful animated cards that can be opened on the web. To accept the gift, they’ll download the EarlyBird app and go through the onboarding process.
After a gift is sent, we highly recommend you to download the EarlyBird app from either the AppStore or and the Android Play Store. You can then sign in and track all of your gifts, the kids you have invested in, and simply send more gifts from the app.
EarlyBird is a Registered Investment Advisor (RIA) and partners with wealth management and financial planning experts to curate our investment offering. We offer parents a fixed portfolio model, where we recommend expertly crafted ETF-based portfolios made up of both securities and bonds, based on the age of the child, your investment goals, time horizon, risk tolerance, and other factors.
There are 5 fixed portfolios that a user can choose from ranging from conservative (100% bond based ETF's) to aggressive (100% equity based ETF's). Once the gift has been accepted, your contribution will be invested in the portfolio that the account holder has chosen.