Worthy Bonds Review: Fixed 5.73% APY and No Fees
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In this Worthy Bonds review, we’ll take a look at what Worthy bonds are, how you can earn through their platform, and whether investing with them is the right strategy for you. Enjoy!
Are you looking for an easy way to make some guaranteed interest on your money? Worthy Bonds can help.
Offering a fixed 5.73% APY return on your money, Worthy Bonds cost just $10 per bond – so it won’t cost you an arm and a leg to get started!
Sound good? Let’s take a closer look at one of our favorite ways to get more out of your money.
Worthy Bonds at a Glance
- Get started with just $10
- Pays a fixed 5.73% APY
- Bonds help to fund small businesses
- 36-month terms
- You can withdraw your money anytime
- Brings balance to your portfolio
- Registered with the SEC
- No fees or penalties
- Automatic reinvestment feature
What Are Worthy Bonds?
Worthy Bonds can help put your money to good use. When you buy a Worthy Bond, you earn a fixed 5.73% return on your money. There are no fees or penalties to worry about. You can buy, sell, transfer, or withdraw your money without paying extra.
Your investment is used to support loans given to growing companies. That’s right – your money goes toward building better communities when you buy bonds from Worthy. Although they are not insured, these loans are fully-secured through the company’s assets, which also helps to minimize risk. (Keep in mind that these are still investments and all investments carry risk.)
Worthy Bonds: How Do They Work?
Using money from investors like you, Worthy loans the money from bond sales to small businesses. These businesses pay interest on the money they borrow, and your funds grow from the interest that accrues.
Worthy returns the money to you and pays 5.73% APY on your investment. You can use that to buy more bonds or make a withdrawal to put the cash back in your pocket.
Fee-Free Bonds with Worthy
You might wonder how to buy bonds with Worthy. The good news is that buying bonds with Worthy is easy, even if you don’t have extra moolah lying around. Since the bonds cost just $10, it doesn’t take a lot to get going.
Worthy even provides an option to “round-up” your purchases. Think about it: How often do you have an extra $10, $20, or $100 bucks laying around to buy investments? But you’re not likely to miss a few cents here and there. That’s where Worthy can help.
When you open and add money to make your bond purchases, you’ll first connect an account. Simply link a credit or debit card as well, and Worthy will monitor the daily transactions on that account.
When you make a purchase, they’ll round up the purchase to the nearest whole dollar. The spare change goes into your Worthy account. Once it reaches $10, you can use it to purchase your next bond.
Each bond comes in with a 36-month term. If you’re short on cash and need the money now, Worthy lets you redeem the bonds at any time – and you won’t pay a penalty. If you’re a big-time investor with more than $50,000 in bonds, the process could take a few weeks to deposit the funds in your bank account. For everyone else, your money will make it to your bank account with no delay.
Registration and Regulation
Because Worthy isn’t a bank, it isn’t insured by the FDIC. Instead, like most investment companies, they’re registered with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).
Any bonds you buy with Worthy are SEC-registered bonds that resemble corporate bonds since they don’t trade publicly.
Security
Whenever we’re talking about online savings accounts or investments, a security breach is a obviously a common concern. Worthy keeps your information safe with standard internet security measures like Secure Sockets Layer encryption.
Your Social Security number also undergoes encryption, and Worthy uses automated tools to stop unauthorized access to your account.
Benefits of Worthy Bonds
- Good return on investment – It’s can be hard to find decent returns with relatively low risk, but Worthy delivers a fixed 5.73% APY on the bonds you buy. That rate is often better than you’ll find with high-yield savings accounts.
- No fees – Worthy is free for you to use. They make fully-secured loans to businesses, and the profits come from the interest payments made on these loans. This is why they don’t need to charge you any fees or penalties.
- Can withdraw your money any time – Each bond comes with a 36-month term, but you’re free to withdraw your money at any time without fees or penalties.
- Low minimum to open account – It’s easy to find an extra $10 to invest, right? That’s all it takes to open an account with Worthy.
- Puts investing on autopilot – The change from your round-ups will automatically prompt a new bond purchase when the balance reaches $10. And, if you enable Automatic Reinvestments, a new bond will be added to your account when the interest you earn reaches $10, too.
Where Worthy Falls Short
- Investment limits – Both accredited (those that meet certain income requirements) and non-accredited investors can open a Worthy account. There is no max on accredited investments, but the max for non-accredited individuals is 10% of that person’s annual income or net worth.
- Investments not insured – Remember, this is an investment not a savings account. Although the bonds are “fully-secured,” that does not make them completely safe. Should economic conditions affect loan repayments, the potential to lose your investment is real.
Who Should Consider Worthy Bonds?
Hands-off investors looking for automation – Not everyone enjoys managing their investments. If that sounds like you, Worthy might be a good fit. Connecting a credit or debit card will automatically round-up your purchases to buy bonds, and reinvesting the interest you earn to buy more bonds is an option, too.
Investors who hate fees – You won’t pay any fees at all with your Worthy account. Even if you need to withdraw your money before the 36-month term is up, there’s no penalty.
Beginning investors who want to get their feet wet – Worthy is an excellent option for beginners. The bonds are only $10 each and you can start by buying just one. As your comfort level grows, investing and earning more money is possible.
Investors who want to diversify their portfolio – Stocks are the go-to investment strategy but there’s power in having a balanced portfolio. If you add bonds, like the ones you can buy through Worthy, it brings diversity so all your eggs aren’t in one basket.
Who Should Avoid Worthy?
Investing is a fantastic way to grow your money, but it can wait if you don’t have any emergency savings built up. Without having accessible cash, you and your family could be in trouble if an unexpected expense pops up. Even $1,000 can help, though aim for setting aside enough to cover your expenses for three to six months to be safe.
Of course, your money is fairly liquid with Worthy. Still, just because you can withdraw your money early without penalty doesn’t mean you should. Short-term investors looking at terms of less than 3 years should consider other options, such as a high-yield savings account or CD.
How to Open a Worthy Account
Getting started with Worthy is easy-peasy. Make sure you have your Social Security number to reference, and your bank’s login information, too.
Here’s how to open a Worthy account:
- Use this link to go to the Worthy website to earn 5.73% APY on your $10 investment.
- You’ll see two options: Log In and Get Started. Select Get Started, then type in your email address and password and agree to their terms and privacy policy.
- On the next screen, you’ll enter your personal information.
- Now it’s time to connect your bank account to fund your bond purchases. Instant verification is the easiest, though microdeposit verification is an option, too. Keep in mind verifying your account with microdeposit can take two to three business days.
That’s it! After they verify your account, you can deposit funds and start earning 5.73% APY on the bonds you buy.
Worthy Review: The Bottom Line
When taking everything into consideration, Worthy is an excellent platform to invest in bonds. With a fixed 5.73% APY return, a $10 minimum investment, and no penalties or fees, we think Worthy is an outstanding choice.
Rounding up your purchases and using the leftover cash to fund bonds makes growing your money easy. Plus, your money helps to grow communities by providing competitive loan options for small businesses. What’s not to feel good about?
So, if you’re looking for an effortless way to buy bonds, you should definitely consider Worthy.
Are bonds part of your portfolio? Why or why not? Share with us in the comments below!
Worthy Bonds Review
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Worthy Bonds Review
When taking everything into consideration, Worthy is an excellent platform to invest in bonds. With a fixed 5% return, a $10 minimum investment, and no penalties or fees, we think Worthy is an outstanding choice. Rounding up your purchases and using the leftover cash to fund bonds makes growing your money easy. Plus, your money helps to grow communities by providing competitive loan options for small businesses.
Great article but just to make sure, it’s not for non-americans, right?
Correct. Worthy Bonds are currently only available to U.S. citizens.
If the money can be withdrawn at any time, why do the bonds have a 36 month term? What happens after 36 months?
Hey Collin, good question. The term simply expires. You have to cash it out or buy more bonds with the money.
this is a non insured bond, so i challenge your statement of low risk.
That is correct – the bonds are not insured and they are an investment, which by nature means they carry some risk. However, the loans backed by the bonds are fully-secured which theoretically helps reduce risk. But to be clear, lower risk does not equal no risk.
Hello: So if I invest today, and within the next 12 months interest rates double. After 12 months I want to withdraw my money , will I receive my full principal back? No interest rate risk as in normal bonds??
Where can I find more info about the non-accredited investor limits? I’m thinking of investing more than 10% of my salary but less than 10% of my net worth.
In reality there is a lot of risk to these bonds, that you should discuss a lot more in your article. It is important to note that the bond you are investing in is a loan to Worthy bonds. You are making a loan to the company, then they use some of those funds to make secured/asset backed loans – so your actual bond is not a secured or asset back bond. Worthy has filings with the SEC and they talk a lot about some very serious risks that their business faces (over and beyond just having the loans they make default). Here is link to filing: https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1699834/000149315221002031/partiiandiii.htm . Something that should be very concerning is that both management and the auditors have issued a going concern opinion- I think any corporate rated bond that had a going concern audit opinion would be rated as a junk bond. For comparison purposes the US High Yield Master II Total Return Index is an index of Junk bonds, and over its life has averaged 8.67%. In 2020 it was 6.7% return. To me the risk profile of Worthy Bonds should be considered at least as high as this bond index, yet you are only investing in one thing (whereas the index is diversified), and the potential return is much lower with Worthy than the historical rate of return of this index.
In addition, Worthy has never turned a profit. Based off of their June 30 2020 financial data they are running a $17M working capital deficit, and they have only 1.2M in total cash. In their filings they say that as of January 28, 2021 they only have made $18.93M in loans, yet in June 30 they had 25M of liabilities, that means that there is 6M of liabilities that they are paying interest on (Worthy bonds or other debt- which could be more senior to the Worthy bonds). From their filing I quote: “Interest on the proceeds from our Regulation A offering will not cover interest payments accruing on the bonds or our operating expenses. Accordingly, until such time as we are able to generate significant income from the investment of the proceeds we will be required to utilize cash on hand to make the interest payments which will reduce the amount of proceeds available for loans by us.” To me this means that when you buy a worthy bond, a good amount of those proceeds go to make the interest payments on other loans. Unless Worthy is able to make a lot more loans at a good spread that won’t default, then it means that at some point Worthy isn’t going to be able to make their interest payments and could default on all of these bonds. There is a huge possibility that all of these bonds could lose a lot or all of their value – I feel like investing in a Worthy Bond is a similar risk to investing in a early stage company or IPO, but the potential return is capped at 5%. I don’t feel this risk-return profile is good for any investor. say there is a 5% chance that Worthy folds and these bonds become worthless, are you willing to take a 5% probability of a 100% loss, for a total potential upside of 5%? That is not a risk profile I am comfortable with, and I would argue that there is a greater then 5% chance that these bonds become worthless.
Thank you, this is information I needed.
Forever amazing!