Three-thousand dollars might not seem like enough cash to get started in the stock market, since many of the top stocks cost hundreds or thousands of dollars per share. But with commission-free platforms and fractional trades, it's never been easier for retail investors to build up a diversified portfolio of evergreen stocks with a modest investment.

If I were just getting started with $3,000 in cash, I'd consider spreading it out across these three evergreen financial stocks: American Express (AXP 2.77%), SoFi Technologies (SOFI 6.68%), and Berkshire Hathaway (BRK.A 0.90%) (BRK.B 0.84%). All of these companies have unique strengths, wide moats, and plenty of room to expand over the next few decades.

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American Express

American Express is often compared to Visa (NYSE: V) and Mastercard (NYSE: MA), but it operates a different business model. Visa and Mastercard only process payments on their networks instead of issuing any cards. Their partnered banks and financial institutions actually issue the co-branded cards and handle the accounts, while Visa and Mastercard simply charge "swipe fees" every time those cards are used.

American Express operates its own bank and issues its own cards. It controls a much smaller slice of the credit card market than Visa and Mastercard, but that's intentional because it only issues its cards to lower-risk and higher-income customers.

American Express' business model is also well insulated from interest swings. While rising interest rates might throttle consumer spending and reduce its swipe fees, they can boost its banking segment's net profits. That balance makes it a more well-rounded investment than Visa and Mastercard, which don't operate their own banks or benefit from higher interest rates. It's also been gradually expanding overseas to reduce its dependence on the U.S. market.

From 2024 to 2027, analysts expect American Express' revenue to grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 8% as its earnings per share (EPS) rise at a CAGR of 13%. Its stock still looks cheap at 18 times this year's earnings, and it pays a forward yield of 1.2%.

SoFi Technologies

SoFi, which is short for Social Finance, plans to disrupt brick-and-mortar banks as a "one-stop shop" for digital financial services. It provides personal loans, credit cards, insurance policies, estate planning tools, and stock trading services. It launched a digital-only direct bank after it obtained a U.S. bank charter in 2022.

SoFi's online-only approach attracted a lot of younger customers and enabled it to grow at a faster rate than its brick-and-mortar competitors. Its number of year-end members quadrupled from 2.52 million in 2020 to 10.13 million in 2024, while its payment-processing subsidiary Galileo -- which it acquired in 2020 -- hosts 168 million accounts of its own. It also turned profitable on a generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP) basis in 2024.

SoFi faced two main headwinds over the past few years: A federal freeze on student loans from March 2020 to September 2023 and a decline in new loans amid rising interest rates. However, that freeze has thawed, and the Federal Reserve is still aiming for two rate cuts this year. As those headwinds dissipate, analysts expect SoFi's revenue and EPS to grow at a CAGR of 19% and 24%, respectively, from 2024 to 2027.

SoFi might not initially seem like a bargain at 49 times this year's earnings, but it looks a lot cheaper at 14 times its forward adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization (EBITDA). It could be a great growth stock to buy if you expect more Americans to ditch traditional banks in favor of digital-only platforms.

Berkshire Hathaway

Last but not least, Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway remains one of the simplest ways to invest in a broad range of evergreen financial companies. Its core business owns insurance companies like GEICO, Gen Re, Alleghany, Wesco, and National Indemnity. In its $284 billion stock portfolio, it holds big stakes in the insurance giant Chubb, American Express, Capital One, Bank of America, and the Latin American direct bank Nu Holdings.

Berkshire Hathaway also owns energy, transportation, and consumer staples companies through its core business and investment portfolio. That scale and diversification has made it a reliable long-term investment -- and it's consistently outperformed the S&P 500 since Buffett acquired Berkshire Hathaway in 1965.

Berkshire usually gauges its bottom-line growth with its "operating earnings," which exclude the capital gains or losses from its investment portfolio, instead of its GAAP EPS. That proprietary metric grew at a CAGR of 16% from 1994 to 2024, and it should continue rising as long as Buffett's eventual successors stick with his evergreen growth strategies.