Do you have experience with Betterment/Wealthfront and how they compare to a standard 3 fund portfolio at Schwab/Fidelity/Vanguard? I know fees are a bit higher. Is the return still more? Is the automatic rebalancing and tax-loss harvesting worth it? I tried to calculate the cost difference using the fees and expense ratios of the different portfolios but am still not confident that I am covering everything.
Sorry I don't have an answer here, but very interested in anyone's experience here with Betterment/Wealthfront.
Wealthfront claims their asset allocations (5-7 etfs) are based on established research and provides the best "risk adjusted returns" over long 5+ years) periods of time. I am a long time customer and Wealthfront is my primary taxable investment instrument. The tax loss harvesting and auto rebalancing are are definitely great features and increase returns quite a bit and justifies the .25% fee. FYI they released a new update this week that lets you tweak the portfolio allocations if I choose not to use their recommended portfolio, and I think this is a very helpful feature for many users.
Love Wealthfront, I've been using them for a 6-7 years now. Tax loss harvesting is awesome, allocation is good. As the other poster just said, they just added the ability to customize allocation, but IMO their default allocation is pretty good. I use it for both taxable and Roth IRA, and they do use different allocations in order to minimize taxes (e.g. municipal bonds in taxable vs. corporate and emerging market bonds in the Roth IRA).
Bogleheads.org
There are several posts about wealthfront, not very positive. - tax loss harvesting could lead to wash out sells - it's very difficult to get out of wealthfront after investing with them for a while - 0.25% fee adds up and the expectation is that fees will increase I think I might start with a Vanguard investment account for now.