Do you guys use Betterment or any of its competitors? What are your experiences?
Have more than half a million in Betterment and absolutely love it. For me it's not so much about their returns - since they use index funds and don't attempt to beat the market, you get the market returns. But they have lots of very cool features like tax loss harvesting, fractional shares, smart dividends reinvesting, tax coordinated portfolios, estimated tax impact on rebalancing or withdrawals, etc. Plus a very user friendly web site and app. Plus very good customer service. All of that is completely worth their 0.25% fees IMO. Also look at Wealthfront- very similar proposition.
I use wealthfront and have been happy with it; 18% over the last 3 years (2015 was a negative year). Not sure if it has all the features that the previous reply described Betterment as having. It does let you set your risk tolerance and builds a portfolio based on that.
Why pay the .25% fee when you can invest directly with Vanguard and pay 0%?
How is it different than loss harvesting yourself?
Tax loss harvesting by Betterment and Wealthfront is done automatically on a daily basis...try doing that yourself for fun.
Daily TLH = potential TLH. Neither actually harvests every day, they just look for the opportunity to. You could easily set triggers to do it yourself, however it's the initial legwork that makes it more appealing to outsource it
I'm not too smart about investing to do it myself, and hence user betterment. It's pretty easy to use, I see a 9% return so far. I think of it as a rainy day savings account. I love their app, and love the fact that they don't burden you with details unless you ask for it.
Thanks guys, love the replies
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I do use it. I like it! - Currently invested for around 1.5 years now. Getting 7-8% ROI. - It mostly invests in Vanguard Index Funds which is good. - I like that I can set various goals and invest towards each. - In case of an emergency you might get blocked as it takes about 3-5 days to extract money. - I don't put all my eggs in one basket, so it's just another way. Others I use are savings bank account in India, manual stock purchases, retirement account and some emergency funds in a savings account in the US. - Auto deposit is also a great option as you can pay yourself on the first day of the month and don't have to worry about spending it all.
What's the point of depositing money into a savings bank account in India?