Those of you who know me well, know that I’m always good for a rant. The finest of dictionaries, Urban Dictionary (for the lulz), defines a rant as:
To speak agressivly (sic) about somthing (sic). or to take your own tangent about a subject and talk for a long time in a passionate manner.
Yes, they misspelled “aggressive” and “something,” but who’s counting, right? In the interest of not ranting on WHY I think my fellow millennials should invest and WHY I think the “robo-advisors” are the way to go for many of us just getting started, let me just touch on a single(ish) pro and con for each of the 3 services I’ve experimented with and recommend.
Let’s start it off with Betterment 
Pro: Betterment has the absolute best web interface. It’s clean, fairly bug-free, and can give you access to a wealth of information, if you know where to look. You can also start with $0 until you get an idea for how it works. Finally, out of all 3, Betterment contains the broadest scope of individual investment ETFs
Con: My biggest pet-peeve with Betterment is the way they display your portfolio’s gains/losses. For some reason, it DEFAULTS to giving your your lifetime gains/losses in terms of a %. While they have since added an “Earnings” % which mildly corrects the issue, I believe it is at least mildly misleading, and I suspect this is a tactic meant to amplify your perception of how good the service is. In simple terms, it tells you your % gain/loss as if you invested all of your money the moment you opened your account; so if 3 years ago you opened your account on 3 July, it will tell you whether $100 (or any static number, regardless of how much you’ve added or subtracted since then) has increased/decreased since then. *sigh* Can you tell this aggravates me?
Now on to Wealthfront 
Pro: Wealthfront gives you the first $10,000 fee free (as far as the service goes – the individual underlying funds still have fees, though they are very low). In fact, if you are referred by another customer, both you and the customer get an extra $5,000 fee free, for life! That means, if you join through the link above, you are getting $15,000 managed in the service for free, versus Betterment, where you pay 0.35% points for management, right off the bat. AND, when you go over your $15,000, you are only paying 0.25% points, which is the same as Betterment at that account size. Put simply, you are saving more money, which means you are making more money. Also, as a Dividend investor, I appreciate that Wealthfront has a dividend fund, where Betterment does not.
Con: Where Betterment has a beautiful web interface, Wealthfront is only average, and their phone application provides you with next to nothing. In fact, aside from seeing your overall gains/loss and your lifetime ETF stats next to a pretty black and green graph, you get almost no data. Setting up recurring contributions on the phone is equally confusing, as it doesn’t show any existing contribution plans, and you could end up double contributing on accident. You also have to start an account with $500, which is higher than the other two services.
Lastly, the mysterious Wise Banyan 
Pro: Wise Banyan is the least well-known of the “Robos,” but also possibly the most advantageous. Where I said Wealthfront charges you nothing for the first $10-15k, Wise Banyan currently charges you nothing, EVER. That’s a LOT of money in savings over the life of the account. Moreover, Wise Banyan’s web interface, is very easy to read and clearly presents important data regarding your account on a single page. It may lack some of the bells & whistles of Betterment, but it does the job here better than Wealthfront. Wise Banyan, also like Betterment, lets you invest with next to nothing ($10, I believe). Lastly, your portfolio will have access to REITs and Junk Bonds, two new classes of investment not seen in either of the other two services (whether or not you want those classes in your portfolio is a separate question you must answer)
Con: Wise Banyan is the least well known because it makes many nervous. The other two make their money off of that “fee” I mentioned. Betterment makes money from the moment you start investing, and Wealthfront assumes you’ll like them enough to keep investing to the point where they’ll start to make money. Wise Banyan has no apparent mechanism for earning money for their service. They claim that “one day” they will offer additional paid services, making their platform akin to the “freemium” games you play on your phone (CandyCrush, anyone?), but for now, everyone is nervous they will go out of business. That DOES NOT mean your money would disappear; it does mean, however, that your account would likely close and you would need to transfer those investments to another adviser, or liquidate them – a hassle which no one really wants.
That’s all folks. I really don’t know how to keep it short, do I? But hopefully, that comparison will help you as you look at all your options!
~Beardman
30pinions 