Wealthfront (long term) user review; 6 Year update - YouTube

you're here because you've heard about wealthfront  as a robo advisor you're now here because you're  

looking for somebody who's been using it for a  lengthy period of time in my case i've been using  

wealthfront as my primary investment vehicle  for over six years still not sponsored so  

you can take what i'm going to give you with a  grain of salt in that i'm here just to give you  

data on my personal experiences with it i'm not  going to over promise and say you're going to get  

17 returns year over year using wealthfront  or have a weird-looking thumbnail with an o  

face i'm here to give you data and my experiences  having used this platform for as long as i have  

hello i'm Wanderer001 and just like i said this  is my long-term review of wealthfront i've been  

using it since it was actually a green and orange  site as you can see wealthfront has changed itself  

quite a bit pretty much going away from all the  green and moving over to a purple transition so  

we're not here to nitpick them on user interface  stuff but i will admit over here on the right hand  

side i am happy that i no longer have to block  out information for pending transactions and so  

forth the one thing i will admit is for a lot  of this stuff now you really have to dig into  

a lot of the menus find that information which i  don't necessarily know if i'm happy with or not  

starting at the top you have your goals i have  one goal and that goal is just to retire you can  

see at 65 i will supposedly have 2.8 million based  on this number here which is encompassing all of  

my accounts and as you can see it is giving  me information about how they came up with  

that because i happen to click on that selecting  goals will show you you have one goal and it is  

comfortable you can add more goals if you want but  i have covered the goals as well as other aspects  

of wealthfront in many of my past videos which can  be found in the upper right hand corner right now  

however if this is your first time they have  changed the menu up top here so our overview is  

where all of our accounts are listed next we have  explore which will let you explore some of the  

changes that they've actually made to wealthfront  and back in september they introduce socially  

responsible investment portfolios they still have  their classic portfolio but now you have socially  

responsible and direct indexing some of these  options do not become available to you until you  

reach certain thresholds of money in your account  mainly the direct indexing if we come in here  

it will show you information about that but it  also says that you cannot do this unless you  

have over a hundred thousand in your investment  account now if we selected socially responsible  

it will give you an idea of how well the returns  have been and then based on a risk score these are  

going to select funds within these areas which  are considered socially responsible and i like  

the fact that they brought back the slider so  you can kind of tell how well things are doing  

you can also select add to profile if you want i'm  going to pop back and show you the classic profile  

here it's showing you the returns over three years  and if we slide this around you can see the rough  

estimate as to how well your returns would have  been now they do allow you to edit each individual  

portfolio and i'll show you that a little later  but i like that they have brought back the ease  

of being able to check the different profiles and  not only that here you can see us stock etfs bonds  

they break out all the things that you can have  now some of which are only accessible in your  

roth ira versus an investment but if we come up  to us it will show us everything that they have  

as possible options clicking into any one of these  will again show you market returns as well as  

lots of other useful information for it we're  gonna come back to our overview or main page  

because the other one is just transferring  funds around and then inviting friends which  

we'll talk about a little later so those have  been major platform changes now let's move on to  

returns because well that's probably your primary  focus of why you're here we will come over to my  

ira and here we can see up at the top i like the  fact that they have this information very visible  

for you you have all-time returns contributions  for 2020 and then 2021 now i'm doing this  

during a particular volatile time in the market  where things have been going up and down for the  

last three to four days in fact right before  filming this the market was down about 900  

points for the dow jones and i do that because i  want you to know that returns are not a guarantee  

but if you passively invest consistently you will  dollar cost average into the market thereby making  

things not look as scary here you can see over  the six years that i've been doing it here's our  

major dip back in 2020 and then we've just been  kind of going up if we come down to 2022 you'll  

actually see that my account overall is down five  percent based on current market but coming back  

to all you can see that pops back to being up  in the green and they move the location to find  

this so if you come over to your all time here and  click the i it will bring up time weighted return  

money weighted return and dividends and here  you can see this dividend is based on the six  

years that i've been doing it that's not counting  any asset appreciation that's just dividends so  

if we're going to look back at my previous returns  my money weighted return for my roth last time i  

did this for my five and a half review i was at  93.66 here you can see we are sitting at 82.7  

gone down however the time weighted was 87.43  and here it's 87.99 so this has actually gone  

up ever so slightly and if you ever want to know  the difference between time weighted and money  

weighted simply click the i and it will let you  know the information about that again i covered  

that in past videos so i won't be covering  that again but this is a better representation  

of your portfolio based on the inception of  when you had started investing money over how  

many years you've been doing it as opposed to when  money's going in and out of your account so that's  

my roth ira as you can see six years it's still  going in the right direction minus these blips  

up and down but keep in mind you're investing in  something like this for the long haul let's take  

a look over at my individual investment account  which has a risk score of 7.5 with me playing with  

some of the investments in here if you saw that  last one i put some technology stocks in here the  

ira that you saw before was a risk score of 6.5  with minor tweaking adding more into my stocks  

and again if we come over to 2020 you can see i'm  actually down 4.88 not as much as the previous for  

my roth ira but you can also see that it has  tax lost harvest 1.28 cents as of 2022 and if  

we bring that into all time you could see 322.33  cents that is the neat thing that your investment  

account can do that your roth ira does not do it  tax lost harvests things selling them when you  

lose value in your account to help you save money  on paper on your taxes but if we come up to our  

returns here we can see our money weighted return  last time i did this was 78.50 we are sitting at  

64.10 our time weighted return previously was  59.21 and here we're looking at 59.26 so again  

it has gone up a little bit but because of the  markets being what they are right now you'll  

notice here 37 and 38 so current versus our  target that's because the market has kind of  

been going down a little bit but again i wanted  to show you this because of the upward trajectory  

that you get when you continuously invest money  into something like this and as mentioned before  

if we scroll down you have the option to edit  your portfolio see recent activities so if  

you wanted to see your transactions dividends  withdrawals this is how you'd be able to do it  

now if we select edit portfolio you can  see that it's saying custom i can select  

switch portfolio in which i can go back to the  classic or socially responsible indexing if i  

had over a hundred thousand if i selected  classic we can adjust our risk score could  

because based on what i told it it says i should  be an 8.5 out of 10. i'm a wimp i know i should  

make it higher but it's difficult for me to do  that if i come back to our edit portfolio area  

and scroll down here we have our ad investment  and i bring this up because the other big thing  

that wealthfront introduced in 2021 back in july  was this right here cryptocurrency trust selecting  

this will allow you to either select from ethereum  or bitcoin now adding these to your portfolio will  

give you exposure to bitcoin or ethereum and here  you can see these are very tantalizing returns  

but it is a much bumpier ride and one of the  things that i do not particularly care for  

especially with the bitcoin trust is if we come  down to our expense ratio it is two percent  

the rest of your etfs that you're going to  be investing in with wealthfront normally  

are 0.16.25 at most to have exposure to bitcoin  at 2 it it's a little hard for me to to chew and  

there are other alternatives if you want to get  exposure to bitcoin without having to actually put  

up your own money over in the corner there you'll  see a link for a video that i did on a browser  

extension called lolly which will allow you to  use a browser extension just like honey which  

will allow you to get cash back from purchases  made through lolly much like a rocket on or honey  

instead of getting cash back you get bitcoin  back so if you're interested in that review  

over there in the corner as well as an affiliate  link full disclosure if you're interested in that  

but we're gonna come back to our overview page one  more time to talk about the personal cash account  

i still have mixed feelings about the personal  cash account i dislike that they dropped the  

interest rate so drastically so quickly a lot of  people called it and you know what i agree it does  

feel a bit like a bait and switch however there  are specific aspects having a cash account that i  

do like uh normally i keep about a thousand  dollars in here because what you can do is  

transfer between your investment accounts and your  personal cash account within five minutes if you  

do a transfer from a brick and mortar into your  wealthfront account you're looking at a day and a  

half between sending money and getting invested so  the ability to invest within five minutes was very  

useful today when the market was down 900 points  and allowing me to jump in when it was read so i  

like keeping a little bit of money in here and my  business account up there but i don't think that's  

the super selling factor that it was when it  originally launched for wealthfront i hate to say  

i'm just being honest well i'm going to sneak this  in at the end because well this happened while i  

was editing the video to go live and you probably  have heard about it too if you're a current  

wealthfront client wealthfront has agreed to be  purchased by ubs bank it is a swiss-based bank but  

what does this mean for you and me well supposedly  based on the wealthfront article and several other  

articles that i have been checking into uh regard  to this is well wealthfront is supposedly going  

to be a subsidiary of ubs bank they will  still be able to operate as they have been  

but whenever something like this happens you  have to wonder well what happens now will ubs  

bank start pushing their etfs or mutual funds onto  the wealthfront system even if the expense ratio  

isn't as good as you would get with a schwab or a  vanguard i i have paused because reading through  

the article that's here from wealthprunt's  blog page which is the same article that  

was emailed to me it says that the 1.4 billion  transaction helps them accelerate their offering  

time horizon meaning we'll get new features  much faster but now i have questions about  

what about the cash account which you just  saw what happens with that you partnered with  

several different banks before to get the best  rate are we now going to be stuck with ubs only  

as our cash account holder wealthfront states  that nothing for its current customers will  

change and they will continue to operate as they  have been in the past will that hold true well  

we will have to wait and see what the next six  months to a year haven't stored for wealthfront  

now being a subsidiary product of a bank a brick  and mortar bank that was the big thing it is  

wealthfront was a was a fintech startup to get  millennials who are comfortable with technology  

out of the big banks and now they're owned by  a big bank ubs i can see why they're doing it  

they want to leverage the technology that  wealthfront has but as a fintech investor  

i don't know how i feel about wealthfront being  bought out i'm not saying this is the beginning  

of the end but it might be time to consider  looking elsewhere depending on what happens  

after the acquisition fully goes through with that  if you are still interested in wealthfront i will  

have a referral code in the description area of  this video you can click on that and for now you  

can get five thousand dollars managed fee free if  you so choose to invest and bank with wealthfront  

for the time being with that being said we'll  just have to wait and see what the future holds  

i have been Wanderer001 if you have any questions  or comments please feel free to leave them in the  

area below and as always thanks for watching if  you found this video helpful consider giving it  

a like as that will help other people find  the video as well if you like what i'm doing  

here you can always help fuel the next review by  buying me a coffee link in the description below  

last but not least if you want to be notified  when i upload a new video you know what to do