SoFi - Banking & Investing

So, I am shifting all of my money away from my big name bank (after all, it seems a little archaic to be banking with a company that uses a horse-drawn carriage as their mascot). First, I will say that SoFi is not perfect. I have had to call their support several times through the setup process due to nuances in their systems, getting a joint account holder approved, ect. However, in my experience, the customer service is phenomenal. Thus, any of the issues that I have experienced has been taken care of swiftly and without compromise. Additionally, the benefit of having my banking (SoFi money), investing (SoFi Investing), and loan options all in one place is very useful. I am a medical student, so I hope to refinance my loans through SoFi once I go to residency. To summarize, SoFi is not perfect. It seems they are experiencing some growing pains. However, they have adequate staffing to face these growing pains. I will also say that they walk laps around the other banking companies out there (even some of the other “new” startups). Also, the app is clean cut and simple to use. I greatly appreciate SoFi!

I was hesitant to move my money to a bank just starting out, but after making the move, I was really glad that I did. The interest rates are way higher than what I had before (Wells Fargo). Moving money to the investing services is around 2 clicks. You just transfer money from your bank account to SoFi Invest and then choose the dollar amount that you want invested into SPY or any other popular stock or etf. I do wish that they allowed instant buying/selling of shares (like Robinhood, WeBull, etc) but trading isn’t really the point of SoFi, it’s for long term investments. The fractional shares do work as advertised and are really interesting. They also have money vaults that are way more convenient than having separate checking accounts. I did have to contact support once and they were very helpful and had no issues. The free ATMs really work as well. They instantly send you reimbursement for any ATM fees. The debit card works like a charm as well.

I have been using SoFi for about a month now, and I LOVE IT. Being able to see where my money is going, learning more about investing, and having a ton of tools to help me as I learn financial independence as a college student is really helping me to get smart about my money and spending. I do feel like there are a few more tools that could be added to improve the budgeting aspect of this app. For instance, a round-up tool that could round up the remaining change in your purchases, to go toward stock or savings would be extremely beneficial. I’d also love if there was a way to create little secondary pots of money for me to allocate toward certain bills, like a separate pot for rent or my phone bill that I could accumulate separate from my checking account, and then move over to my checking once the bill is due, to prevent over spending (perhaps even an auto-transfer). All in all, I understand that this app is still growing and fine tuning what is already presented, but I would love to see these additional features added!

I am giving this app 5stars because I do see how it can potentially be one of the best all-in-one financial app. However, I sadly am facing a very annoying issue with it and customer service has been less than great in dealing with this. The app has been showing me an error that reads “you’ve reached max attempts, try reconnecting banks on November 11, 2019” for the past month.. and I am not able to connect any funding sources. I basically see the potential yet it’s all useless to me so far. Customer service has been giving me answers like “hmmm... it’s weird.. send me a screenshot of the error and we’ll get back to you” and never follow-up. If this issue won’t get resolved in the upcoming 48 hours i’m closing the account and changing my stars rating.. If that can be resolved, I am happy to submit a fair review update because I truly want to love this app. Finally, PLEASE catch up with the 2019 must-have dark mode option!! Thank you.

I have been using this bank as a Christmas fund and not an everyday checking. I have put about $300 so far in about 2 1/2 months of having it and have almost gained $0.25! You will never see this in any other checking! Since I haven't used this for a normal checking, I haven’t fought with overdraft fees or any of that, but to watch my money grow as a Christmas fund is absolutely amazing and so much fun. This is better than a CD or mutual fund because there is no maturity date or anything of that sort to wait for, so I can pull the money out as I please. I have also talked to customer service and they have been very polite and willing so get all the answers I have asked about. I also havent run across anyone that seems to want to just push you off the phone and count you as another number. (Ex: I got 42 calls today. How many did you get?) This has been great in the almost 3 months and I have no complaints.