Wealthfront: Save and Invest

I also use apps for my accounts at US Bank and TruStone Credit Union. This app is much better. The US Bank app is often down or gives strange error messages. The credit union app is confusing. I can transfer money back and forth to my checking account quickly and safely. The interest rate is way better than US Bank, which also has stealthy fees. When I sold my house, I had to pay them $300 to close my home equity credit line, which I had never used. The US Bank person who talked me into opening it said it was fee-free. What a lie. US Bank also applied a $15 or more monthly fee to my savings account that paid a fraction of a percent interest, and a similar fee to my checking account. When I complained, they started just crediting the fees back every month. I’m sure they will stop crediting them sometime to see if I notice.

This app is very functional and easy to use. It gives users a quick way to assess their complete financial situation through the ability to link to all your external accounts with other financial institutions. It will also show a projection of your financial situation throughout your lifetime, if you desire. The app makes it very easy to add money to your Wealthfront accounts or transfer money out of Wealthfront to another institution. There are two distinct reasons I did not give the Wealthfront app five stars. First, the app does not give users the ability to change their risk tolerance score. Users must log on to Wealthfront’s actual website to do that, which is tremendously inconvenient. Second, although I like the financial future modeling the app provides, there is no available explanation of the modeling used to make such a long term forecast. Specifically, I would like to know the assumed annual rate of return in the model as well as whether it accounts for an assumed annual pay increase or an assumed increase in the value of your home. This would all be possible by adding a simple link that explains the specifics of the assumptions and methodology behind the model used to calculate important values like your predicted net worth at retirement age. I am sure this seems like a niche request, but some more financially and data savvy users would appreciate it.

These days I’m hesitant with which apps I choose to share my income info. (As they say, if the product is free then you are the product. ) Yet, I chose to bank with wealthfront for their high yield savings account with an APY ranging from 1.8-2.5 %, which is great compared to my previous banks .03%. I then linked my other retirement accounts & downloaded the app to use their PATH feature, which helps me understand how my different income streams & retirement accounts influence when I can retire. I also have > 100k in student loans and like that these accounts can also be linked & every time that I pay more than the minimum loan amount it’s nice to see how this effects my net worth & when I can ultimately retire. Keeping track of my account balances with the wealthfront app allows me to immediately see the small impact of my decisions to spend v save income—or use money to pay down debt.

Forget financial planners and traditional banks. This is how future generations will want to do business. By cutting out the physical locations and Human Resources, this company is able to offer the best options for savings possible. Fees are extremely low and I’ve watched my money grow over 3 years in this app. At tax season you can just upload your form into TurboTax making taxes super easy to do. Wealthfront also has features to save you lots of money on taxes. I withdrew 70k at one point and it was quick and easy. I had a question and I was able to contact customer service on the phone and get a quick smart response. Not an operator from who knows where reading a script. The humans are there if you need them (and they’re super smart!) but mostly this thing is run by robots. And I think that’s a good thing.

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First, I’m a huge fan how simple wealthfront makes investing in stocks. This review is on the cash account only. I want to make a bigger purchase this weekend and was saving every penny for this - putting my savings on the cash account in anticipation that I can withdraw this cash easily when I want to make the purchase. I initiated the withdrawal on Monday morning and still don’t see any cash on my bank account (4 days later), even tho they tell you it takes 1-3 days for the cash to hit your account. They also freeze deposits you make for 5 business days until you can withdraw them again for “security reasons”. I also have a cash account with American Express and made the transfer at the same time as wealthfront. My cash from then arrived one day later! This experience with welthfront cash is very frustrating, especially because I know that I have the money, it’s just frozen on their account! Worst case, I have to take out a loan to make the purchase because wealthfront failed to make a transaction on time! Thanks for this, wealthfront!