Wealthfront: Save and Invest Reviews

Wealthfront 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. Wealthfront makes it very easy to add money to your this app accounts or transfer money out of this app to another institution.

There are two distinct reasons I did not give the this app app five stars. First, Wealthfront does not give users the ability to change their risk tolerance score. Users must log on to this app’s actual website to do that, which is tremendously inconvenient. Second, although I like the financial future modeling Wealthfront 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.

I have been using Wealthfront for 6 months. I found it when I was looking for a high-interest savings account. this app's cash account isn't a savings account itself but it works with other established banks to offer 1.78% interest per year and is FDIC insured. I'm unsure about the exact amount insured but it's over $1 million dollars.

On top of that, you can also connect your bank accounts, credit cards and other financial services to keep track of all your money in one place. I'm not aware if it offer categories for tracking spending but it does help you determine how many years it will take you to reach your retirement goals at your current savings rate. I am saving $600/mo and apparently I should be able to retire at 60yo. It helps you establish realistic expectations. If anything, it's shown me I need a better paying job since I'm saving as much as possible at this point.

Wealthfront is my top money tracking app along with Credit Karma and Experian (for credit). I also use Robinhood, Webull and my credit card apps. I have used Mint but it feels like it isn't being supported by the developers any longer.

I’m relatively new to investing but this app is by far the easiest investing tool I’ve ever seen, and one that is perfect for someone in my new-to-investing position. My favorite feature is the Path tool, which gives me the confidence I need to spend my money while saving away more than enough to live the retirement of my dreams. I’m excited to see how this app continues to grow and flourish, since just in the short time I’ve been using it, it has added a number of incredible features (notably, their new this app Cash account).

UPDATE: It has been several years since I left this review and this app has remained a five-star app and service. Since reviewing, I’ve transitioned my entire financial life over to this app (with the exception of my employer-sponsored 401(k)). this app’s checking and cash management features are industry-leading, and now that they allow you to tweak your investment portfolios to suit your style, their investment suite is too. I look forward to continuing to grow my finances with this app.

I wish I could find my original review, because it was pretty scathing. While this app continues to be great for investing and managing money, one of the biggest reasons I also signed on was the ability to input information and manage my assets and liabilities. Right now, in that area, this app is letting me down. Out of the 11 or so accounts I currently have linked to this app, six of them are temporarily down, and the one that links to my financial institution has been down for almost a year. I have contacted their customer service by email, and they’re great - don’t get me wrong - but they have been unable to provide me a time frame. The fact that my account has been down for more than 50% of my time with this app shows my frustration here.

To those seeking a simple way to invest and manage money, I HIGHLY encourage and recommend you to give this app a try. To this app, I implore you to put more effort into fixing these account links. If six of mine are down, statistically, I can imagine there are more that I do not know about.

I first heard about this app from reading a blog in nerdwallet. The low fee, diversification, and passive investment style really resonated with me. I started small and after almost a year I believe I was up $1k. Not to mention the tax loss harvesting that reduced my taxes. The only thing I would advice against is using the robo advisor for position trading. I tried it and ended up losing on even more gains and lower capital tax. The robo advisor portfolio is more of a set it and forget it.

I believe they now offer individual accounts too where you gave more control on what to invest when you are ready. Also, they have a cash account that earns interest (really low right now) and you can easily transfer funds from there to the investments account. I highly recommend if you want a simple approach that takes the guessing out of it. No you won’t get rich quick by using this method but over the long run there is a good chance!

What a gift of service Wealthfront is! It connects all previous accounts. While I have invested in vanguard for retirement for a while, when I went to invest in other stuff - felt like I needed a PhD to discern and didn’t know where to start. I didn’t want to talk to anyone bc I felt behind the curve and just wanted to start.

I’m so thankful to this app’s system. My sister recommended due to their reverse engineering big picture map planning. I’ve tried Albert previously as well. It’s the Birdseye view and timeline projections that set Wealthfront apart by leaps and bounds. I wish I had known of it earlier bc it almost gamifies the saving process.

Before, I felt indundated and behind. Now I feel more on track. If I had started earlier, I would have realized housing was more on track than I thought and been able to purchase even in the crazy housing market!

I have absolutely no background in investing of any sort. All I knew is that in order to be successful in investing is that I could not put all my eggs in one basket. So I tried a few different investing apps for tips and tricks but nothing really worked. One day I was listening to the Tim Ferriss show and Tim mentioned it as one of his sponsors. I decided to take a look and give it a shot. I made my first investment on December 7th and am already up over 2% ROI. Not too shabby for almost a 3 week period. this app handles all the investing, diversification, reinvestment of your dividends and all other complicated investing strategies for you in order to maximize your long term returns. Best app I've ever downloaded, gives me back the time of researching different stocks and bonds and piece of mind that it's AI backed algorithms will always maximize my return with the best possible strategy.

I let — and I love to let — the robots at this app completely manage my financial portfolio. this app has been my main bank since the addition of checking accounts, and its Autopilot feature is also highly useful (which automatically invests/moves money between internal categories/external accounts upon reaching predefined thresholds).

There are certain, newer features that some people may gripe about (i.e., the ability to customize your investments yourself) but this, in my opinion, comes down to whether someone has the self-restraint to use, or not use, such features. For me, I see such features as a boon despite not using them because the more the merrier.

My favorite bit about this app, although this is a shared trait amongst the robo-advisors, is the peace of mind that such a platform can bring. More involved financial platforms require constant monitoring (i.e., stealing your attention) and can be quite destructive to those with addictive personalities. this app manages this by making it absolutely simple to “set and forget.” There’s no need to check Wealthfront everyday, there’s no need to whip out your phone at every alert. You know where your money is going and what your money is doing. This is truly tranquil stuff.

I have only high praise for this app.

I love the interface of the this app app. Much better than Wealthsimple! New features are added regularly. I like how the tax loss harvesting ends up paying for the advisory fees most years (and then some) and all my investments are held in tax efficient index funds. I think all people interested in Financial Independence should try out a roboadvisor like this app. I enjoy hands on investing with Vanguard but this app gives you a diversified portfolio with almost no effort or distraction. I have better things to worry about than rebalancing my portfolio and this app offers more flexibility than a target date fund. Too good to resist investing with them. I know enough about my finances to not pay a financial advisor regularly so I appreciate not paying for features I don’t use. Most simple and hands off tool to increase net worth over time!

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 this app 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 Wealthfront 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 this app app allows me to immediately see the small impact of my decisions to spend v save income—or use money to pay down debt.

At 21 years old, it’s so exciting seeing my potential net worth just by managing my money in different interest-bearing accounts and being an avid saver. The main benefit of course is the high-yield savings. Currently my net worth is projected to be $13 million when I retire; and this is with me only seriously saving for the past two months! 2021 I promised myself would be a year I take my money much more seriously. Wealthfront shows me all my accounts, even my debts, and tells me my current and projected net worth. I also just opened a checking account with this app and the card is so cute and unique. The design and layout of Wealthfront is very easy to follow. You can tell developers put a lot of work into it. It honestly has the cleanest layout of any banking platform I’ve used thus far. No complaints!!

I opened this account 2 days after my payday. I went ahead and gave my employer the info to set up direct deposit, thinking SURELY I’d get my debit card before I got paid again. BIG MISTAKE. After TWO WEEKS still with no debit card, I had a paycheck deposited and no way to use my money!! It took them forever to get the card to me which (DING DING DING!!) gives me access to all my money!!!!! I might need that sooner than 2 WEEKS after I open my account!!!
UPDATE: The main screen you see when you open Wealthfront has all this stuff that I don’t want to see and that you apparently can’t remove and/or customize. I don’t care anything about my “net worth”. I ONLY want to see the AVAILABLE BALANCE on my account. That’s it!!! I don’t need a fancy chart that I don’t even know what it means, I don’t need all these investment suggestions; I just want to see my balance.
I wish I had used Wealthfront for a little while before I changed my direct deposit information.

I’ve been using this app for a few years now and I really love it. It’s very straightforward and has made retirement saving simple. I also love that I can link all my financial accounts and get a real time picture of my net worth.

One minor suggestion I would make: I recently added a goal to buy a house in two year, which is considered a stretch because it doesn’t account for cash I’ve already saved and short term investments that can be liquidated to buy a house. Because of this it doesn’t automatically calculate the amount I need to save to put 20% down on a house in the area I want to live in. Again this is a minor annoyance and I love Wealthfront overall, but an option to apply current cash/short term investments towards a real estate investment would be incredible.

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 Wealthfront. At tax season you can just upload your form into TurboTax making taxes super easy to do. this app 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.

So I think online banking is the future so I tried to live only using this app’s cash account. The first you’ll notice is that it’s almost never recognized as an accredited bank by other systems. You’ll need to have your account number and checking number at the ready and confirm a small transaction almost every time.

I decided to completely pull out when a landlord required a cashiers check for rent. Not only do they have no way to get you a cashiers check, their security rules do not allow cash transfers if the target bank is not in your name. They do not make exceptions even though I emailed and called them making sure that I was the one that initiated the transfer. Definitely made an already stressful situation even more stressful.

If you’re going to use their cash account always make sure to have another cash account with an accredited institution that have physical locations. The world is definitely not ready for pure online banking and this app does not do much to support you when they do need you.

First, I’m a huge fan how simple this app 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 this app. 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 this app failed to make a transaction on time! Thanks for this, this app!

The UI is incredibly intuitive and the product itself is amazing. I literally recommend it to ANYONE, best friends, strangers on the street, people waiting in line for the bathroom etc. Elevator pitch, it takes less than 10 minutes to sign up (start to finish) and they have one of the highest APYs in the game. Wanna see you 401k status next to your credit card balance? Done. Want to have a tracker tell you your net worth? Done (but sad for me personally cause it’s low).

I feel like I grownup tracking all of my investments, credit cards, and savings in one place. I have both a Roth IRA with this app and a savings account and could not be happier.

Thanks to Wealthfront dev peeps and the smarties who wrote the OG algo for the reinvesting bit. Not all heroes wear capes!

I love Wealthfront. Intuitive and informative. Looking at my investments now and then is a nice little bump of pleasure. Well as long as the market is doing well.

It also lets me review my retirement plan and tweak the scenarios. Being able to link all of my accounts in one place is great.

A few minor quibbles, like it says my retirement is in good shape but also has a suggested savings rate and I’m not sure if it in good shape without saving as much as they recommend or IF I save as much as they recommend. Or maybe I already am?

Also the links to the other banks don’t already update but that could be the problem of the other institutions. Maybe a feature to notify you when a link hasn’t connected after a given window of time.

I’m older and don’t take for granted that I’ve been able to save some money but Wealthfront is still great - or better really - for younger people to start investing early and take advantage of the magic of compound interest! Wish I had started earlier but at least I’ve had a 401k for the past few decades.

Get Wealthfront . Start investing what you can afford. It’s one of the best gifts your present self can give to your future self. (And keep fairly healthy habits) :)

I work with a CFP, I manage a stock and ETF account with scottrade, and have been using this app for 18 months now. This is by far the easiest and now most lucrative of the 3, and I have yet to crest over $500 in fees. And once I do, they have about $5k in harvested losses that my cfp nor myself would have done because well, we have day jobs. So whatever fees end up going to this app, which are minuscule, will easily be covered by their automated loss harvesting. Wealthfront is dirt easy, you can link other accounts and real estate holdings, etc. I can't recommend this enough to anyone, regardless of understanding of investing or retirement planning. These guys hit all the bases and their fees finance themselves with the tax loss harvesting. I.E. this is cheaper than free!

The one nice feature of Wealthfront is to have a place where all your accounts are linked. This allows you to see all your accounts on one platform, but there are many other apps that allow you to do this.

Returns through this app are extremely poor. My investment strategy is set to the most aggressive option. Now I understand that you see large swings with an aggressive investment strategy, but I only ever see large changes when I’m losing money. Markets are doing well and I make extremely small returns. Markets are doing alright and I lose money. Markets are doing poorly and I lose more money. Add in the management fee and I lose more money. Stay away from Wealthfront if you’re looking to make money.

I started this account to invest through something I didn’t have to monitor. I now see that I made a big mistake. After 2 years and a negative return, I think it’s time to take my money elsewhere. Could have made more money in a standard savings account than through this app.

Savings used to be “decent” compared to others. Now, about half as much at 0.35% APY compared to high yield credit unions. Unfortunate. Reminds me of INGDirect back in the day. Great rate, then poor.

ETF investments never did that well over a couple of years, despite strong bull market over period. A lay persons observation: Other investments did much better that were managed by people. Growth was up and down and dividends never that great. Tax loss harvesting seems overrated when there was a desire is grow value.

It used to be solid with financial links (for years), now fails for two different key institutions for weeks with same message that it is being worked on to correct. I am wondering what is happening to them as this is unexpected. I have verified that other financial apps are able to integrate fine. As a result, I have had to move away from Wealthfront, for now at least.

For an investment account Wealthfront is awesome 5 stars for that! 3 stars for everything else.

To utilize the other features that use linking external accounts it is terrible they break often (seems to be getting worse), are slow to update, and some places aren’t supported at all then you constantly have to manually update all the time. It causes inaccuracies or rather a lag in their projections and net worth calculations. This also leads to another issue I can’t use the highly touted new autopilot feature because they don’t connect to the credit union I use! Hopefully they get this straightened out soon. LOTS of work to do before they achieve “self driving money” status. About the only automated thing I can do is a recurring deposit to my investment account.

I have been putting money into Wealthfront for about a year now. I am a college student and don’t have much money so I put in the minimum amount I can for the monthly deposit so that I can still function financially. As a result of that, I’ve only put in about $1500 and this app has made me an additional $100. Not bad for a college student who is trying to put away money to go to grad school. I like to think that my money is better spent here than letting it sit in a bank and decrease in value as inflation increases. In about a year’s time I plan on updating this review to match my continued experience with this company. Hopefully I will continue to see these small gains that I wouldn’t see from my bank.

I started using this app because of Tim Ferriss. It has been the best financial decision I have made for my future so far. I'm a college student so my funds are rather small and was previously investing on Acorns. I got up to a couple of grand on there and realized my returns were terrible! Only around 4% per year!!! I knew I need to change and that's when this app came in. No fees under like 10-15k has and an easy simple set up process. Needless to say I sent my money over immediately. Just over the last 9 months (not even a full year) I've had a 12.5% return! No joke a whole 8% better return in less time. this app is the best set it and forget it investing service out there.

Wealthfront is very user friendly and intuitive. Significant improvements have been made over the years and I truly think it’s been very well built and provides features that are easy for anyone to use to help you manage your money. this app’s products are great for anybody looking to get into investing in the markets in a passive way and their learning documents are very helpful. Overall there is still work to be done on improving the accuracy of the projections and suggested savings features but it gives you a fairly good picture of your overall financial situation on any given day. Definitely recommend everyone to give this app a try.

After reading about online robo-advisors and weighing the pros and cons of each I decided to open an account with this app. My primary motivator was the fact that the first $10,000 (in my case $15,000) is managed free. If you read online robi-advisor reviews you can find affiliate sign-up links that offer an additional $5k managed free. It was easy to set-up an account. It took about 3 business days for my money to be transferred into my account. Wealthfront is user-friendly and easy to understand. I am still learning about tax-loss harvesting and I like that they send out beginner emails explaining terms and investment strategy. I’ve had my account for about a month. So far, so good.

Right now I am using Wealthfront as a second hand savings account for the moment since the APY of my regular savings account is stipend. But I love Wealthfront so far.
I also love the feature is shows for your retirement money and the part when I shake my phone I can see how much money I have overall if i need to transfer that amount when I go on a trip to another country.
Rn I connected all of my other brokerages and bank accounts to it and so fourth.
Wealthfront does have a lot of potential to me and it seems like they are creating amazing things that I’ll be able to enjoy.
There are other processes that can take if they want to be a bank like credit cards and percentage cash back base on a persons spending habits.

I’ll be doing updates to this post while I try the other features later on to see if I can make passive income from the stock portfolio of Wealthfront . I do know they charge a fee for that platform but it seems interesting.

Love the work you guys are doing at this app so far. Hope you guys can evolve this beautiful product even further.

Sincerely,
Dalius Beck

I barely do Reviews, in fact this might be my first or second .
That's how great of a resource and an app this app is, as a student I've always heard how it's advised that people get into investing and this app makes that a reality with its very insightful and straightforward interface , along with it great investing strategies according to your risk. I'm a huge fan of the dividend reinvestment a and tax loss harvesting, along with the path feature that shows you how far along you are to fulfilling a financial goal of yours.
I'm also a fan of the articles they lost frequently, which pose an unbiased Jew at various financial situation and how they affect you.
Looking forward to the great features that are yet to come.