moneyreallymatters.com

I posted about Betterment.com investment service couple of weeks ago, compared their website with others and recommended to check it out. I also mentioned about their $25 bonus offering for account opened with $250 initial deposit.

I just want to post an update about my experience and performance of my portfolio so far since I opened my the account. I know it has just been couple of weeks and cannot expect so much growth but to my surprise, I saw a 1% growth for 10 days even with stock market rollergoaster ride. That’s the advantage of investing in ETF’s and index funds which are so diversified.

Anyway, let me share my experience as likes and Dislikes.

LIKES

1. I got the $25 bonus amount same day I opened and initiated my $300 first deposit.
2. As I said in my earlier post, their website interface is very easy to use, fast and really understandable even for non-financial saavy consumer which they are targeting. They really spent good amount of time and research to study and design the website.
3. Fast money transfer with quick bank authentication and also provides easy way to setup automatic savings.
4. Summary page delivers the overall picture of the portfolio as soon user logs in with amount invested and amount earned figures for the allocation model selected.
5. Activity page gives the monthly activity like composition of various securities purchases. Below is the composition for securities for my initial deposit with allocation model set to 100% stocks.
   
6. I used their advise tool to change my allocation and it was easy to use compared to TRoweprice and other investment companies tools I come across. As a guy who passed CFP exam, I have seen some complication diversification strategies but this one makes it easier for ordinary consumer. It allows to set you goals and name it as well to identify them accordingly.
7. I like the quick and dirty performance charts with comparison options to keep us updated on the analysis section.

DISLIKES

1. The important thing missing is better user security. In this day and age where identity theft is all over the place, any financial sites like this one should have more security to make users secured. They need to improve their user authentication process to follow the federally mandated security procedures to add more steps in user login. Most of the investment companies these days needs more than just username and password.  I did notice they have session time out feature which alerts if the session is idle of for few minutes which is good.
2. They limit setting only one goal for an account. May be they can take this to another level by allowing users to add different goals and set allocation to those accordingly and split their deposit to those goals monthly. That would be good one for people who multiple long term goals.
3. It would be better to show the current portfolio allocation/diversification on the Allocation page instead of just giving them in activity page.
   

Over all, likes out weighs the dislikes and I should say I am really satisfied choosing to go with betterment.com as my another vehicle to save for retirement goal. I hope they keep their promise by diversifying the portfolio regularly by adding more ETF’s to keep returns coming to our portfolio. I am little skeptical about their long term survival but if I can guess the future with past knowledge, these smaller investment companies are good take over candidates by bigger fishes which sometimes spoils the party.
We just have to wait and watch…

Happy Investing!!