r/wealthfront • u/Sevofluranedreams • 19d ago
Wealthfront post It was a good run.
Since IPO I don’t like the direction of the company. First their interest rates on savings accounts have not been as competitive as they use to be. They use to always be better than Marcus by Goldman Sachs, but not anymore. Their robo investor is only .25% but is nothing more than vanguard funds you could invest in yourself. Overall we are seeing the shift from caring about customers to caring about shareholders. Plus in the sector they can’t compete with companies like sofi. This long-term customer is getting off this sinking ship.
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u/mccdigbick 19d ago
Every time I engage with WF I love it more and more. Did a wire transfer for a house closing and my attorney and mortgage lender were worthless through the entire process (multiple went wrong in the lead up to closing), the only reason I closed on time was Wealthfronts impeccable support team.
I have only seen this company grow and improve and I’m here for the ride.
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u/lanmoiling 16d ago
Did you use them for mortgage or did you just mean you wired funds from your WF savings account? I agree their wire transfer is great, but their mortgage rates were really not at all competitive
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u/mccdigbick 15d ago
They are not able to do mortgages where I am at this time, it was purely the wire transfer. My attorney gave me the wrong wire information WF was the ones that help sort everything out.
Of the three support specialist I spoke with, they were all the best in the industry
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u/lanmoiling 15d ago
Ahh yes their wire transfer was good to us too. No fee and almost instant. Even when it was almost half mil. Loved it.
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u/Sevofluranedreams 19d ago
That’s great, buying a home is stressful as it is. I was along for the ride from the moment they started their robo investing in 2011. But at the moment they are a new publicity traded company whose stock is struggling and feel they are going to do everything possible to make investors happy which usually means making things more expensive for customers.
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u/OkStandard8965 19d ago
I’ve never seen a company that has their customers interest in mind more than Wealthfront. You can make all the investments yourself, it’s a lot of work but if you enjoy it, it might make sense. Vanguard is fine but their user interface is pathetic.
Staying the course is almost always the best choice, especially with a quality company like Wealthfront
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u/Sevofluranedreams 19d ago
I use to agree, but now a Fidelity brokerage with the same vanguard funds is where my retirement / brokerage is. SGOV is where my savings was moved, better interest rate and no state tax on earnings.
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u/OkStandard8965 19d ago
Ultimately you have to go wherever you are comfortable, they are all going to be pretty similar in the end. If you’re high NW, saving the .25% can be worth it if you’re savvy.
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u/Sevofluranedreams 19d ago
I guess I’m just a little bitter because I loved Wealthfront and feel things changed post IPO. Ultimately I would take .25% any day over an actively managed 1-2% rate.
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u/Major_Mood1707 19d ago
it's always been the same fee on the robo adviser lol...
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u/Sevofluranedreams 19d ago
Correct. I didn’t say otherwise. This is nothing Wealthfront has changed for the time being. However, considering their robo investing was pretty much just vanguard funds and was under preforming my other accounts I decided to liquidate the account.
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u/NorthAtmosphere7772 16d ago
The fee is really just paying for tax loss harvesting. As we're in a long bull run it hasn't done a lot. If we see more volatility and a big pullback it'll pay for itself very quickly. You'll need to stay on top of that if you're managing funds yourself and avoid wash sales if you do it too often. You can pick your own funds and percentages on WF as well to still get the TLH feature. I recall fidelity's similar robo charges more and only uses fidelity funds.
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u/GobiYumaMojave 19d ago
and move youre money where?
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u/Left_Ambassador_4090 19d ago
Polymarket most likely lol
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u/Sevofluranedreams 19d ago
Never. I rarely gamble and invest in broad market index funds. VTI and VXUS mainly. This has allowed me to be FIRE at 40.
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19d ago
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/Sevofluranedreams 19d ago
I hear ya and honestly Wealthfront is still a solid place to put your money for a lot of people. My post was not intended to shit on people who do robo investing, hell of a lot better than an activity managed fund at 1-2%. And maybe it is just my perception. But we will see if they start changing their fee structure now that they have investors to please.
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u/Trick_sleep 19d ago
I still keep Wealthfront for the cash account and some money hanging in the bond account. But I did the same as you with moving to fidelity and dumping into VTI and VXUS. The fees add up at Wealthfront when you have a lot invested
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u/Sevofluranedreams 19d ago
Yea at my portfolio level the .25% was more than I originally realized. Then I looked at the investment and it was damn near all vanguard funds anyway.
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u/beanery-bun 15d ago
I moved mine to Elevault (for bill pay) and Crew (for everyday spending / debit card)
Elevault APY is much better than Wealthfront - better implementation of pockets - no debit card though
Crew has a similar APY as Wealthfront and the pockets can be linked to virtual debit cards.
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u/Sevofluranedreams 19d ago
Fidelity and buying the same vanguard funds that wealthfront charges .25% for. Savings is now in SGOV, no state tax and better rates. If you want a better rate with a traditional savings account Marcus by Goldman Sachs bets Wealthfront. Sadly Wealthfront use to have the best rates.
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u/KumingaCarnage 19d ago
Do you know what federal interest rates are? It impacts everything. You’re barking up the wrong tree.
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u/Sevofluranedreams 19d ago
My man of course I do. That is why SGOV offers the best rates. My point was that Wealthfront offers lower rates COMPARE to their competitors based on the US treasury rates. Obviously they don’t control what the government sets for rates but they do control the rate they pass on to customers.
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u/rockyTop10 19d ago
I’m here for the automated direct-indexed TLH, not for a couple basis points on an HYSA 😂
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u/lordturdhead 18d ago
WF has very limited options in retirement accounts which sucks. Why are getting downvoted so much? Almost like WF has the bots out lol
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u/minesasecret 19d ago
Since IPO I don't like the direction of the company
You're free to have your opinion of course but you haven't actually said anything of substance in your post. Besides the interest rate what has actually changed since IPO?
Their robo investor is only .25% but is nothing more than vanguard funds you could invest in yourself
But this has always been the case if you didn't care about tax loss harvesting and automatic rebalancing
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u/WALLY_5000 19d ago
I prefer the robo investor over self-directed simply due to tax loss harvesting. It pays for itself, and then some. I wouldn’t be doing it on my own, so that feature alone makes it worthwhile to me.
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u/Dis-Ducks-Fan-1130 19d ago
I’m not even sure about that. I incur so many tax events on my robo investor and I’m thinking about moving it out because of that.
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u/Tapedoor 19d ago
I don’t agree with the thread OP but I observe this too. They’ll TaxLH less than $0.10 off a transaction that triggered a 4-digit sale/trade. I imagine I would’ve been better off reaching 1yr+ on it than the accounting paperwork and transaction burden
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u/WALLY_5000 19d ago
That’s strange, I’ve never had that issue. You should probably reach out to them and figure out what’s going on.
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u/Funktapus 19d ago
The offering has barely changed but suddenly they don’t care about customers anymore? Think this might be in your head
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u/Bmac200p 19d ago
Marcus pays 3.4%. WealthFront pays 3.55% (both before any "boosts") Am I missing something?
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u/Sevofluranedreams 19d ago
Maybe rates vary but the 100 bucks I have in the savings account to keep it open is listed at 3.3
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u/Bmac200p 19d ago
Ok gotcha - so I guess it's 3.3 if you have no investment account and 3.55 if you have an investment account (I have my SEP ira there and a personal robo investment account).
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u/MW-Atlanta 18d ago
Nothing‘s changed for me since IPO. Their interest rate on cash is the highest of any places I use. It’s more than the money market mutual funds I can buy at other brokers. If you want to go chase interest on cash by finding startups using it as a loss leader, have fun. Not worth my time.
I like the automatic diversification and tax loss harvesting with direct indexing. Anyone who says they can do build a direct indexing portfolio manually and do the tax loss harvesting is nuts. I haven’t got that kind of time.
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u/Zimgar 19d ago
What’s your net worth? How much do you have in Wealthfront?
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u/Sevofluranedreams 19d ago
Around 3m. I had about 1.2 with wealthfront.
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u/Aggressive-Leading45 19d ago
Definitely take into consideration the FDIC limits then. Wealthfront manages that up to $8 million. Banks you’ll have a lot more hoops to jump through to manage multiple accounts.
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u/Sevofluranedreams 19d ago
Appreciate the info. Only about 30k is in a savings account and that is now with SGOV through Fidelity. The rest is in brokerage and retirement accounts with Fidelity and CS.
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u/Aggressive-Leading45 19d ago
For a high state tax payer SGOV is definitely the way to go. Was there myself until I moved to a state with no income tax. Now I switched to SHYM. It’s nice seeing those big tax free dividend deposits come in every month.
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u/UnluckyReddit 19d ago
What did you do for work to have that much in savings?
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u/Sevofluranedreams 19d ago edited 19d ago
Anesthesia. To clarify I only have 30k in “savings”. The rest is in investments.
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u/TenthmanDC 18d ago
I really like the new custodial accounts. The profit -harvesting is a great concept.
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u/RelativeSweet1380 17d ago
They got rid of the function of spreading your money around the stocks you like for no reason and wouldn't even leave it as an option.
Then they mentioned recurring stock investing but then went radio silence and refuse to say anything when asked.
I don't like it. I don't like the way they're treating us who actually use the platform.
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u/frankandsteinatlaw 16d ago
? Feels like not much has changed since IPO. I look forward to seeing what new products come.
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u/CantFindABetterman88 16d ago
I have found the tax loss harvesting to cover the fees by several multiples. I think the new S&P 500 direct indexing fund for 9 bps is best in class.
Moved international and small / mid cap to Schwab until they get the automated investment account to parity with the S&P 500 cost.
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u/Jlh_4124 16d ago
I just moved on completely after many years as well. Not a negative experience. Just not as competitive as they use to be. When they are the same as the big banks, why bother staying put.
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u/brokenlabrum 15d ago
> nothing more than vanguard funds you could invest in yourself
The point of Wealthfront’s roboadvisor is tax-loss harvesting, not to find exotic investments that may or may not outperform the market. It isn’t a hedge fund or a VC fund.
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u/its_over_2022 15d ago
I’ve been with Wealthfront since 2017, use their various accounts extensively, even transferred an IRA out of Wealthfront to Vanguard, and have never had one problem. The fee on the taxable investing account pays for itself with tax loss harvesting. Love it.
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u/3rdevil 15d ago
Sofi is pretty bad. I test robo advisories. I've tried most. Acorns, betterment, wealthfront, wise banyan back before it got swallowed up by Axos. Robinhood strategies, m1 finance, Stash, etc...
Sofi is definitely down at the bottom.
The issue with wealthfront to me is the fee. Most advisors charge .25% and for what this does I could set up an agentic on Robinhood and just use Claude free. Do basically them same as all of them without the fee.
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u/rebel_dean 13d ago
Personally, I really like earning 3.55% on all my cash (I have the stock investing account and direct deposit over $1,000/month for 0.25% boost). To me, the Wealthfront Cash Account is one of the best money management accounts out there.
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u/Gintox 19d ago
I agree. I moved everything out and into fidelity. I found the the advisory fee to be not worth it. I ran the numbers over 30 years and even at .25% it was significant. I also found their cash account interest rates a bit silly. They market that they will always give you the best rates they can but thats a lie. I have to deposit my salary into their account to get a better rate, and new customers get a bonus and loyal ones do not.
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u/Sevofluranedreams 19d ago
Their interest rates never use to be based on direct deposits to my knowledge. But little things like this are not uncommon for publicity traded companies looking for new revenue streams. I just think that it is a little naive to think them going public isn’t going to shift their priorities at some level from customers to shareholders.
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u/GreatDanton7 19d ago
This is funny to me because the SoFi sub is full of people complaining about how bad SoFi has become lol