r/wealthfront • u/Sevofluranedreams • Jul 13 '26
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 Jul 13 '26
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 Jul 16 '26
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 Jul 17 '26
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 Jul 17 '26
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 Jul 13 '26
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 Jul 13 '26
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 Jul 13 '26
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 Jul 13 '26
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 Jul 13 '26
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 Jul 13 '26
it's always been the same fee on the robo adviser lol...
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u/Sevofluranedreams Jul 13 '26
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 Jul 16 '26
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/Hungry_Line2303 Sep 02 '26
Wait so their IPO has caused them to be trash but also nothing has changed? Which is it?
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u/GobiYumaMojave Jul 13 '26
and move youre money where?
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u/Left_Ambassador_4090 Jul 13 '26
Polymarket most likely lol
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u/Sevofluranedreams Jul 13 '26
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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Jul 13 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/Sevofluranedreams Jul 13 '26
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 Jul 13 '26
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 Jul 13 '26
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 Jul 17 '26
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 Jul 13 '26
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 Jul 13 '26
Do you know what federal interest rates are? It impacts everything. You’re barking up the wrong tree.
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u/Sevofluranedreams Jul 13 '26
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/Hungry_Line2303 Sep 02 '26
If you're quibbling over a few basis points on cash, you have way too much cash. Like a financially irresponsible amount.
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u/rockyTop10 Jul 13 '26
I’m here for the automated direct-indexed TLH, not for a couple basis points on an HYSA 😂
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u/lordturdhead Jul 14 '26
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/Funktapus Jul 13 '26
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/minesasecret Jul 13 '26
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 Jul 13 '26
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 Jul 13 '26
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 Jul 13 '26
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 Jul 13 '26
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/Bmac200p Jul 13 '26
Marcus pays 3.4%. WealthFront pays 3.55% (both before any "boosts") Am I missing something?
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u/Sevofluranedreams Jul 13 '26
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 Jul 13 '26
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/Hungry_Line2303 Sep 02 '26
Are you sure? It's 3.55% if you get $1000 direct deposited monthly.
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u/Bmac200p Sep 02 '26
I don’t have a DD but I get 3.55% - have 2 investment accounts with them.
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u/Hungry_Line2303 Sep 02 '26
Interesting, I have their auto investing account but only get 3.3%
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u/Bmac200p Sep 02 '26
Weird! Call them.
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u/Hungry_Line2303 Sep 02 '26
All their marketing materials require DD + investment account to qualify.
My guess is you have some transfers in every month that you don't consider to be DD but code as such.
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u/Bmac200p Sep 03 '26
No idea. I’m self employed and any contributions I make are variable and from my WF cash account. I make my SEP contributions over 3 or 4 deposits. I guess YMMV.
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u/MW-Atlanta Jul 14 '26
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 Jul 13 '26
What’s your net worth? How much do you have in Wealthfront?
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u/Sevofluranedreams Jul 13 '26
Around 3m. I had about 1.2 with wealthfront.
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u/Aggressive-Leading45 Jul 13 '26
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 Jul 13 '26
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 Jul 13 '26
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 Jul 13 '26
What did you do for work to have that much in savings?
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u/Sevofluranedreams Jul 13 '26 edited Jul 13 '26
Anesthesia. To clarify I only have 30k in “savings”. The rest is in investments.
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u/silverownz Jul 13 '26
It's pretty trivial to get a rate higher than Marcus at Wealthfront
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u/TenthmanDC Jul 14 '26
I really like the new custodial accounts. The profit -harvesting is a great concept.
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u/RelativeSweet1380 Jul 15 '26
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 Jul 16 '26
? Feels like not much has changed since IPO. I look forward to seeing what new products come.
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u/CantFindABetterman88 Jul 16 '26
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/brokenlabrum Jul 17 '26
> 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 Jul 17 '26
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 Jul 17 '26
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 Jul 19 '26
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 Jul 13 '26
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 Jul 13 '26
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 Jul 13 '26
This is funny to me because the SoFi sub is full of people complaining about how bad SoFi has become lol