hello I am Wanderer001 and this is my four year review overlook of wealthfront both as
an investment platform for my retirement account and a investment account but also for their wealth
front cash accounts now normally these review slash updates are very long but well front hasn't
really made any major changes there are definitely things on the horizon that they're looking to do
I do remember getting an email survey but I don't remember if there is an NDA on any of
that so there's things coming can't disclose them at the moment I will say they have made some user
interface updates which makes things better for you personally but makes it more annoying and
difficult to film so there's gonna be a lot of white boxes and blurred things and I apologize
in advance for that mainly being on the right-hand side the pending transaction area will show you
pending transactions with you know banks and account numbers only partial account numbers not
full account numbers still nothing over here about dividends still no fractional shares over here on
the right you have your overall savings this this needs some updating because if you look at this my
average savings is based on savings rate over the past 12 months I do not save this much in
a month I would love to be saving that much in a month that is based on two large deposits that I
made into my personal wealth front cash account I already had one for my business account but I
took the savings that my wife and I had in a brick-and-mortar and put it into here now
I moved twice 20 grand and it figures oh well you are saving $4,000 am i again I would show you but
there's more things that we need to be blurred out and I've just know I wish that wealthfront
would let you edit these numbers because I do not put $4,000 a month into that cash account all the
time which makes this path line and trajectory trajectory incorrect in my opinion if I was able
to go in there and edit the proper amount I feel that this would be a better trajectory tool and
understanding for me that is a personal quibble that I have and I wish they would let you edit
that now they will let you edit outside accounts if you feel that you need to change those but they
will not let you edit the amounts for the internal which again I kind of wish they would let you do
that speaking of edits when attaching a secondary bank account mainly my brick-and-mortar which does
have two-factor authentication turned on it does not pull in the date like I have to constantly
go in there and it is because of the two-factor authentication because I went to go check out
clarity money by Marcus you know their mobile app and there is a statement from wealthfront
saying that if I turn on two-factor authentication for wealthfront it will inhibit external sites
like that so I kind of get it my bank requiring two-factor authentication prevents wealthfront
from accurately pulling in the information you would go through and just kind of click click hey
I set it up again it'll pull the information and then proceed to not have the information again but
again those are just small little UI quibbles that I have everything else I've really been enjoying
and that's why you're here you're here to find out for somebody who's been using this for four years
and doesn't have a multi-million dollar account well what does that look like and well we'll
come right down here into my IRA which shows you that I currently have a balance of twenty
six thousand one hundred dollars up there you can see that I've been using it since January of 2016
you can kind of see my trajectory line here this portion has not changed either contribution limits
for the current year total contributions for the past year I always hold off and do like an extra
one to finish out my maximum contributions the next year before you know the April 1st deadline
and then shows you current contribution limits right here we are at the money weighted return
of 50 7.17 now compared to last time i did this six months ago we're up because that was thirty
six point eight two percent so everything's been going up which is great and if we compare that
to our time weighted we are currently at fifty eight point three five last time was forty three
point seven six now this is great because it's slowly going up and here we could see the blue
line indicates my total contributions that i put in and the green line up there shows hey this is
how much is actually in the account so you can see there is easily over five thousand dollars that i
did not put in that is currently in this account now this is an area of which i want to speak of
and we're going to come down to here because we have risk score of six point five now you used to
be able to go on to the wealthfront site and with just plugging in a email address and choosing your
risk tolerance you could see where things were weighted now this is kind of what you get for
six point five and again these are all based on when i entered the market constantly contributing
and a risk score of six point five well recently i have thought well i still have well over twenty
plus years in the market so i should consider increasing this exposure and i know probably in
the last video i said it did not change enough that warranted me wanting to go in and do that
but i was thinking i probably should because i'm waited a little heavier than i would like to be
in bonds and yes i'd you realize we are currently in a bull market and you know things change that
could all like having bonds would be helpful but again i have twenty plus years still left in the
market i would like to kind of take advantage of that but wealthfront no longer lets you check that
just by putting in an email address and taking the risk tolerance survey on their website they
put that behind a gate now you actually have to create an account in order to take the survey
and i get it the waiting's and things that they put in there are their proprietary information
however in my account there nowhere for me to go and see if I change this to a seven or a 7.5
what it will do to redistribute these totals now I realize that you're coming here because you want
somebody else to do it for you but I would like to be able to see where things would go because I do
recall that I believe which one was it I think corporate bonds disappears they changed the way
that their system allocates in fact they take it from being a seven system portfolio down to six
or five again I can't check for sure because if I come here and I click on this you get this lovely
warning that says hey it's not a good idea and then why and then you would have to say change my
risk score and keeping in mind that you can only do this once every thirty days I kind of just want
to be able to view what that is without having to worry about changing things in my account so well
front I'm looking at you fix that all right now we're going to come into my investment account my
investment account currently has eight thousand three hundred twenty-five dollars in it and you
can see here's the progression this one hasn't been I have not had this one for as long as I've
had the IRA and I also don't put as much money into this one as I do the IRA but here you can
see all the way at the end I have put a total of seven thousand one hundred fifty dollars in with
it being worth eight thousand three twenty-five so nice a little bit of growth if we come down
to our money weighted return currently we are at thirty seven point five three which is up
from seventeen point six two last time I did this coming to time weighted we are like we are looking
at thirty three point eight four and last time it was twenty-one point seven five so again this has
gone up considerably as well now this one I'm not as keen on changing the risk laurens level because
I already changed this one to be a seven when I originally started add about a six alright next
on the hit list is the wealth front cash account now I have mixed feelings about this most of them
are good that one one big thing is the rate the rate just keeps dropping if you look over here the
current rate as of filming late January 2020 is 1.78 when I got into using the wealth front cash
account it was like two point five seven now this rate unlike the other ones kind of annoys me only
in that with the other rate drops it was because the Federal Reserve lowered interest rates and
you heard about it in the news you knew it was coming so I'm like alright I get it they lowered
it by the X percentage that the Federal Reserve lowered it I can understand that this latest one
though I got an email about I actually saw it in a news feed first and then I got an email about
it so from wealthfront they sent me an email which pretty much read the Federal Reserve
sets a target range for the federal funds rate is determined by the supply and demand for borrowing
between banks this rate called the effective Fed fund rate fluctuates daily and is a direct input
in the interest rate we can pay to you meaning they're more like guidelines so because banks
have determined amongst themselves that they're gonna start cutting rates wealthfront had to
lower their rates to make themselves marketable to banks to still give us a decent rate and and
checking out nerd wallet there are others that are higher but require a higher minimum deposit
than wealthfront remember wealthfront is just a dollar so again 1.7 is not bad this is my business
account so anything from business related stuff goes in here so you can see I've currently earned
$85 in interest I have $8 and 86 pending on this $9,000 balance now I will say the interesting part
is my brick-and-mortar also lowered their interest now I will say this has $2,000 less in it than the
remaining funds in my brick-and-mortar account that my wife and I have and during that time
period which was before this but it was 1.85 APY this account made twelve dollars and 66 cents my
brick-and-mortar account which again had $2,000 more than this made 31 cents crazy right so even
though this rate here is lower it is well worth still putting your money into this and some of
the things that I had said I was concerned about before have been changed if we come up here to
transfer you can now put money in take money out you can cash into an investment or investment
into cash so these are a lot of things that I had said I really wish that the cash account could do
well of course shortly after I made that video wealthfront already did that so good on them
one thing that I wish they would add to this somewhere or in the documents area or in your
account area is seeing where your money is being held which banks have your money they do have
monthly reports that you would you know download in a PDF format but there's nowhere on here and
I mean you show me pending transactions from places you could show me where my cash account
money was sitting somewhere on the website just say speaking of documents currently again like I
said I am filming this at the end of January 2020 tax season is quickly approaching and as you can
see here your IRA in my account the Roth doesn't come until May because well it doesn't need to
show up on my taxes investment account I should be getting by February 15 notice what is not here yet
and that is the cash accounts now I did reach out to wealthfront via their help didn't tell them who
I am I'm just some random person who's asking for help asking why I did not see these and they said
they should be there before you know needing them for taxis and so I'm hoping sometime before this
date because that's when the investment account comes out that there will be something here that I
can you know print off my taxes my interest taxes for my two savings accounts that I have with them
because right now they don't have that and one would think it's been a good five six months since
they've implemented the cash account you would think that they would have kind of hard-coded
that stuff into here already so I mean this is the one thing about wealthfront that is a little
bit of a deterrent is you're not gonna be an early bird getting your taxes done I hate to say it but
with all of that said this has been a four year look at my usage of wealthfront even with those
minor things that I'm complaining about I still like it it is the easiest set and forget thing
that I have found to invest and that's what I want and that's what I needed is just set it
and forget it let me send you money you put it where it needs to go and I just have it on auto
repeat so if that sounds useful to you there will be a link down in the description area below plug
time it is a referral link if you choose to use that link I will get $5,000 managed for free you
will get $5,000 managed for free so if you plan on investing $5,000 managed for free is pretty
good their rate is normally 25 basis points or 0.25 percent which in comparison other places is
not bad but 5000 is better even if you open up a cash account and aren't thinking of starting
an investing account consider using the link because maybe down the road you will want to start
investing and that five thousand referral doesn't go anywhere so it's worth checking out if you
found this useful just saying it's there I have been Wanderer001 what if you have any questions
or comments please feel free to leave them in the area below and as always thanks for watching