Top 5 Robo Advisors: A Smart, New Way To Manage Your Money
Robo Advisors are the latest hot topic in financial services. Their automated algorithms can now allocate, deploy and rebalance your investment portfolio at increasingly low costs. So what are the best Spock-like services for your savings? Asset Builder is part of a Texas-based mutual fund family. Services include: annual account rebalancing with eight model portfolios to choose from. But they do charge commission on trades. Personal Capital allows you to link your holdings from other firms and see an overall investment allocation. The California-based Robo Advisor offers you free recommendations that you can implement yourself or further management services for a fee. New York-based Betterment requires investors with balances under $10,000 pay an additional fee of $3 per month unless they auto deposit a monthly $10 or more. Users can expect tax-loss harvesting, automated rebalancing and a mobile application. Wealthfront is one of the original Robo Advisors, launched in 2011 and based in the tech hub of Palo Alto. They've got some good buy in names including Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer, 4-Hour Workweek guru Tim Ferris and Google Ventures partner Kevin Rose. Vanguard Personal Advisor Services has risen to the top of the pile after raising $4.2 billion by October 2014. Vanguard emphasizes working with a partner advisor, even though investment rebalancing is built into the online tool. So as smart money mangers get even smarter, maybe it's time to start checking out some artificially intelligent options for your cash.
