Investing shouldn’t be complicated, and all of the financial TV programs, papers and talking heads would have you believe so. Previously, we were offering accounts from several brokerages, but they didn’t provide much in the way of investing education, and we’ve decided to shift our focus to helping the novice investor get educated and to beat the market for the long-term. This is, after all, about long-term financial planning, which includes investing, right?
So that’s why Betterment.com is currently the only investing and trading platform we can recommend to you as a beginning investor. If you’re and advanced investor or looking to be able to trade stocks & bonds at will, then Betterment IS NOT FOR YOU.
But if you are a beginning investor or a busy person who wants to learn the fundamentals of investing via a sound philosophy and simple approach, then Betterment might just be for you.
How It Works: Betterment isn’t just a brokerage, it also is an investment advisement and training program. They’ve pre-screened 3500 companies and done a lot of the research to help train and advise you where to invest. It’s not a passive type of program, but also not overly-aggressive in the investing approach either.
Investment Methodology: From the Betterment.com site their approach is investing in “index Exchange-Traded Funds (ETFs) that are efficient, liquid, and provide conservatively balanced exposure. The more diversified, the better. Your stock will be invested in over 3,500 companies through a variety of funds. This means your account is diversified and not dependent on any single company or sector of the economy. We’ve done all the research so you don’t have to.”
Here’s how Betterment’s Fee Structure is broken down:
| BALANCE | FEE |
| $0 – $25,000 | 0.9% |
| $25,000 – $100,000 | 0.7% |
| $100,000 – $500,000 | 0.5% |
| $500,000+ | 0.3% |
From Betterment on their fees: “Our efficient model allows you to pay a low annual management fee of 0.3% to 0.9% of your average balance depending on how much money you have in your account. That means if your account has around $1000 in it, you’ll pay at most $9 a year. There are no minimum balances, no transaction fees, no holding periods, no hidden costs.”
If you’re interested in signing up for Betterment, you can read even more and/or apply below. We recommend you check it out.