We’ve officially launched a “Robo” Advisory

We’ve officially launched a “Robo”Advisory Service

We’ve been excited about the movement toward automated, fiduciary investment advice, sometimes called robo-advice, since we saw what WealthFront.com had to offer more than five years ago. I remember looking over Joyce’s shoulder as I walked her through their site, with her jaw dropping to desktop. Now, the likes of Vanguard and Charles Schwab are taking the lead from those first-to-market robos, including Betterment and Wealthfront.

In February of last year, we launched our own robo-advisory service we call Sustainable Income Portfolios. We aimed for a niche market that the others haven’t targeted: baby boomers looking to turn their 401ks and IRAs into retirement income. We purposefully kept our fees on the low-end (a vendor said yesterday, “those are some slim margins!”), far under-pricing Personal Capital, which charges 0.75% per year, with our flat fee of 0.36% per year. While WealthFront, Schwab and Betterment all come in around the 0.25% per year fee schedule, we think we’re worth the extra 0.11%.

Why? Because we’re not robots. We are real people, with over 20 years of investing and client service experience who have survived two huge bear markets both in 2000-2002, and 2008-2009. We know how our clients react to market swings. We understand how volatility affects the psyche. We also understand the value of ETFs designed with rock-bottom fees and broad market exposure.

We feel we’ve blended the best of both human advice, and automated investment allocation.

As of February 2017, we added growth portfolios to our automated investment management service, so folks have over a dozen portfolios to choose from, based on their return objectives and tolerance for volatility.

Sustainable Income Portfolios have had a terrific first year. Now, they exist alongside portfolios targeting growth, socially-conscious investing, and closed-end fund arbitrage. You can invest in any of our models, from Risk Number 22 all the way to Risk Number 82.

By Adam Sommers|May 25th, 2017