Vanguard or Betterment

[shatteredfx]

Apologies if it has been already been discussed - I was curious would you recommend Vanguard and/or Betterment and why. I have presently at the moment Betterment and I am looking at Vanguard ? should i consider or leave it as it is with Betterment.

- thanks in advance

 

[HI Bill]

Here is an article comparing the two. https://www.nerdwallet.com/blog/investing/betterment-vs-vanguard/

If you are comfort managing your own acccount, go with VG for diversity of choices and control.

 

[shatteredfx]

thank you in advance I do appreciate it - but Betterment is fine also you would say

 

[VanWinkle]

Apologies if it has been already been discussed - I was curious would you recommend Vanguard and/or Betterment and why. I have presently at the moment Betterment and I am looking at Vanguard ? should i consider or leave it as it is with Betterment.

- thanks in advance

If you like the choices at Vanguard, it is better to own the funds at the fund company. If you like to mix different fund companies to arrive at your allocation, then betterment will work just as well. I personally have all of my funds at Vanguard as I like their funds and have been treated well. I make few trades and am a very patient person with my investments.

 

[Another Reader]

Betterment is a gimmick. Unless you can use their tax loss harvesting and you can't rebalance by yourself, there is no reason to use Betterment. I also dislike their smug attitude. Opening a "savings" account in my name without asking my permission was the last straw for me. I'm in the process of ending that little experiment.

 

[Nick12]

Do not know much about Betterment. Investing in Vanguard mutual index funds for many many years. I did pretty well. Retired at age 51 last year.

 

[bingybear]

Why restrict the choice to just those two? I've not used betterment, but left Vanguard after many years there. I do still like some of Vanguard's funds.

 

[LOL!]

Here is a criteria not often discussed: Which one would be easy to switch from if you ever wanted to do that?

The answer is that Vanguard will be the easiest to switch from. The reason is that Vanguard creates simple portfolios without complexity, so that they are easy to understand, easy to implement, easy to be tax-efficient.

Betterment can make it hard to switch. They will put you into too many different ETFs, they make understanding the 1099s harder, they make it harder to unwind a portfolio with all the attention one has to pay to cost basis.

Of course, if you don't have any taxable account assets and your assets are all in IRAs, then no problem with Betterment.

Also, if you like complicated, then Betterment is for you.

As far as performance goes though, there will be very little difference between the two provided that the stock:bond ratios are the same.

I'm a do-it-yourselfer, so Betterment offers me nothing that I cannot do myself. And Vanguard offers me nothing that I cannot do myself as well.

 

[rollergrrl]

Apologies if it has been already been discussed - I was curious would you recommend Vanguard and/or Betterment and why. I have presently at the moment Betterment and I am looking at Vanguard ? should i consider or leave it as it is with Betterment.



- thanks in advance

I started using betterment for a Roth IRA a few years ago. I am curious to see if you actually moved to Vanguard.