Wealthfront: Save and Invest

Wealthfront has not only been amazing as a wealth management app, their customer service is also amazing. A few months ago I saw a transaction of $115 in my bank account. I could not trace this transaction’s origin. So I called Wealthfront to see if they could track it down. The person I talked to was very respectful and helpful and told me that they would provide me a credit for this amount and look deeper into it for some time and then update me on where this came from. She also immediately asked me to close my debit card and provided me with a new one. Within the next week or two I got a credit for the amount of money that I was asking about and Wealthfront sent me a letter to let me know that they were looking into the issue and if they could figure out where this transaction came from then they would either let me keep the credit or take it back if it was actually done by me. Finally, after a few weeks they sent me another letter to let me know that they granted the claim and the provisional credit that I received was officially mine, as the dispute had finally been resolved on their end. They let me keep my credit and they did not investigate me as if I were some type of criminal, which I know other banks do (I know Wealthfront isn’t a bank). Next, I also had a question about taxes because I was doing a rollover and there were several questions I had from the previous custodial account, and they struggled very much to answer my questions. Wealthfront, on the other hand, was able to answer my questions with one phone call and within about 7 minutes, I had no more questions. I am very happy with Wealthfront’s customer service and they have provided a great application for me to manage my money.

I used to recommend Wealthfront to everyone who'd listen and several people who wouldn't, but no more. I thought it was the best financial institution to ever appear on the planet, and I think, for a while – and excepting their preposterous requirements for mobile check deposit – it was. Unfortunately, over the past month or so, several transactions I've tried to make were declined due to their obviously faulty security system that now flags perfectly ordinary transactions – including my monthly cell phone bill – as "suspicious". I wouldn't even mind this nearly so much if their response to every "suspicious" transaction was to immediately send me a text asking whether the transaction was valid, but they now do this on only the rarest of occasions, leaving me, 99% of the time, to call them on the phone, wait on hold for some period of time, and then talk with a representative for about 20 minutes in order for the representative to make a "one-time exception" to the overzealous security system's error so that I can complete the transaction in question and have my *next* purchase or payment declined instead. Due to this and the aforementioned unreasonable requirements for mobile check deposit, I'm moving my money out of Wealthfront and likely closing my accounts. And I've told everyone I recommended them to that I no longer recommend Wealthfront at all. It's a crying shame, but everything changes, and, alas, Wealthfront has proven no exception.

This app is very functional and easy to use. It gives users a quick way to assess their complete financial situation through the ability to link to all your external accounts with other financial institutions. It will also show a projection of your financial situation throughout your lifetime, if you desire. The app makes it very easy to add money to your Wealthfront accounts or transfer money out of Wealthfront to another institution. There are two distinct reasons I did not give the Wealthfront app five stars. First, the app does not give users the ability to change their risk tolerance score. Users must log on to Wealthfront’s actual website to do that, which is tremendously inconvenient. Second, although I like the financial future modeling the app provides, there is no available explanation of the modeling used to make such a long term forecast. Specifically, I would like to know the assumed annual rate of return in the model as well as whether it accounts for an assumed annual pay increase or an assumed increase in the value of your home. This would all be possible by adding a simple link that explains the specifics of the assumptions and methodology behind the model used to calculate important values like your predicted net worth at retirement age. I am sure this seems like a niche request, but some more financially and data savvy users would appreciate it.