I personally have some money I want to try investing with over time (sub-$10k realm for now while I am in school). A colleague of mine suggested (emphatically) that I try Betterment for at least 6 months to a year, and he has a so-and-so return and on and on.

Anybody have any experience on this end? For better or for worse.

 

Have you seen aidans finance thread? Lots of discussion there with how to make money with your money over time.

 

I haven't, I will try to find it.

 

Samnavy also has a recent thread.

The TL;DR of my thread was if you want hands off investing get an index fund. Paying a service to invest your money isn't usually the best route.

 

I've been reading / listening a lot recently, and am coming to accept what appears to be the increasingly consensus opinion reflected above. That there just aren't a lot* of portfolio advisors who have actually been able to consistently outperform the S&P 500 over the long term.

Personally, I'm of the opinion that the best thing you can probably do is to just invest in low-overhead index funds, and be ready to very quickly exchange into a double-bear fund the next time the market tips into the dumpster like it did in '01 and '08.

 

The one thing betterment did do that most people would not do on their own was tax loss harvesting. This alone use to make their service worth it back when they first started. I believe they just hiked their rates fairly significantly recently which cause quite a few people who praised them to pull support and move their own accounts. If you don't know what tax loss harvesting is you should google it. It is something that is not actually too hard to do on your own a few time a year to minimize your tax burden and increase real returns in the process.