Today, I’m proud to announce that we’re opening Wealthfront to even more investors by lowering the minimum amount required to open a Wealthfront account to just $500.
Our simple and transparent pricing structure continues unchanged: We only charge a low 0.25%annual advisor fee. As always, Wealthfront has no trading commissions, no account maintenance fees and no additional monthly fees. In other words, none of the fee gimmicks or gotchas that give banks and brokerages such a bad name.
We lowered our minimum in response to numerous requests from young investors. A year ago, 60% of our clients were under age 35. Lately, the rate at which we attract young investors has increased dramatically, which has increased the frequency of requests for a lower minimum.
At first, we were surprised to see this surge in demand for a lower minimum. After all, there are a number of investment services from startups that have lower minimums. However, as we evaluated these services, we noticed that they have fallen prey to the excessive monthly fees that plague the traditional investment industry.
At Wealthfront, we believe everyone deserves sophisticated financial advice – regardless of your account size or your net worth. So we were disappointed that other services were taking advantage of younger investors — many of whom were just starting out with their first investment account.
Today, that changes.
Now anyone can get a low-cost diversified portfolio whether she has $500 or $5,000. More importantly, we’re a great place to begin building your nest egg because we only charge a low 0.25% annual advisory fee. You no longer have to worry about how much of your hard earned money is being taken in fees.
An Optimal Portfolio at Any Size
In order to lower the minimum to $500, we borrowed some of the innovative technology we pioneered with our Stock-level Tax-Loss Harvesting platform. Our state of the art portfolio optimizer, designed by our deeply experienced investment research team, chooses the ideal combination of ETFs for your portfolio based on the size of your account and risk score. We do this while minimizing your cash balance and keeping you fully invested regardless of moves in market prices.
The result is an optimal portfolio for any account level composed of Wealthfront-selected ETF investments. Although $500 can’t even purchase one share of Google (Ticker: GOOGL), now with just $500 you can get exposure to a globally diversified portfolio across multiple asset classes representing thousands of securities, all in a simple, convenient and automated Wealthfront account.
Leading the Next Generation of Investors
At Wealthfront, we’re proud that the features we bring to market have come to define our category. Our mission isn’t just to provide increasing value to our own clients, but also to force the entire industry to do the same.
There has never been a better time to open a Wealthfront account , whether you’ve been thinking about referring your friends and colleagues to the service or even opening an account yourself.
Disclosure
Nothing in this article should be construed as a solicitation or offer, or recommendation, to buy or sell any security. The information provided here is for educational purposes only and is not intended as investment advice. While the data Wealthfront uses from third parties is believed to be reliable, Wealthfront does not guarantee the accuracy of the information. The analysis uses information from third-party sources, which Wealthfront believes to be, however Wealthfront does not guarantee the accuracy of the information. There is a potential for loss as well as gain. Actual investors on Wealthfront may experience different results from the results shown.
About the author(s)
Elliot Shmukler, Wealthfront's VP of Product and Growth, is an accomplished Silicon Valley “growth hacker,” having led the strategy and execution behind LinkedIn’s growth from 20M to more than 200M members. He joined Wealthfront from LinkedIn, where, as Sr. Director of Product Management, he also oversaw much of the consumer product experience, including Profile, Search, Endorsements and People You May Know. Previous to LinkedIn, Elliot held technical and leadership roles at eBay, About.com, Sombasa Media and Microsoft. Elliot holds an MBA from Stanford Graduate School of Business, where he was an Arjay Miller scholar, and holds a BA magna cum laude in Computer Science from Harvard University. View all posts by Elliot Shmukler
