Wealthfront vs Betterment vs Vanguard

[fund4tomorrow]

This is my first post, so please excuse me if this thread has been covered before.

I am a 40 year old married male who contributes the maximum to his 401k and IRA yearly.  My wife contributes the same.  I feel at this point in my life I am behind the curve compared to most mustachians, but really want to make the most of the next 10 years of our working lives. 

I have only truly invested in retirement accounts so far except for the occasional trades, but that has been used more for learning than the accumulation of wealth.

I really like the mustachian approach of using index funds.  While doing some research, I find that a lot of services like wealthfront and betterment are reselling Vanguard funds and managing portfolios on your behalf.  I will not be in a position to use Wealthfront's tax harvesting feature for some time as it requires 100k in your account.

With my less than average mustachian IQ, I am curious what you all think of using this type of service vs. going it on your own (via Vanguard direct). 

I'd appreciate any thoughts you all might have on this

Thanks - Matt

 

[Ricky]

Read this post and it's comments:

http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2014/11/04/why-i-put-my-last-100000-into-betterment/

Everything you'll need to know.

[madmax]

I read through the post linked above but wasn't convinced. I like having control over my investments and being able to determine tax efficient fund placement. Also, I'm too lazy to dig it up now but there was a thread on Bogleheads analyzing the value prop for Betterment and it came to the conclusion that Tax loss harvesting does not add the amount of value that the folks at Betterment say it does.

If you must use a so called Robo advisor, I suggest waiting for Schwab's intelligent portfolios. It is set to launch in Q1 of this year and will be without any advisory fees.