Doulos, there's plenty of lively banter on this topic in the threads I posted above.
For Betterment, it boils down to if you want to pay for a fancy UI and have just about everything done for you automatically versus a Vanguard setup that does all of that but without as pretty a UI.
The TLH depends on several things:
- Do you invest in the same indices elsewhere? Does your legal partner (if married)? If so, you'll encounter wash rules, which basically "undo" the harvest
- Are you in a low tax bracket (including state, federal)? If so, the additional value of any kind of TLH will be diminished
- Will you make frequent purchases? This will help create more opportunities for harvests
- What's your hold period? Longer periods (>1 year) are better for deferred taxes
If you intend on Tax Gain Harvesting, Betterment is not structured to do that type of tax planning...it's a little
too automatic.
The MadFientist does excellent write-ups on this kind of stuff...here are some links:
http://www.madfientist.com/tax-loss-harvesting/http://www.madfientist.com/moving-my-money-to-betterment/http://www.madfientist.com/tax-gain-harvesting/If you are "doing stupid things" with your investments, you are in a good place to remedy that behavior!