Betterment - When to say when?

[meepzork]

Long story short, I have some money in a 90/10 split investment account at Betterment for about 18 months, and have realized 0% return.  How is that even possible?  Last week was the first time ever that my account had $1 more than what I put in initially, but dont worry, that victory was short lived.  I'm about to withdraw 15k and give it to wealthfront simply because theres no fees, so how could it be any worse?

Thoughts?

[ysette9]

Why not just pick your favorite Vanguard fund and leave it there? Do you have an investment policy statement? https://www.bogleheads.org/wiki/Investment_policy_statement

[gggggg]

Personally, if that happened to me, with the recent market; I'd pull it, and drop it in an index or index etf. It's not my money though.

[Rocket]

Is it because a 90/10 allocation in betterment is a lot of foreign indexes, which are down in the last 18 months?

[kenaces]

I am a DIY guy who doesn't like the extra fees of robo advisor but if you are new to investing the fees are not unreasonable.

90/10 - markets don't always go up :)  Also keep in mind that betterment has big chunk in both international stacks and heavy US value tilt - both of which have underperformed the US stock market recently.  I think long run both value tilt and international exposure are a good thinks in the long term and currently are on the cheap side, so if you like the roboadvisors just HOLD.

[bcg02]

After years of trying to identify stock trends, buying and selling, and trying to out-game the masters, I have finally realized the benefits of a simple portolio.

Pull the funds out.
Open vanguard brokerage account.

Invest 90% VTSAX
Invest 10% VBTLX if you are somewhat risk averse or could potentially need the money soon. Otherwise all VTSAX

Set it and forget it. Your balances will go up and down, but in the long run you will see much more returns than the betterment portfolio and pay no fees.

I know there are others here that will chime in with  "you need international or more diversity" but I still fail to see why.

To me, VTSAX is the proven winning race horse and betting on anything else just means less returns with marginally less risk.

[TheStachery]

For my betterment account. (Full Disclosure, i'm in the process of moving it to Vanguard)

It says:
Lifetime -
-earnings - 5.5%
-time-weighted returns - 11.3%
Annualized -
-earnings - 2.1%
-time-weighted returns - 4.3%

my portfolio has always been at 65/35

Sounds like it has done better than the 90/10

[endleesss]

Here's mine:
LIFETIME RETURNS 5.5%
Earnings % 5.7%
100% stocks
US Total Stock Market: VTI 17.5%
US Large-Cap Value: VTV 17.4%
US Mid-Cap Value: VOE 5.6%
US Small-Cap Value: VBR 4.9%
Developed Markets: VEA 41.4%
Emerging Markets: VWO 13.1%

[Derrian]

15 months ago the SP 500 was at 2120. While it has risen 3% the international portion of the portfolio has lost value. Not seeing any gains makes sense. If you had invested throughout the past 15 months you would see some gains as the SP 500 had two significant dips in value.

Long story short, I have some money in a 90/10 split investment account at Betterment for about 18 months, and have realized 0% return.  How is that even possible?  Last week was the first time ever that my account had $1 more than what I put in initially, but dont worry, that victory was short lived.  I'm about to withdraw 15k and give it to wealthfront simply because theres no fees, so how could it be any worse?

Thoughts?