HOW IT WORKS

Betterment takes sophisticated investing strategies and makes them better with personalized guidance and tax-smart technology. Here's what you can expect.

01

We ask about you.

What are you saving for? Maybe you’re buying a home, paying for college, saving for retirement, or building an emergency fund. Or, maybe you’re just investing for the sake of investing.

No matter your goal, we’ll ask you how much you’re hoping to save and when you’ll need your money.

02

We'll build you a portfolio.

Once we know a bit about you and your investing goals, we’ll build a personalized portfolio with a risk level and investment mix that suits each goal. And if you’d like to adjust that mix, you can.

Learn more about our portfolio strategies and how we manage your investments.

See our portfolios

03

We’ll help you decide how much to invest.

For each of your investing goals, we’ll recommend how much you should deposit initially and on an ongoing basis. When it comes to retirement, we’ll also suggest which retirement accounts you should use, and how much you should save into each account. We can even automate your deposits so you don’t have to worry about it.

No matter the investing plan you choose, we’ll keep you up-to-date on how you’re tracking to help you reach your goal by the time you’d like to.

Betterment investing app on laptop and phone

04

Our technology manages your money.

Here’s where our technology gets to work. We’ll rebalance your portfolio to maintain your preferred risk level. As your investments produce dividends, we reinvest them for you to avoid cash drag.

We put the right investments in the right types of accounts. And when it’s time to sell a portion of your portfolio we'll sell the holdings in a tax-efficient way, helping to reduce your tax burden.

Smart Rebalancing

We automatically rebalance your portfolio so you maintain an optimal level of risk.

Auto-Depositing

Set up auto-deposits and we’ll seamlessly transfer funds into your investment account.

Reinvesting Dividends

Any dividends get reinvested immediately back into your portfolio—so you earn more.

Tax Loss Harvesting

We check regularly for opportunities to lower your tax bill while still maintaining optimal asset allocation and expected returns.

You pay one low, annual fee.

No hidden fees. No additional trading and transfer fees. What you see is what you pay. If only everything in life were this simple. See details

Annual Fee

0.25%

or about $25/year for every $10,000 invested

Explore your first goal

Safety Net

This is a great place to start—an emergency fund for life's unplanned hiccups. A safety net is a conservative portfolio.

Retirement

Whether it's a long way off or just around the corner, we'll help you save for the retirement you deserve.

General Investing

If you want to invest and build wealth over time, then this is the goal for you. This is an excellent goal type for unknown future needs or money you plan to pass to future generations.

Smart Saver

You could earn 20X more than a typical savings account with our low-risk investing account for your extra cash.

Explore your first step toward a better financial future

Save

Put your extra cash to work. You could earn 20X more than the average savings account with Smart Saver, our low-risk investing account.

Invest

Invest without the hassle. We manage your portfolio, offer expert allocation advice, and take care of the manual trading work.

Retire

Whether retirement is a long way off or just around the corner, we'll help you plan for the retirement you deserve.

Learn

Get answers to your questions about Betterment. We can help you become more confident with your money.