Why don’t you invest? Are you scared to lose money? Maybe you have no clue where to start since everything you read tells you something different? Or maybe you want to start but investing sounds too complicated?
I have good news for you. There is a way to help you start investing without fear and possibly even help you lessen the chances of losing money. Say hello to Betterment.
Back when I started investing in the late 1990s, it wasn’t as easy as it is today. Online brokers weren’t the norm. I had to go through a discount broker. This meant calling him on the phone and telling him what I wanted to invest in and what price I wanted to buy it at.
It also meant I needed to have enough money to buy whole shares since you couldn’t buy fractional shares.
I quickly became frustrated with this process, so I switched over to investing in mutual funds. Doing this allowed me to invest less money at a time since I could buy fractional shares. It also allowed me to automate my investing to a degree.
When I filled out the paperwork to start investing in a mutual fund, I had them automatically take money from my bank account each month to invest for me.
I did nothing else but sit back and watch my investments grow over time.
As great as this was, it wasn’t perfect. I still had to do my homework. What funds would I invest in to create a diversified portfolio? How long was it going to take to set up automatic transfers for each investment? How much would I invest in each fund every month?
It got confusing very quickly.
Luckily, investing today is much easier thanks to Betterment.
Who wants to spend their weekends analyzing stocks, trying to find the next home run when you could be playing with your kids or enjoying your favorite hobby?
The sad thing is, many people make investing harder for themselves and they never reap the rewards of that hard work. What if I told you that you could reap the rewards without putting in the hard work? You’d probably think that sounded too good to be true!
What Is Betterment?
Betterment is one of the most trusted online investment managers and has been around since 2010. They are an SEC-registered investment advisor and their broker-dealer is a member of SIPC and FINRA. This means you can trust them with managing your money.
Their investment approach is simple. They manage your investments so you don’t have to.
They do this so you reach your goals by focusing on the long-term, which is what successful investors do, and ignoring the short-term volatility, which is what many investors focus on. With Betterment, you are always diversified, balancing risk and reward.
Betterment currently has over $9 billion in assets under management and over 260,000 customers.