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Our Rating
4.5/5
The Bottom Line: Ellevest is a robo advisor service offering women customized portfolio options with goal-based plans intended to meet clients’ individual needs. Yes, men you can use it too!
Ellevest is a robo investing platform created specifically to help women because the company believes that gender neutral investing fails them.
For Wall Street exec Sallie Krawcheck aims to minimize the gender investing gap and aims to help factor in women’s specific financial needs in order to help build wealth.
This means looking at things like longer lifespan and different lifetime earnings when creating a portfolio. It also aims to help clients invest in funds that encourages the advancement of women.
Don’t worry men, you can invest with Ellevest too.
However, how does this company stack against other robo investors?
Let’s take a closer look at Ellevest to see how it works to address specific financial needs for women and whether it’s the right investing service for you.
Quick Summary
Account Minimum: $0
Fees: .25%
Promotion: Up to $50 (cash bonus with qualifying deposit)
What is Ellevest?
Ellevest is a robo advisor service offering women customized portfolio options with goal-based plans intended to meet clients’ individual needs.
The idea is that Ellevest only considers specific challenges that affect women. Clients also get the opportunity to help enact social change by investing in companies that help to empower women.
As a fiduciary, Ellevest offers different tiers of services, including the option of managing your other assets through their private wealth management offering.
No matter the tier of service, you can change your strategy or goals whenever you want such as your initial deposit, target goal dates, timelines and recurring contributions.
Why Investing Specifically For Women?
It’s not hard to figure out that the financial services industry are mostly male-dominated and that women are differ from when it comes to their finances.
What gender neutral investing platforms could miss are understanding the unique circumstances or needs women face throughout their lives.
Ellevest assume a 30-year-old man and a 30-year-old woman, both with bachelor’s degrees earning $85,000 per year. a registered investment advisor and subsidiary of Morningstar, Inc.
Yup, we’re talking about the wage gap (and the fact that women still earn less than their male counterparts), and time women take off from factors such as motherhood and care taking.
Combine that with a typical longer lifespan than men and you see the need for investment help that’s more than just a standard approach.
Ellevest understands this disparity between genders and addresses it with their products and services.
How Does Ellevest Work?
After signing up, Ellevest will ask you to enter personal information such as your income, family responsibilities and financial goals in as little as five minutes.
It will then suggest a personalized investment portfolio based on the information you provided — gender, education level and salary.
You can also consolidate your investments but you may be limited to the types of accounts supported. Ellevest also evaluates your current accounts to assess whether it’s right for your financial goals by taking a look at fees and what options are available.
If you want to roll over your assets, Ellevest will take care of that for you. Otherwise, you can consider having Ellevest manage your assets through their private wealth management program if you don’t want to manage it on your own.
Ellevest also understands that your life circumstances change, so you can edit your plan as often as you want. You can change things such as your goals, recurring contributions, initial deposit and timeline.
Ellevest will automatically update your portfolio if you change dates for your goals.
Start Funding Your Future
NO MINIMUM BALANCE
Start as small as you'd like – there's no minimum deposit for Ellevest Digital.
NO-PENALTY ELLEVEST WITHDRAWALS
You can withdraw your money at any time – no strings attached.
FREE EMERGENCY FUND
Ellevest charges 0% of investment management fees on assets in your emergency fund.
Not to worry — Ellevest is a fiduciary registered with the FDIC so their advisors are legally obligated to act on behalf of your best interest.
Ellevest Features and Pricing
Ellevest offers what it calls goals-based investing that focuses on both your long term and short term goals.
It recommends asset allocations based on research from Morningstar Investment Management so you’re able to reach your goals instead of some random benchmark that may or may not be relevant.
Ellevest also helps you build your portfolio based on Liability Driven Investing which estimates what you need to pay for future liabilities.
​ | Digital | Premium | Private Wealth Management |
|---|---|---|---|
Minimum balance* | $0 | $50,000 | $1,000,000 |
Annual Fee** | 0.25% $25/year for a $10K account | 0.50% $250/year for a $50K account | Based on assets under management |
1:1 access to our CFPs® for personalized guidance on finances & money growth strategies | Cell |
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1:1 access to our Executive Coaches for guidance on salary negotiations & career events | Cell |
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Personalized investment portfolios |
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Option to invest in Ellevest Impact Portfolios |
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Automatic deposits |
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No-penalty withdrawals from Ellevest |
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Automatic rebalancing |
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Ellevest Tax Minimization Methodology |
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Unlimited support from the Ellevest Concierge Team, including financial professionals |
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So far, there are around 21 diverse asset classes which you can customize. These Impact Portfolios have been specifically chosen to support businesses that prioritize sustainability and improve the welfare of women.
You also have the option to have Ellevest manage an emergency fund to be housed inside an FDIC insured bank account that’s equivalent to three months worth of your salary.
Although there are no minimums to start using Ellevest, but the company offers different service pricing tiers:
Ellevest Digital
You’ll get personalized investment portfolios and the option to choose Ellevest Impact Portfolios — these options include automatic rebalancing and Ellevest’s tax minimization methodology.
You also get unlimited support from Ellevest’s concierge team. There are no minimum balance requirements and you’ll be charged a 0.25% annual fee.
Ellevest Premium
You’ll get access to a CFP for one on one guidance on investments and other financial advice. There are also Ellevest Executive coaches who can work with you with your career, including salaries.
However, you need a $50,000 minimum balance to access these services and you’ll pay a 0.50% annual fee.
Private Wealth Management
If you have a portfolio of $1 million or higher, you can get even higher levels of service, including a dedicated team of experienced financial advisors.
Private wealth management is based on a sliding scale of fees. To find out what they are, you’ll need to contact Ellevest for a consultation.
Ellevest Alternatives
Pros & Cons
Pros
- Addresses women’s specific needs - Whether you believe Ellevest’s approach to their female-focused services is a marketing ploy, it does work to address their specific needs, namely issues with the gender pay gap and the fact that women’s salaries tend to max out and decline faster than men’s.
- Emergency fund management - Unlike other financial firms, Ellevest doesn’t charge any management fees to help you establish an emergency fund (an optional feature).
- Goal-based investing - We like that Ellevest helps with both retirement (long term) and non-retirement goals (short term).
- Customize portfolio - Clients can customize their risk tolerance based on their goals.
- Different investment tiers - Offering different pricing tiers allows clients to get their toes into investing and working with a robo advisor (and limited access to financial professionals) before moving up to more hands on services.
Cons
- Limited amount of accounts supported - Right now, Ellevest only offers IRAs (Roth, Traditional and SEPs) and taxable accounts which is not as many options compared to other robo investors.
- Fees are on the higher side - At 0.25% for their lowest tier, Ellevest is on par with what other robo advisors are charging and with similar levels of service.
- No tax loss harvesting - If minimizing taxes is important to you, know that Ellevest does not offer tax loss harvesting — if you have taxable accounts with high balances you may find this problematic.
- Complex portfolio - Although Ellevest offers a lot of choices in their portfolio, for smaller amounts (think less than $100,000) it may not make much of a difference in returns.
Ellevest
Ellevest is a robo investing platform created specifically to help women because the company believes that gender neutral investing fails them.
Should You Join Ellevest?
What sets Ellevest apart is that it’s marketing itself by focusing on the issues with the male-dominated industry and emphasizing female focused investment help.
It’s also different in that it’s not gender neutral — Ellevest takes into the gaps in salaries and the lifespan of each gender.
Plus, you can help promote the advancement of women by investing in companies that do so if that’s something you’re interested in doing.
Their ETF offerings are pretty good and you are paying pretty low expense ratios considering many of them are through Vanguard, known for having some of the lowest fees.
However, there are a few features that aren’t as robust, such as the lack of tax-loss harvesting and the limited types of supported accounts.
Ellevest’s fees are also a little bit on the higher side when it comes to their more premium services so it’s up to you to decide whether it’s worth it to sign up.
The company also doesn’t ignore the role of taxes altogether — it helps its clients with minimizing taxes through the Ellevest Tax Minimization Methodology.
Otherwise, with their lower account minimums with their premium services, large offerings of ETFs and other holistic financial features, Ellevest could be for you, especially if your priority is helping women-focused companies.
Quick Recap
Minimum investment | $0 |
Fees | Starting at 0.25% |
Best For | Women who like to be more hands-off, are investing newbies and want to dive into goal based and values based investing. |
Promotion | Earn up to $50 with a qualifying deposit |
Supported Accounts | IRAs and and personal taxable accounts |
