Ellevest Review: Investing Platform for Women

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!

Pros & Cons

Ellevest is a robo investing platform created specifically to help women because the company believes that gender neutral investing fails them.  

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 financial planners and career coaches 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 advisors?

Let’s take a closer look at the Ellevest robo advisor platform to see how it works to address specific financial needs for women and whether it’s the right investing service for you.

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.

Yup, we’re talking about pay gaps, career breaks and the host of other factors that only impact women.

Combine these things with a typical longer lifespan than men and you see the need for investment help that’s more than just a standard approach.

Sallie Krawcheck understands this disparity between genders and addresses it with Ellevest's 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. 

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. 

Features & 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 ETFs and mutual funds portfolio based on Liability Driven Investing which estimates what you need to pay for future liabilities. 

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 an Ellevest Spend and Save Cash Management account - an emergency fund to be housed inside an account that’s equivalent to three months worth of your salary.

The funds in this Ellevest Spend and Save account are FDIC-insured up to $250,000 per depositor through Coastal Community Bank, Member FDIC. What's more, banking products and services are provided by Coastal Community Bank, member FDIC.

Although there are no minimums to start using Ellevest, but the company offers different service pricing tiers - starting with Ellevest Essential, then Ellevest Plus and Essential for individuals with higher minimum balances:

Ellevest Alternatives

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.