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I spent 10 years working in finance and I'm convinced robo-advisers are better than human advisers for 5 reasons

Robo-advisors offer a unique investment option that continues to grow in popularity.

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Robo-advisor investment services, such as Wealthfront and Betterment , have exploded in popularity in recent years. There's a lot to love: they're low cost; they're easily accessible online; and you don't need a financial planning certificate to understand them.

While there are still many robo-skeptics out there, these innovative investment platforms offer many benefits over human financial advisors, from cost savings to tax savings. Let me, an MBA and former bank manager, spell them out for you.

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Most financial advisors draw on a combination of their own education and experience. When you go to a large financial-advising firm, investment guidance is often based on a set of high-quality portfolios created by investment experts following guidelines for varying investor scenarios.

Robo-advisors take out the risk of smaller investment managers, and the middle-man from larger ones. With a traditional investment manager, your funds may be pointed to single stocks or funds that are not in your best interest, and they charge a hefty sum for the privilege. If you find an advisor who is a fiduciary , they are required to always invest in your best interest, but portfolios may be based on dated theories and the limited investment research time your advisor has to spare between clients.

With a robo-advisor, you get access to a high-quality portfolio built with someone like you in mind. For example, leading robo-advisor Betterment uses mostly Vanguard and other low-cost ETF families with a strong track record.

A human might follow their instincts and choose a risky investment. It may pay off, but it might not. A human also follows emotions when buying and selling investments, but studies have shown that people do a bad job at buying low and selling high. Computers don't have those emotions making decisions for you, which is best for your money.

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Just as following emotions is bad for investing, timing the market has proven a bad strategy for investors. Rather than tinkering with things, robo-advisors pick the right investments for you and mostly leave things alone.

In the event of a market downturn, the worst thing you can do is sell. If you do, you'll miss out on the upside when the market recovers. Robo-advisors know that and do the same thing a responsible financial advisor should do when faced with market volatility: leave your investments alone to ride the wave back up during the recovery.

Wealthfront , another popular robo-advisor, uses only low-cost ETFs , mostly from Schwab, Vanguard, and State Street, to build client portfolios. Many funds it uses have fees well under 0.10%, and none are higher than 0.23% (a municipal bond fund that makes up just a small portion of portfolios if it appears at all).

Because most robo-advisors invest solely through low-cost ETFs from popular providers, you know your portfolio has low fees and high liquidity.

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Most financial advisors charge based on a percent of assets under management , or a flat fee. Fee-only advisors are the best human financial advisors for most people, but when a computer handles your investments, you pay a lot less.

Schwab Intelligent Portfolios is the leader in fee-free robo-advising. It charges nothing for its robo-advising service. While you'll still pay fees from the low-cost funds your dollars land in, you won't pay Schwab itself any advising fees.

The average robo-advisor charges around 0.25% to 0.35%, depending on your balance and the services you choose. That's compared to the common rate of 1% for a human advisor. You'll pay a human advisor about four times as much in management fees as you'll pay Betterment or Wealthfront .

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The market has good days and bad days. With the current climate in Washington, there has certainly been a lot of volatility over the past few years. The savviest investors take advantage of those market fluctuations with tax loss harvesting.

With tax loss harvesting , you can sell an investment that is down at a loss and immediately purchase a similar investment, locking in the tax loss without selling yourself out of the asset class. For example, you may sell VOO and buy IVV on a down market day, as both give you exposure to the S&P 500 index.

A person can't physically keep up with this process the way a computer can handle tax loss harvesting. For larger portfolios, using a robo-advisor can add up to significant tax savings.

With portfolios based on Nobel research and investment strategies created by economics and finance PhDs, you know your funds are in good hands with a robo-advisor. While each has its own unique offering, high-quality providers like Betterment and Wealthfront offer sound investments tailored to your unique needs.

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Robo-advisors shouldn't perform significantly better than a great financial advisor, but not all financial advisors are great. Plus, robo-advisors cost a lot less than most financial advisors and keep your money exclusively in low-cost funds, so your all-in costs are significantly lower with an automated investment solution. Don't discount this difference it can easily be worth tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars to your portfolio over time.

If you have yet to come around to the idea of robo-advisors managing your money, it may be time to get on board with this growing trend. With the potential for better performance and a guarantee for lower fees, robo-advisors are the future of investing and a great choice for any modern long-term investor.

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