Learn Vest

I signed up for Learn Vest a few years ago in an attempt to get my finances more streamlined. I set up my account, filled in the information that was required and made an appointment with one of the advisors. I was not impressed with her professionalism or knowledge. Her recommendations weren’t anything out of the ordinary or cutting edge and, in fact, I had already pursued many of the avenues she suggested on my own. On top of that, I found her to be condescending and amatuer. It was a disappointing experience and one that did not provide anything that improved or clarified my finances.
When I called to cancel my membership, the person I spoke with was rude. After I cancelled it, I received a survey which I happily filled out expressing my displeasure with my experience. Unfortunately, when I clicked to submit I got an error message and the survey never when through. How odd.
In theory, Learn Vest has the right idea but with unprofessional and unknowledgeable advisors, they aren’t going to reach their potential.

Today is the day I canceled my account.
Today is the day I allow myself to feel and release the shame I feel over having let $ 19 dwindle from my account every month for the past year, after an initial investment of $ 200 (after a $ 100 coupon), with the intention of saving money, and yet the opposite result.
I was overwhelmed from the start. My planner could have been a lot more skillful in recognizing and responding to the emotions that came up for me in the process of looking at finances, and adapting to where I was at. Instead, I felt pushed to consider things I wasn’t ready to, and was left feeling like if I didn’t make some major uncomfortable changes, I would not have a cushion in life and would not be able to achieve my goals. I don’t believe this is true; in fact, I feel I am on a good trajectory with my more natural, intuitive way of operating. I haven’t been living on the budget she gave me at all and yet I still have good credit and live as I wish to. If she had taken the time to understand more of how I relate to money and what kinds of things I would consider realistic and desirable changes, maybe I would be using the program and benefitting from it. Instead, I gave up early, and should have canceled sooner, but I believe shame held me back, as I had made the initial investment in this program and really wanted it to work. I kept hoping I would come back to it, but a year later I have nothing to show for it except the money that was spent.

In concept, Learnvest is a great idea. Affordable planning combined with a website & app to make it easy to stick to your goals.
In reality, Learnvest has some significant kinks to work out before selling their service to the public.
Their regular dashboard for the unpaid service is ok, but the platform to set up additional info prior to meeting with your planner is full of bugs. The account info part of the set up in the «planner» view you get with paid service does not work at all. (On any browser; I tried chrome, safari, and firefox.)
Further, once you have taken a considerable amount of time to enter your information into the system, the corresponding plan the planner creates for you has almost no integration with the learnvest site, and lives as a static PDF.
* Because it is static, the plan does not update when your commitments change and you change your budget
* It is difficult to track the «weekly number» the planner assigns you to spend because it has no correlation to what you are spending, even though learnvest is hooked up to all of your accounts
* The plan does not include a clear view of how much you should contribute monthly to your goals (and without integration with the website, you have to manually create and update the site to match the PDF, but this is not explained to you.)
The Planner:
* Seems very junior, and appears to be reading from a generic script
* Is not able to help you project a reasonable flex budget based on current spending even though the site has access to all of your transactions
* Even if your flex budget is way over or under your recommended weekly amount, your planner will not notice or recommend any change
* Is actually only available for two phone sessions as the other user mentioned (So $ 150 per session, for some fairly boiler plate advice)
Minor annoyance, but may point to larger problems: their service constantly requires you to re-​authenticate your accounts in a way I have never seen with other services (e.g. USAA and Mint) which leads me to believe their site is either buggy, not as trusted as others, or poorly architected.

I’m in my early 30s and thought I was pretty responsible with my finances, but in my mind, financial planner meant more of someone who helps you invest all your money. I’m not at that point. I felt overwhelmed about what to put money toward first, 401k, house down payment, credit card, student loan, etc etc and how to get out of debt so that someday I may be able to use what you traditionally think of as a financial planner. I needed help to sort some of this out, so when I looked into Learnvest, I thought it might be the help I needed. I got a $ 100 promo code so got the plan for around $ 200.
I had two phone calls with my advisor person. I guess it was weird having someone you don’t know intimately involved with your monetary life, but at the same time I liked that they weren’t judgmental about it and were a neutral third party. While the plan I was presented with was surprising to see where I’m falling short, it was also the wake up call I needed to make some real strides toward changing and shifting some of where I was putting my money, getting into some higher yielding accounts, possibly looking for other sources of income, etc.
Their goal is to help you find positive, long term habits instead of expecting to magically pay something off. What I found the most helpful was having them help me prioritize what I should focus on now and what will take a few years. With actual numbers of what you should be spending on what, and where it will get you, it helps things feel more manageable and focused instead of me just trying to make a budget for myself and failing. The actual calls felt kind of scripted and impersonal, but the planner was able to answer most of my questions and the information I ultimately gathered may help me for years, so I feel like it was probably worth the price.
After the second call, I was told I’d have unlimited email access to my planner. I’m not sure how long I’ll continue the $ 19 monthly payments for this. It’s a little hard to swallow considering I need to have money to put toward so many other things, as I’m sure is the case with many others who try this, but from what I’ve explored so far, they do have some helpful articles, videos and tools. I’m not sure how many of these are still available with the free version but for now will do some more exploring and try out what they’ve given me to see if it works.

Pros: Learn Vest is accessible to many people who cannot afford a financial planner out right.
The most valuable thing I learned was about calculating what it cost per year for your lifestyle then dividing that number by 12 and opening an account to set that amount aside into separate accounts.
For example lets say my idea of fun things like shopping, travel, dining out cost me $ 2,000 per year. I would open a FUN account and save $ 166.00 per month which is $ 2,000/12= $ 166.00. Anythime I do a «fun» activity, make a transfer to pay for it. Brilliant and I never thought of it before LearnVest
Cons: I paid $ 299 set up fee and $ 19.00 per month thereafter. I would say that $ 300 set up and $ 19/​month is comparable to what you would pay a legit financial planner for two real sessions. If I knew what they really offered for the money you pay, I would’ve passed.
You only get two phone calls. The phone calls last about 1 hour and are very impersonal you cant see the person advising you about your money. No bueno. I suggested Skype but was told for legal reasons they cant skype. After the two phone calls you are on your own.
Those stupid PDF worksheets: Once you have painstakingly input all your financial information into the Learnvest system i. e salary, retirement and debt, you are required to complete worksheets to figure out a budget. The idea is great but the execution is terrible because the worksheets have to be printed out and done by hand. In addition, the work on the worksheets remains on paper its not incorporated into the system electronically. FAIL

Conclusion: LearnVest is a classic case of being too big for its britches. While they have some great and innovative ideas, they fail on software and executing those ideas.
All you are really getting from Learnvest is what
provides for free with the exception of 2 phone calls from a personal planner and daily «tasks» via automatic emails that go ignored. If you need more support and guidance especially with investing, just pay to play and hire a real CFA.

You get a lot for a little.
Do it.
As someone who has been in debt my entire adult life (student loans, credit cards), as I approach 40, I’m close to paying it all off, and I’m over owing. I’ve managed to save for retirement, but I want more. I want a nest egg. I want a stable IRA, a stacked stock portfolio with dividends multiplying like rabbits in heat. That ‘s hot. Debt’s not.
I couldn’t seem to get there myself. I needed a little help, a nudge in the right direction, back-​up support, as it were. I have a decent income, but I just wasn’t able to figure out how to properly allocate my monthly pay to maximize my debt repayment to get to where I want to be. Math was never my strong subject anyway.
I’d used Learn Vest’s free online money management tool for several years and I got their emails delivered to my inbox. I always found their articles helpful, insightful and relatable. As a recent birthday present to myself, I decided to take it to the next level and purchase a financial planning program.
I’m so glad I did.
I took advantage of a $ 50 promotion and subscribed to their Portfolio Builder plan, $ 399 up front (- $ 50) plus a monthly $ 19 fee. This program covers your entire financial spectrum — investing, debt repayment, retirement, saving for goals, building liquid savings — it’s the best option to cover all of your financial bases. I was paired with a planner and asked to complete some basic information — monthly pay, investments, retirement, insurance, recurring bills and to provide information about my specific goals. After filling out my online profile and uploading information to their secure site, I had my first call with my planner. He made sense of my money universe, and we agreed to a budget that would help me allocate $ 1,000 a month toward my goals — paying off that student loan and last bit of credit card debt way faster than I could have ever imagined. We’ll work together as a team as long as I need. And my budget isn’t stingy, it’s sensible — I still have money to splurge on a few things each paycheck.
It’s a no brainer.
I wish I had done this sooner. It’s a huge relief to have someone helping me, being my bestie and pointing me in the right direction. I needed that. I like it so much, I’m going to get my little brother a plan as a gift. If you need money advice and want an affordable solution, Learn Vest is a great option. If I follow my planner’s budget — I’ll be in the green in way less time than I ever thought imaginable. You can’t put a price on that.