Seattle Based FutureAdvisor Review at CashSherpa.com

Investment advice can be hard to get. Most people have a retirement saving account, a 401k, maybe some mutual funds. But they don’t really know how their investments are doing, or even if they are the right types of investments for their needs. Instead, they rely on common wisdom, or go see a financial consultant. The problem with financial consultants is that they are usually paid by a company, and their job also includes pushing their products such as mutual funds or life insurance. That’s the reason why Bo Lu co-funded FutureAdvisor along with Jon Xu out in Seattle. This new type of web site offers free financial advice, and can be useful for anyone looking to get better savings.

The way it works is fairly simple. All you have to do is go on the site, create an account, and answer a few questions about your financial profile and your goals. Then, their system creates a target portfolio that meets those needs. You can even import your own investments and see immediately how close they are to your target goal, and compare with what’s available out there. Finally, you get recommendations on how to maximize your savings while minimizing your costs. The site is well designed and boosts that it takes just 2 minutes to get started, with the whole process being completely free. The way this new startup makes money is by offering more personalized financial advice through a gold level which costs $49 per year, and even video calls with staff members at $195.

It’s a fairly unique idea, and the new business caught the eye of investment firms like Sequoia who financed its first round, allowing the two co-founders to get started. On their help site, they fully describe their methodology and how they arrive at the conclusions that they do. By favoring low fee index funds, they base their process on solid market research and long standing strategies as explained in many financial books. According to their claims, they save up to 80% on fees for their users, and the report you get at the end of the process focuses heavily on the savings you can make on those fees if you follow their advices. With the paid accounts, you can even get personalized alerts for when new investment opportunities appear.

It’s worth noting that anyone who is looking for investment advices should consult a financial professional, but for most of us, people who don’t want to pay for advices or don’t have someone on call for the millions of dollars we don’t have, a site like FutureAdvisor is an interesting alternative, which you can try for free and see if the advices they give you make sense for your situation. The site is still in beta but has appeared in many major publications like the Wall Street Journal and VentureBeat.