For the past few years, I’ve been a loyal user of WiseBanyan, the automated financial guru. My journey with WiseBanyan began as a component of my 12-month WiseBanyan + Digit Challenge. The purpose? I wanted to observe the growth of my savings and investments over a year without actively micromanaging it.
Utilizing my Digit Savings Account, I saved minor sums sporadically each month, barely noticing the deductions. When savings exceeded about $75, I’d funnel them into WiseBanyan for investing. The beauty of this process was its seamless and painless nature—small amounts were whisked away from my account without any prompting from me.
By the close of the year, my Digit savings totaled a substantial $4538. If you project this amount over three decades with an average 8% interest, it translates to a whopping sum of around $567,300. The potential of such seemingly trivial savings and their growth over time truly resonated with me.
Last year, WiseBanyan unveiled their novel feature called Milestones. Milestones offer a complimentary financial planning service, erasing much of the uncertainty from saving for future endeavors. Here’s a peek.
Unraveling Milestones – WiseBanyan’s Gift of Financial Planning
So, what exactly are Milestones? WiseBanyan elucidates:
“Welcome to Milestones – our zero-cost financial planning offering. Just share your financial objectives (and your desired timeline), and we pledge to assist you throughout. As your milestones get set, we’ll constantly oversee, realign, and automate your contributions, allowing you to cherish the present while being assured of a promising future.”
In essence, you establish an account with a specific financial objective, and WiseBanyan nurtures it to fruition over time. They determine your Milestone target factoring in variables like your income, net worth, duration, initial deposits, among others. It’s designed to chart out an optimal path to achieve your set objectives.
Exploring the Milestone Options
On navigating to the Milestone section in WiseBanyan, four distinct options emerge:
- Rainy Day Milestone: This is the primary milestone WiseBanyan advises you to establish. Think of it as your significant emergency buffer. It’s the fund that cushions unexpected blows like sudden home repairs, vehicle maintenance, abrupt job loss, or unforeseen taxes. A Rainy Day Milestone fosters financial security.
- Retirement Milestone: This milestone serves as a vessel for your future. It supports you in shaping your eventual financial dreams. I’ve already established such an account, leveraging a Roth IRA for a tax-beneficial retirement.
- Custom Milestone: This is a versatile category. Be it a short-term goal like holiday savings or a medium-term one for procuring a property or vehicle, these milestones can be tailor-made. Whether your timeline is 1, 5, or 10 years, you mold it as per your aspirations.
- Build Wealth Milestone: This is a rather open-ended fund, letting your wealth flourish without binding it to particular deadlines or figures.
It’s worth noting that you can only hold one Retirement, Rainy Day, and Build Wealth milestone each. In contrast, you can spawn multiple Custom milestones.
Launching Your Maiden Milestone Account
Embarking on your Milestones journey with WiseBanyan is a breeze. After registering, simply select “create milestone” from the dropdown.
Here’s a brief rundown:
- Sign up for WiseBanyan (it’s free!)
- Click “Create Milestone” and define your savings aspiration.
Crafting a Milestone
Let’s illustrate the creation of a Rainy Day milestone, as I did. After opting to craft a milestone, you’re prompted to specify its nature. Having already crafted a Retirement milestone via my Roth IRA on WiseBanyan, that option was unavailable. Hence, I opted for the Rainy Day fund.
Proceeding, the setup prompts for a savings target and duration. I aimed for a $10,000 reserve to be accumulated in 18 months. After stipulating the opening deposit, the next step defines your monthly contribution. WiseBanyan then proposes a saving strategy to achieve your objective.
A risk-adapted asset allocation is then presented, which for a Rainy Day milestone, is more conservative, favoring bonds. Post allocation approval, a final review of your deposit and monthly contribution is requested, and then voila! Your milestone is crafted and will begin its journey with the inaugural deposit and subsequent monthly contributions.
WiseBanyan’s Milestones: Securing Your Tomorrow
WiseBanyan’s latest Milestones feature serves as a pragmatic tool from this pioneering, no-cost automated financial advisor. It facilitates the creation of adaptable savings and investment objectives, guiding you towards both immediate and distant financial visions.
I wholeheartedly vouch for its efficacy, and I suggest you explore its offerings just as I did.
