- Is Blooom worth it all (to Robo manage employer 401k)? No, but if you want to you can sign up during the free trial, have them optimize it, then cancel and re balance yourself yearly. I'd be happy to look at your options and suggest a plan, as well (for free).
- Anyone have any experience with it? Yes, I always try things to see what they offer. It basically just gives "optimizes" your choices based on the risk tolerance you want. Not worth the money.
- Has it made or lost you money?
- Do they rebalance often? Is that a good strategy? Believe they re-balance based on your preferences. I normally re-balance yearly.
Also, if I'm relatively new to investing. It seems like when I search for stuff on the internet, it appears to be advice based off the marketing of products and might not actually be sound advice.
Bloom is literally a product that can be done for free yourself.
I have a 401k through Employer (Valic now AIG).
My wife and I have most of our other invested money in Traditional IRAs and a little in Roth at Vanguard.
Why traditional IRA? Unless you're over the salary threshold, I wouldn't suggest that.
Should I pay for a consultation at Vanguard? The guy at work seems kind of useless. Everything he advises me to be in has the highest management fees. It's hard to cut through all the noise.
You have to pay for a vanguard consultation? Only one I've ever done is free. This sounds shady as Vanguard typically steers you away from high fee funds. Also, unless vanguard can see your ENTIRE portfolio (they can't), they will do a very bad job rebalacing your money as its basically them having to balance with blinders on (IE if you have 500k total, and only 50k in vanguard, if they are re-balancing just the vanguard portion, it is very likely not right based on your overall re-balancing).
Are there courses any of you recommend? I'm willing to take some computer-aided learning if beneficial.