• Home
No Result
View All Result
Money Monarch
  • Make Money
  • Money Management
  • Banking
  • Investing
  • Lifestyle
  • Real Estate
Money Monarch
  • Make Money
    • All
    • Make Money Apps
    • Make Money Online
    • Side Hustles
    • Work From Home
    68 Ways To Make Money Quickly In Multiple Sectors During 2020

    68 Ways To Make Money Quickly In Multiple Sectors During 2020

    23 Ideas For Kids And Teenagers To Make Money

    23 Ideas For Kids And Teenagers To Make Money

    I need money now

    23 Ways To Make Quick Cash When You Need Money Now

    make money driving for uber

    How To Make Extra Money Driving For Uber

    online jobs for teens

    13 Best Online Jobs For Teens To Make Real Money

    8 Places To Get Paid To Test Websites From Your Home Couch

    8 Places To Get Paid To Test Websites From Your Home Couch

    stay at home mother

    9 Best Stay At Home Mom Jobs To See Your Kids

    hobbies that make money

    16 Hobbies That Make You Money To Start Today

    create passive income with no money

    How to Create Passive Income With Zero Money

  • Banking
    • All
    • Certificates of Deposits
    • Checking Accounts
    • Savings Accounts
    Meet Credit Karma Savings – A New High Yield Savings Account With Even More Perks

    Meet Credit Karma Savings – A New High Yield Savings Account With Even More Perks

    woman writing about a money order

    How To Fill Out A Money Order Step by Step

    checkbook for checking account

    What Is A Checking Account?

    piggy bank savings account

    What Is A Savings Account And When Should You Use One?

    cd ladder money

    What Is A CD Ladder – Should You Get One?

    switch bank meeting

    How To Switch Banks Without Missing Any Payments

    what is direct deposit

    Direct Deposit – What Is It?

    Radius bank high yield account

    Radius Bank High Yield Savings Account Review: What You Should Know

    Checking Accounts Versus Savings Accounts: Similarities And Differences

    Checking Accounts Versus Savings Accounts: Similarities And Differences

  • Investing
    What Is A Bear Market?

    What Is A Bear Market?

    Stash App Review – What You Must Know Before Investing

    Stash App Review – What You Must Know Before Investing

    stock gift

    How to Give Kids A Share Of Stock (Christmas Gifts Or Other Holidays)

    Titan invest banner

    Titan Invest Review – Algorithm Investing Like A Hedge Fund

    thinking about betterment

    Betterment Review: Safe Investing With Robo Advisors?

    best short term investments

    8 Best Short Term Investments To Grow Your Money

    happy acorns review

    Acorns Review – Investing Spare Change With An App

    fundrise review apartment buildings

    Fundrise Review: Real Estate Crowdfunding Made Simple

    M1 Finance Review – The Greatest Way To Invest With “Pies”

    M1 Finance Review – The Greatest Way To Invest With “Pies”

  • Money Management
    68 Ways To Make Money Quickly In Multiple Sectors During 2020

    68 Ways To Make Money Quickly In Multiple Sectors During 2020

    Earny Review: The App That Monitors Price Matching And Price Drops

    Earny Review: The App That Monitors Price Matching And Price Drops

    What Is A Bear Market?

    What Is A Bear Market?

    12 Best Coupon Websites To Save The Most Money

    12 Best Coupon Websites To Save The Most Money

    Groupon Review – Online Discounts Without Clipping Coupons

    Groupon Review – Online Discounts Without Clipping Coupons

    filling up discounted gas

    16 Best Ways To Get Free Gas Cards and Discounted Gas

    how to get out of debt guide

    How to Get Out of Debt (Step By Step Guide 2020)

    Charlie Review – Text Message Budgeting Assistant

    Charlie Review – Text Message Budgeting Assistant

    on phone getting a personal loan

    How To Get A Personal Loan (Where To Look To Find One)

  • Real Estate
    buildium review

    Buildium Review – Is It Worth The Money?

    best property management software

    The Best Property Management Software (Ultimate Guide)

    13 Steps To Buy A House For The First Time

    13 Steps To Buy A House For The First Time

    3 Ways To Make 50K A Year Without Working (Using Passive Income)

    3 Ways To Make 50K A Year Without Working (Using Passive Income)

    how renters can save a house down payment

    7 Ways For Renters To Save For A Down Payment

    7 Ways For Renters To Save A Down Payment For A House

    7 Ways For Renters To Save A Down Payment For A House

No Result
View All Result
Money Monarch
No Result
View All Result
Home Investing

Blooom Review – A Robo Advisor To Help Manage Your 401(k) Account

Money Monarch by Money Monarch
January 1, 2020
in Investing
0
This article may contain references to products from one or more of our advertisers. We may receive compensation when you click on links to those products. For an explanation of our Advertising Policy, visit this page.
0
SHARES
69
VIEWS
Share on FacebookShare on Twitter

Blooom Review – Excelling in Retirement

Retirement: that golden age of life where you do whatever you want, whenever you want.

Well, within reason, of course.

But you can’t just sit around for 40 years and expect to have all your financial needs taken care of.

Quite the contrary: successfully retiring involves decades of diligent saving and investing.

However, there seems to be almost as many retirement investment vehicles as there are dollars you need to invest.

And navigating the complicated world of investing involves many hours of reading news and educational material, not to mention managing your investments and tracking your progress towards that light at the end of the workforce tunnel.

Fortunately, the investing world is becoming increasingly “democratized” (aka accessible to the average person) due to the proliferation of investment apps and robo-advisors. Many apps are generic, but some are tailored to specific needs such as

  • Simple but comprehensive budgeting (think Mint)
  • Saving for a house
  • Paying for college
  • Investing your spare change (like Acorns)

But since we’re here to talk retirement, we thought we’d show you Blooom, a robo-advisor app tailored to helping you retire.

Before we show you the strengths and weaknesses of Blooom, we’d like to reiterate the importance of saving for retirement beginning your saving early.

The Importance Of Saving For Retirement

Saving for retirement is critical if you want to enjoy your freedom from the workforce during the latter half of your life.

After all, your expenses don’t stop just because you’re “unemployed” status is legally and culturally sanctioned.

Some might point out that it is possible to neglect saving a lot for retirement and still get by. That’s great advice… if you want to move back in with your children, survive on welfare, or live out your years in a retirement home.

If you want to live a halfway-decent retirement lifestyle, you need to establish some savings as well as some retirement income streams.

If you want to live a lavish lifestyle, however, you’ll have to work even harder (and save for a longer time) to maximize your retirement fun.

Save Early, Save Often

In theory, you don’t need to start saving for retirement from your very first paycheck. You could wait a few years and blow your potential retirement savings on other things and still come up with enough cash at age 65 to live on.

However, every year that you aren’t saving for retirement sets you back A LOT.

First of all, you can’t get time back. If you didn’t put $1,000 aside for retirement last year and spend it on something else, you’re permanently down $1,000. You could put double in this year to compensate, but that’ll hurt your finances more in the present.

But that’s not the only reason to start early.

Now, you’ve probably heard of compounding, right?

Investing early for retirement allows you to take full advantage of compounding.

See, the earlier you invest, the more time your money will have to work FOR you and make you more money in the form of interest/other returns on investment.

To illustrate just how significant this can be to your finances, let’s run a quick thought experiment.

Say you started investing the moment you walked into your first day at your first 9-5. Let’s assume you’re 22 at this time and you invest a constant $5,000 per year in a tax-deferred account that yields 7% returns until you turn 32. Once you hit 32, you stop contributing to the account.

Assuming nothing changes, your account will have grown to about $690,000 by age 65 even though you haven’t touched the account in 33 years.

Now, let’s say you wait one single year longer and start investing at age 23. Assuming all other thought experiment data stays the same, you’ll have around $644,000 in your retirement account.

Beginning your retirement savings journey just one year earlier in this case will earn you the equivalent of a big-city, entry-level salary.

The difference only gets wider the later you invest!

Now that you understand the importance of saving/investing early, let’s talk about how Blooom makes this easier.

What Is Blooom?

Blooom is the name of the company that created their eponymous retirement investing app.

But we’re here to talk about the app, so let’s do that.

The Blooom app was created to make retirement investing easier, with emphasis on employer-sponsored retirement plans such as the 401(k).

If you don’t know what 401(k) plans are, they’re a very common pretax retirement plan provided by employers. When you contribute, a financial management firm invests your money into funds specified by the plan to help you grow your retirement funds. Usually, employers match your contributions up to a certain percentage (meaning they give you free money).

You can link other employer-sponsored plans [401(a), 403(b), 457 and TSP Plans as well. For simplicity’s sake, however, we’ll stick with 401(k)s.

Blooom’s goal is to simplify and cut the cost of money management so that those without extraordinary wealth can save enough to enjoy the retirement lifestyle they’ve always dreamed of.

The app analyzes all investment options in your 401(k) and throws out the ones that don’t make sense based on your retirement goals.

It then picks investments for your approval based on your current age and your expected retirement age.

Blooom prides itself on being the “affordable online 401(k) management for the 99%”, yet another nod to the democratization of investing.

Part of their Manifesto (which you can access on their site) even details how one of the founders was disillusioned with serving only those with plenty of wealth to invest and wanted to help the common person better manage their retirement investments.

Here is a video from Blooom themselves!

So what do they do to follow through on such a noble goal?

Blooom’s Strengths

The 401(k) Focus

Many apps place themselves in the retirement niche, which is pretty helpful for retirees.

But Blooom takes it even further by heavily emphasizing the 401(k) plan.

Why is this such a big deal?

First of all, the total amount of assets in all 401(k)s was estimated to total over $5 trillion at the end of 2018, according to the Investment Company Institute.

And although data on the number of 401(k) participants is somewhat elusive, you can logically conclude that $5 trillion of 401(k)s means a significant portion of the workforce has one.

Yet for some reason, robo-advisors rarely offer 401(k) management; they’d rather handle money from more well-off people.

With little support from robo-advisors, managing your 401(k) could be a headache.

Blooom’s emphasis on 401(k) management is therefore a boon for many Americans who are looking to maximize their retirement savings.

Blooom lets you manage your 401(k) plan no matter where you work or who manages your plan, so no need to worry about being unable to use it.

Absolutely No Account Minimum

We already went over the importance of saving for retirement as early as possible to take full advantage of compounding.

But it’s hard to do that when you’re required to have a significant amount of money to start.

That’s why Blooom doesn’t require you to have ANYTHING in your 401(k) to start using the app. As soon as you open your 401(k), link it to Blooom and start using it to maximize your investments.

Support From Real Financial Advisors

Got questions about financial planning that Google can’t answer?

Blooom offers support from real-life financial advisors for a variety of financial planning issues beyond just 401(k) management.

You can reach these advisors via email, text message, and in-app chatting. They’ll help you answer plenty of financial planning questions, including but not limited to

  • Budgeting
  • Major purchases (houses, cars)
  • Other retirement investment options
  • Miscellaneous investment questions

They’re free to use with the app, so use them liberally!

Pricing

blooom pricing and savings

Blooom has a simple and affordable pricing structure with a decreasing rate based on your account balance. Here’s how it works:

  • $2,000 – 6% per year
  • $10,000 – 1.2% per year
  • $25,000 – 0.48% per year
  • $50,000 – 0.24% per year
  • $100,000 – 0.12% per year

6% of $2,000 is $120/year; that sounds like a fair chunk of change, but it comes out to only $10 per month. That’s around what you pay for Netflix, except this helps you save for retirement.

That’s not too bad, given this is one of the only apps that offers such a niche personal finance service. They could jack up the rates a bit more if they wanted, but it seems the founders of Blooom want to stick to their mission despite room for more profits.

Good on them!

To get rates that beat other robo-advisors (who’s rates typically fall between 0.25% and 0.50%), you’ll need to get up to that $50,000 mark; it’ll take you a long time, but if you keep contributing up to the matching amount as your salary grows, you’ll get there before you know it.

The “Glide Path”

One piece of common investment advice goes like this:

Invest in riskier (within reason) assets when you’re young, as you have more time to recoup losses AND your returns will supposedly average out over time.

As you get older, you’re told to pull out of riskier assets and invest in something safer, like bonds.

In other words: be aggressive when you’re young, and conservative when you’re old.

Blooom does this automatically using an “exponential glide path” that relocates your assets based on your age and retirement age.

Pretty nifty.

Blooom’s Weaknesses

The 401(k) Emphasis…

What Blooom excels at is 401(k)s; unfortunately, that comes at the expense of extremely limited offerings.

In fact, 401(k)s are the only retirement account Blooom manages at all!

Perhaps they’ll expand their offerings in the future; for now, you’re out of luck if you have anything other than a 401(k).

Analysis Isn’t As Rigorous As It Could Be

Because Blooom is focused on helping people retire, their focus is on, well, retirement.

Such a narrow focus means you might not get as thorough or accurate of a risk tolerance assessment as other robo-advisors.

Signing up and answering the questions is a quick and simple process, it just simply isn’t as rigorous as many would like it to be.

They Don’t Have Phones

You can reach Blooom through chatting or emailing, but they have no customer support number to call.

If you prefer to speak to someone rather than chat online or over email, there isn’t much you can do as far as Blooom goes.

Who Should Use Blooom?

Blooom’s primary demographic is that huge slice of workers that make enough to fund a 401(k) (or other employer-sponsored plan) and a few other simple investments, but not much else.

This demographic has been historically underserved when it comes to financial management, which is unfortunate given the massive amount of people in said demographic.

If you’re one of these people, you should look into using Blooom if you want to both simplify your retirement investing and maximize returns on your 401(k) or other employer-sponsored plan.

However, if your retirement portfolio is spread among multiple retirement accounts (such as traditional or Roth IRAs), another more complex robo-advisor (or real financial advisor) might be right for you.

Whether you fall in love with Blooom or choose a different investment management service, one thing remains constant in the “saving for retirement” arena.

Save early, and save often.

You’ll thank yourself in a few short decades when you’re living your dream retirement lifestyle.

Previous Post

Should You Lease A Car? How to Decide If You Should Buy Or Lease A Car

Next Post

7 Mistakes To Avoid As A First Time Home Buyer

Money Monarch

Money Monarch

Money Monarch is a team that is in love with personal finance. We are on a mission to help you make the crucial decisions that will outline your financial future.

Next Post
buying a house common mistakes

7 Mistakes To Avoid As A First Time Home Buyer

happy about managing her money

How To Manage Your Money (Without Stressing Out)

piggy bank savings account

What Is A Savings Account And When Should You Use One?

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Follow Money Monarch

  • 8 Followers

Popular Post

  • donating plasma doctor visit

    How Much is My Plasma Worth? Ultimate Guide to Selling Plasma for Money

    0 shares
    Share 0 Tweet 0
  • 13 Ways Nurses Can Make Extra Money From Home

    0 shares
    Share 0 Tweet 0
  • 3 Ways To Get A Free CarFax Report When Buying A Car

    2 shares
    Share 0 Tweet 0
  • The Ultimate List of Blog Income Reports (100 Bloggers to Follow)

    11 shares
    Share 0 Tweet 0
  • How To Get Free Stocks – 8 Ways To Pocket Free Shares

    0 shares
    Share 0 Tweet 0

Follow Our Page

Follow Us

  • Looking for freedom from your job? Want to work from anywhere in the world? Learn how you can earn a full-time income by getting paid to write - even start your own blog! #blogger #blogging #paidtowrite #sidehustle #entrepreneur #entrepreneurlife #makemoneyonline #quityourjob
  • Want to make your money work for you? We
  • Are you a single parent of working hard to support your whole family? We
  • Trying to pay off never ending student loans or high interest credit cards? Let us help! This article explains how to track expenses and earn extra income to help you achieve financial freedom! #studentloans #creditcarddebt #financialfreedom #finance #sidehustle
  • Your health is important! Get rewarded for eating right and working out - win up to $10,000!  #weightloss #fitness #healthylifestyle
Facebook Twitter Youtube Pinterest Instagram

Money Monarch is here to help you save and make more money at home while at the same time helping you get your finances right

Pages

  • Privacy Policy
  • Terms of Use
  • Contact Us
  • About Us

Recent Articles

3 Ways To Get A Free CarFax Report When Buying A Car

3 Ways To Get A Free CarFax Report When Buying A Car

June 17, 2020
Meet Credit Karma Savings – A New High Yield Savings Account With Even More Perks

Meet Credit Karma Savings – A New High Yield Savings Account With Even More Perks

June 17, 2020

© 2022 MoneyMonarch.com

No Result
View All Result
  • Make Money
  • Banking
  • Investing
  • Money Management
  • Real Estate

© 2022 MoneyMonarch.com