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Investing For Beginners: How to Get Started Today

  • Writer: Melissa Mondesir
    Melissa Mondesir
  • Jun 3
  • 7 min read

Updated: Sep 2

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its no hidden secret that the investing industry has been, frankly, built by men, for men. It’s all about picking the best stock and beating the market — and not about taking into account women’s longer lifespans and reaching financial goals.

Today, the market is answering the call for portfolio management platforms specifically created for women.

One of these platforms is Ellevest, a  female-focused automated investing platform founded by former Wall Street CEO and finance industry veteran, Sallie Krawcheck. Nicknamed by Fortune Magazine as “The Last Honest Analyst,” Krawcheck believes gender-neutral investing fails women, so she turned the problem on its head by giving women a platform targeted to their life paths and financial goals.

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Having created partnerships with entrepreneurs, analysts,  engineers, Ellevest’s goal is to close the gender investing gap and empower women take financial control today.

And that’s not just a cute pat marketing slogan, either.

Gender-based investing at Ellevest means factoring women’s generally longer lifespan, lower incomes, and different lifetime earnings curve into portfolio construction. Another way the company delivers on its female empowerment promise is through its Impact Portfolios, which give clients the opportunity invest up to half of their portfolios into funds that drive positive social and economic change (check) … by advancing women.

The company’s 0.25% advisory fee for Ellevest Digital — no minimum account requirement — and 0.50% advisory for Ellevest Premium ($50,000 minimum), which includes access to certified financial planners and executive career coaching services, makes them competitive among robo-advisor rivals like Betterment and Wealthfront and especially attractive to female investors.

Read on for a review of Ellevest, and what this robo-advisor offers to investors. 


What is Ellevest?

Ellevest is an automated investment platform  — or Robo-advisor — that offers customized portfolios for women investors. The goal-based plans are tailored to meet the individual needs of women.

This means that when creating portfolios, Ellevest considers the specific factors that only affect women. The company also serves as a fiduciary, which means by law, they have to act according to your best interests.


Ellevest is Best For:

  • Goal-based investing.

  • Beginning to intermediate investing.

  • Values-based investing.


Where Ellevest shines:

  • Addressing women’s needs.

  • Emergency fund management.

  • Supports multiple financial goals.

  • Portfolio customization.

  • Large number of ETF classes.

  • Addressing women’s needs: Ellevest factors in the the fact women have to surmount a tougher set of obstacles than men to reach their financial goals.

    The company addresses this in two ways:

    • While other robo-advisors might treat men and women equally when considering their future earnings, Ellevest may recommend a higher savings rate for a female client than it would for a similar male client because of that lower future earnings potential.

    • Ellevest Premium —which comes with $50,000 minimum — provides access to one-on-one executive coaching from the company’s career team, helping women with impactful financial issues like career transitions and salary negotiations. Members of Ellevest Premium  also get unlimited access to guidance from certified financial planners.


    Supports multiple financial goals: Similar to larger robo-advisors such as Betterment and Wealthfront, Ellevest’s primary focus is helping investors attain their longer-term goals (e.g. retirement). The more unique feature is Ellevest’s additional planning layer that helps clients invest appropriately for short-term, nonretirement goals, too.


    Investors can select any number of savings goals — including saving for a car, building a home down payment, child-related expenses or starting your own business. Based on your time horizon and capacity for risk (as elicited via a questionnaire), Ellevest produces a customized investment plan that, according to simulations, gives you a 70% likelihood of reaching your goal. It also provides a dose of reality in terms of trade-offs that may be necessary to achieve multiple goals — for example, how buying a new car this year might delay buying a house and retiring. Or how a lower savings rate and less aggressive investments now might affect paying for college in a few years.


  • Another feature that increases the likelihood that you’ll achieve your goals is auto deposit — the ability to have a portion of your paycheck deposited directly into your Ellevest account. After all, it’s harder to spend it if the money doesn’t even make a pit stop in your checking account.


    Portfolio customization: Ellevest believes that a well-diversified, low-cost investment portfolio is a better bet than stock picking.  They believe that at the end of the day, investing is a way to achieve your big goals, like buying that home, starting that business, and retiring on your own terms — and not a game to be won.


    Simlar to its peer robo-advosors, each of Ellevest portfolio has specific target allocations: more aggressive funds for long-term goals and more conservative ones for the short term  As a goal due date approaches, Ellevest automatically invests in more conservative funds to ensure that the cash is available when needed. Clients, however, are given some control over how aggressively (or not) their money is invested and can toggle their exposure to stocks up or down within reason (between 5% or 10%, depending on the goal). Whenever the portfolio veers too much from the target allocation, Ellevest rebalances the investments for free.


    Emergency fund management: Ellevest has a holistic approach to money management and part of it is to help clients establish an emergency of three to six months of take-home pay (salary minus all taxes, including Social Security and Medicare). Ellevest charges no management fee for this money — unlike some other firms that offer a cash feature — and it keeps the cash safe in an FDIC-insured bank account.


    The downside here is that it earns only a trickle of interest — 0.01% of assets — which is less than you can get with an online savings account but on  par with bricks-and-mortar banks .


    That said, seeing your emergency savings incorporated into your plan may help you get a more comprehensive view of your finances. That it takes some doing to withdraw funds (up to seven business days) can be a deterrent to dipping in for nonemergencies. If you already have an emergency fund, don’t worry — this is an opt-in feature.


    Large number of ETF classes: Like other robo-advisors, Ellevest portfolios are composed of a mix of exchange-traded funds that cover more than 20 asset classes, which is more than what most of the leading players offer. For its standard portfolios Ellevest chooses from 21 ETF classes; Impact Portfolios draw from roughly 25.


    Many of the funds Ellevest uses are managed by Vanguard, a leader in low-cost ETFs. That’s important because on top of the advisory fee, investors pay for the management fees (aka expense ratios) on the ETFs in their portfolio.


    Ellevest’s disadvantages:

    Where Ellevest falls short is in its tax loss harvesting or lack thereof.  Currently, Ellevest offers only taxable accounts, individual retirement accounts (Roth, traditional and SEP IRAs) and 401(k) rollover IRAs.


    Trusts and other savings plans such as 529 college education accounts aren’t available. In theory, tax loss harvesting minimises any tax costs when investing. While Ellevest does use a Tax Minimizing Methodology, they don’t offer many benefits for taxable accounts.

    That said, similar to larger robos, Ellevest puts any tax-inefficient securities in tax-deferred retirement accounts and tax-efficient investments in taxable accounts. And when it comes time for clients to make withdrawals, clients are advised in the ways of tax-smart withdrawal sequencing to minimize the IRS’ cut.


    How do you sign up for Ellevest?

    Signing up is relatively straightforward. It should take you no longer than ten minutes. Ellevest first asks you to tell them a little bit about your goals so that they can recommend personalised investment portfolios. Next, their team of professionals will advise you on various management strategies based on the different options available to you.

    Ellevest claims to help their clients reach approximately 70% of their goals, and they do so by incorporating a Monte Carlo simulation (a computational algorithm) that assesses how well your investments will perform in various circumstances. It’s particularly useful given the unpredictable nature of the economy.


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Is Ellevest right for you?


Ellevest’s mission is to close the gender investing gap and can clients find the right balance between both longer-term goals (e.g. retirement) and short term goals.

What sets Ellevest apart is its unabashedly female-approach to investing. The company’s investing algorithm takes into account the salary curve and lifespan of whatever gender profile the client chooses. It also offers investment options that allows its mostly female clientele to invest their dollars in companies that have policies and practices that advance women. The Premium service — which offers career coaching (on top of anytime access to CFPs)  — is another way this robo-advisor aims to better its target customer’s financial well-being.

To learn how to get started investing for women go to Ellevest and get your free financial plan (a great way to see if you like it).


Ellevest’s advice options:

Ellevest offers three levels of financial advice. Ellevest Digital is their most basic option. At this level, you’ll have unrestricted access to the concierge team who’ll guide you through every step of the investing process. You can reach the team via email, phone or text. To use Ellevest Digital, you’ll need to pay an annual fee of 0.25 per cent of your invested assets, and there’s no minimum balance required to open an account.

Next on offer is Ellevest Premium. With their premium service, you’ll receive one-to-one guidance with financial planners who can assist you with the monetary side of buying or remodelling a home, growing your family, and retirement. You’ll also get help from Ellevest Executive Coaches on how to leverage employee benefits and navigate your finances through any major life or career change. The annual fee for Ellevest Premium is 0.50 percent of assets under management and the minimum balance required is $50,000.

Alternatively, with a minimum balance of $1 million, Ellevest offers private wealth management services where assets under management will determine your fees.


Ellevest Awards and Press:

LinkedIn (again): Sallie Krawcheck, 20 Top Voices of 2018

Vanity Fair: Sallie Krawcheck, The 2018 New Establishment List


Action for women:

Make this the year you start investing, even just a little bit. If you’re just starting out, choose an investment service with a $0 minimum and low fees that is a fiduciary, meaning they are required to act in your best financial interest. Then start investing as soon as you’ve paid off any bad debt. The 50/30/20 rule is a great one — and if you’re not there yet, it’s one to aim for.

This is the inequality we can start working on all by ourselves.

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