Invest in Your Future with the Betterment Gift Registry

When my husband and I got married in 2008, I stubbornly insisted that I did not want to register for gifts.

It seemed ridiculous to end up with silver asparagus tongs and porcelain gravy boats that would collect dust for years on end.

Cooler heads (that is, my mother and mother-in-law) prevailed, and my husband and I registered for gifts that were equal parts useful, beautiful, and fun.

And yet, even with our practical sensibilities, our registries did not necessarily reflect the real needs of a young couple starting out. These days, with couples delaying marriage until their late 20′s and beyond, there is no longer a need to outfit newlyweds with everything necessary to set up housekeeping.

Couples are much more likely to need help with the down payment on their first house, saving for the education of their future kids, or even money to furnish their new home together.

That’s where the Betterment Gift Registry comes in.

Betterment has already been making a name for itself by offering simple investing to help ease anxieties about making investment choices. The site allows you to easily transfer money, then select the percentage of your stake that you’d like invested in stocks versus bonds.

Betterment does all of the diversifying and re-balancing of your money for you.

With the new gift registry, friends and family can help you to reach your goals by investing money for you in gift-sized amounts.

Betterment Gifts

For example, if you’re hoping to buy a house within a few years of saying “I do,” you can set up a new home goal in your registry. You can then specify a gift amount, such as $100, for people to donate toward your goal.

Betterment will then use the information about when you’d like to achieve your goal to customize and maximize your investment.

While there are other registries set up for cash gifts, the Betterment Gift Registry is unique in that there is no fee assessed to the gift giver for donating to the registry. So 100% of the gift is deposited in the happy couple’s account.

Betterment’s annual fee is also low—from 0.35% of the annual balance for $10,000 or less invested, to 0.15% of the annual balance for over $100,000 invested. This means that more of your gifts and your investment profit will go towards your goals than they would with other cash gift registries.

A wedding gift is something that should last throughout the couple’s life together. While Great-Aunt Martha might prefer the traditional route of giving silverware or fine china, today’s young couples often see more value in an investment in their future.

And that’s a much more practical and lasting gift to a new family than a gravy boat.

To get started, open an account with Betterment ($25 bonus included), and then navigate to https://gifts.betterment.com to setup your registry.