We only make money three ways - and none of them are hidden
Fund expense ratios, advisory fees on portfolios we manage, and net interest on cash. No commissions, no product sales quotas, no revenue that depends on you trading more than you should.
Figures as of the most recent quarter end.
Four commitments we can be held to
Costs come down, never up
We have cut fund expense ratios eleven times and raised them never. When scale lowers our costs, the saving goes to shareholders of the fund - which is to say, to you.
Advice is fiduciary, always
Planners are salaried and hold no product-based incentive. Every recommendation must be in your interest, not merely defensible as suitable.
Plain language, in writing
The complete fee schedule is one page. Statements say what a fee was for. Nothing important lives in a footnote.
Long horizons over daily noise
We publish research on saving rates, allocation and taxes - the things that actually determine outcomes - rather than trade ideas designed to generate turnover.
Security
Protecting an account is mostly about controls the customer never has to think about.
- SIPC protection up to $500,000, including $250,000 for cash
- Two-factor authentication on login and money movement
- Password hashing with per-user salts, never plain text
- CSRF protection on every state-changing request
- Full audit trail of logins, trades and transfers
- $0 liability for unauthorised activity you report promptly
How the platform is built
PHP 8 with PDO prepared statements throughout, MySQL for persistence, hand-written CSS and dependency-free JavaScript. Passwords use password_hash(); sessions regenerate on login; every form carries a CSRF token.
A short history
- 1998
Founded in Boston
Three index funds and a conviction that costs are the only reliable predictor of long-run fund performance.
- 2004
IRAs go online
Account opening moves from a paper form and a two-week wait to ten minutes in a browser.
- 2011
The ETF line launches
The same index exposure, priced intraday, at the same expense ratios.
- 2016
Digital portfolios at 0.25%
Professional allocation and rebalancing for savers with $500, not $500,000.
- 2019
Commissions go to zero
Online stock and ETF trades become free, permanently.
- 2025
Planning built into the account
Goal tracking, readiness scoring and income projection move from a calculator page into the dashboard itself.
In their words
Testimonials reflect one client’s experience and are not a guarantee of future results.
Open an account in about ten minutes
No minimum, no maintenance fee, and no obligation to fund it today.