I manage my own investments. Schwab brokerage account, a Roth IRA at Vanguard, an old 401(k) from a previous employer. I've been doing this for years, and I always assumed I was doing fine.
But here's what I realized: I had no actual way to know.
My brokerage shows me account value and basic returns. That's it. It doesn't tell me whether my returns are good relative to the risk I'm taking. It doesn't compare my results to a relevant benchmark — a real one, not just "the market was up 12%." And it definitely doesn't tell me how my self-directed approach stacks up against what a comparable managed strategy would have delivered.
I was flying blind. And if you manage your own money, you probably are too.
There's a lot of content out there about whether you should use a financial advisor or go it alone. But almost none of it addresses the most basic question: how do you actually measure whether your approach is working?
If you're self-directed, your brokerage gives you a dashboard showing your balance and maybe a line chart. That's not analysis. That's a number on a screen.
The core issue: Self-directed investors have no access to the kind of performance analysis that institutional money managers are required to produce. You're making investment decisions without the tools to evaluate whether those decisions are actually working.
Are you beating a relevant benchmark after accounting for the risk you took? What's your risk-adjusted return? How do your results compare to other investors in a similar situation with a similar allocation? Is managing your own money actually saving you anything, or are you leaving returns on the table?
Until recently, there was no way for a regular investor to answer any of these questions.
A few months ago, I came across a service called WiseMint that applies the same performance measurement standards used for institutional money managers — the kind of rigorous analysis that pension funds and endowments require — to regular investor accounts.
WiseMint analyzes all investment accounts: brokerage accounts, 401(k)s, IRAs, and self-directed accounts. It connects through Plaid (the same secure system your bank uses for account linking) and generates an independent report covering your actual performance against appropriate benchmarks.
What makes this different: WiseMint uses the mathematical principles underlying the Global Investment Performance Standards (GIPS), created by the CFA Institute. These are the standards institutional investors require from their money managers. Until now, retail investors — especially self-directed ones — had no access to this level of analysis.
If you manage your own money, you made that choice for a reason — maybe to save on advisory fees, maybe because you enjoy it, maybe because you don't trust someone else with your retirement. All valid reasons.
But that choice comes with a blind spot. Without independent performance analysis, you have no way to know if your approach is genuinely delivering better results than the alternative. You might be outperforming what an advisor would have done. You might be underperforming by a margin that dwarfs the fees you're saving. You literally cannot tell from a brokerage dashboard.
WiseMint fills that gap. It's not an advisor. It doesn't manage your money or tell you what to buy. It's purely an analysis tool — an independent scorecard for your investment decisions.
If you do use a financial advisor, WiseMint solves a different version of the same problem. The only performance report most advised investors ever see comes from the same person managing their money. WiseMint gives you an independent second opinion — using institutional-grade standards — on whether your advisor is actually delivering.
See how your investments are really performing with institutional-grade analysis. Works with brokerage accounts, 401(k)s, IRAs, and self-directed accounts.
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Without going into excessive detail, the WiseMint report gives you performance measurement against relevant benchmarks (not cherry-picked ones), risk-adjusted return metrics that institutional investors use, fee transparency showing what you're actually paying, and peer comparison so you can see how your results stack up against investors in similar situations.
For self-directed investors, that peer comparison is especially powerful. It's the first tool I've found that lets you objectively evaluate whether your DIY approach is delivering better results than a managed alternative — or whether you'd actually come out ahead paying someone.
WiseMint isn't for everyone. If you have $5,000 in a target-date fund and don't think about it, you probably don't need this. But if any of these describe you, it's worth serious consideration:
You manage your own investments and want to know if your approach is genuinely working. You've been self-directed for years but have never benchmarked your results against anything meaningful. You're deciding between continuing to self-manage or hiring an advisor and want real data to inform that choice. You use an advisor and want an independent check on their reported performance. Or you're approaching retirement and want a clear-eyed assessment of whether your portfolio is on track — regardless of how it's managed.
No review is complete without honest feedback. WiseMint is a newer service, and like any early-stage product, there's room for growth. The report could include more granular historical analysis. The onboarding process, while straightforward, could benefit from more hand-holding for less tech-savvy users. And I'd like to see support for additional brokerage integrations over time.
That said, the core analysis is solid. The methodology is sound. And the fundamental value proposition — institutional-grade performance analysis for everyday investors — is something that simply didn't exist before this.
If you manage your own money and you've never had your performance independently analyzed, you don't actually know how you're doing. You know your account balance went up or down. You don't know if it went up enough, given the risk you took and the opportunities you had.
WiseMint gives you a way to find out. I use it. I recommend it.
Institutional-grade performance standards, applied to your accounts — brokerage, 401(k), IRA, and self-directed.
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Have questions about WiseMint or portfolio analysis in general? Get in touch — I'm happy to help.