Where do you bank if you have a high net worth?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We have a very high net worth and we are fine banking with Bask and Fidelity. As in…our NW grows by $250K per month through passive income and active investments alone. DH and I are both tech savvy, online influencers.

Not sure about all these other losers leaning on trusts, attorneys, and financial advisors. Seems like a foolish move for the older and less intelligent generations…we possess the technical ability and business acumen necessary to successfully invest and manage our own assets.

Your comment doesn’t really make much sense.

Considering the verifiable wealthiest people in the world make use of trusts and advisors to save literally billions on taxes.

Maybe you are saying that you and others just aren’t rich enough to even know or understand what you don’t know?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Get out of BOA/Merril. They are awful to deal with for your heirs. Please. I beg you.

Wait why?? We have a ton of money invested through them and I didn’t know this!! We are leaving a lot to our kids hopefully and my parents are with BOA/Merrill wealth management too!!!
What? Details
Please?

Hi--I'm the poster who said BOA/Merrill was horrible to deal with as an heir. I was the successor trustee for my aunt's trust. She has since died and I was her executor. Her husband was my blood uncle and they had no children. While she was still living, she became unable to feed herself, drive safely, and stopped paying her bills regularly. As successor trustee, I took the letter of diagnosis from a psychologist declaring her incompetent with severe dementia and not expected to ever improve, a copy of the trust naming me as successor, the Durable Financial Power of Attorney, and my own identification to BOA to activate my rights to manage her money. Oh, my God! It took months, many in-person meetings, filling out huge amounts of paperwork, leaving work in the middle of the day over and over just to get the rights that were so clearly her intention. BOA gave me the runaround, always promising it was just this easy, but I was so frustrated. And this was with a simple set-up where her bank account was already in the trust and her entire estate consisted of this BOA checking account, a BOA savings account, and a studio condo in DC all in the trust. That's it! Total of around $500k net worth.

And, get this, the savings account was earning 0.01% interest and they refused to move it to anything even though they offered several accounts paying closer to 1-2% at the time. It was horrendous and even the in-person staff who were kind and trying to help had to sit on hold with call centers to get anything done. Hours and hours of my time. UGH!

I was so glad the day the last check to my cousins cashed, I had paid all the taxes, and I could close the account. All in all, it was a 6 year ordeal.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Get out of BOA/Merril. They are awful to deal with for your heirs. Please. I beg you.

Wait why?? We have a ton of money invested through them and I didn’t know this!! We are leaving a lot to our kids hopefully and my parents are with BOA/Merrill wealth management too!!!
What? Details
Please?

Hi--I'm the poster who said BOA/Merrill was horrible to deal with as an heir. I was the successor trustee for my aunt's trust. She has since died and I was her executor. Her husband was my blood uncle and they had no children. While she was still living, she became unable to feed herself, drive safely, and stopped paying her bills regularly. As successor trustee, I took the letter of diagnosis from a psychologist declaring her incompetent with severe dementia and not expected to ever improve, a copy of the trust naming me as successor, the Durable Financial Power of Attorney, and my own identification to BOA to activate my rights to manage her money. Oh, my God! It took months, many in-person meetings, filling out huge amounts of paperwork, leaving work in the middle of the day over and over just to get the rights that were so clearly her intention. BOA gave me the runaround, always promising it was just this easy, but I was so frustrated. And this was with a simple set-up where her bank account was already in the trust and her entire estate consisted of this BOA checking account, a BOA savings account, and a studio condo in DC all in the trust. That's it! Total of around $500k net worth.

And, get this, the savings account was earning 0.01% interest and they refused to move it to anything even though they offered several accounts paying closer to 1-2% at the time. It was horrendous and even the in-person staff who were kind and trying to help had to sit on hold with call centers to get anything done. Hours and hours of my time. UGH!

I was so glad the day the last check to my cousins cashed, I had paid all the taxes, and I could close the account. All in all, it was a 6 year ordeal.

I agree this sounds very painful…but it is much simpler when there is a death and it’s an inheritance situation.

I wonder if your experience would have been any easier at any other large financial institution.

It is just extremely difficult in general to deal with situations like your situation where the person is still alive, have to prove incompetence, etc.

[Anonymous]

My husband’s parents use Goldman Sachs’ private bank (Ayco) with minimum $10m and they manage our money too. My husband has a trust set up by his parents and an investment fund with money we make (HHI ~850K and we are late 30s, so not HNW like many posters) and they manage both. Buy in for hedge funds and I think PE is 500K liquid so very different threshold than minimum elsewhere. My mom banks at Boston Private and likes it but I don’t know anything else about their experience.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Get out of BOA/Merril. They are awful to deal with for your heirs. Please. I beg you.

Wait why?? We have a ton of money invested through them and I didn’t know this!! We are leaving a lot to our kids hopefully and my parents are with BOA/Merrill wealth management too!!!
What? Details
Please?

Hi--I'm the poster who said BOA/Merrill was horrible to deal with as an heir. I was the successor trustee for my aunt's trust. She has since died and I was her executor. Her husband was my blood uncle and they had no children. While she was still living, she became unable to feed herself, drive safely, and stopped paying her bills regularly. As successor trustee, I took the letter of diagnosis from a psychologist declaring her incompetent with severe dementia and not expected to ever improve, a copy of the trust naming me as successor, the Durable Financial Power of Attorney, and my own identification to BOA to activate my rights to manage her money. Oh, my God! It took months, many in-person meetings, filling out huge amounts of paperwork, leaving work in the middle of the day over and over just to get the rights that were so clearly her intention. BOA gave me the runaround, always promising it was just this easy, but I was so frustrated. And this was with a simple set-up where her bank account was already in the trust and her entire estate consisted of this BOA checking account, a BOA savings account, and a studio condo in DC all in the trust. That's it! Total of around $500k net worth.

And, get this, the savings account was earning 0.01% interest and they refused to move it to anything even though they offered several accounts paying closer to 1-2% at the time. It was horrendous and even the in-person staff who were kind and trying to help had to sit on hold with call centers to get anything done. Hours and hours of my time. UGH!

I was so glad the day the last check to my cousins cashed, I had paid all the taxes, and I could close the account. All in all, it was a 6 year ordeal.

I agree this sounds very painful…but it is much simpler when there is a death and it’s an inheritance situation.

I wonder if your experience would have been any easier at any other large financial institution.

It is just extremely difficult in general to deal with situations like your situation where the person is still alive, have to prove incompetence, etc.

That’s not necessarily true. Our lawyer advised us to use and avoid certain banks/brokerages based on how easy they were to work with in trust scenarios.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My husband’s parents use Goldman Sachs’ private bank (Ayco) with minimum $10m and they manage our money too. My husband has a trust set up by his parents and an investment fund with money we make (HHI ~850K and we are late 30s, so not HNW like many posters) and they manage both. Buy in for hedge funds and I think PE is 500K liquid so very different threshold than minimum elsewhere. My mom banks at Boston Private and likes it but I don’t know anything else about their experience.

The Goldman people also connected us with a tax advisor to help with taxes when we started needing to pay quarterly. We had been using TurboTax and then H&R Block and then in our mid-30s when we started owing a lot more because we were making a lot more we had no idea that paying quarterly was even a thing.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Get out of BOA/Merril. They are awful to deal with for your heirs. Please. I beg you.

Wait why?? We have a ton of money invested through them and I didn’t know this!! We are leaving a lot to our kids hopefully and my parents are with BOA/Merrill wealth management too!!!
What? Details
Please?

Hi--I'm the poster who said BOA/Merrill was horrible to deal with as an heir. I was the successor trustee for my aunt's trust. She has since died and I was her executor. Her husband was my blood uncle and they had no children. While she was still living, she became unable to feed herself, drive safely, and stopped paying her bills regularly. As successor trustee, I took the letter of diagnosis from a psychologist declaring her incompetent with severe dementia and not expected to ever improve, a copy of the trust naming me as successor, the Durable Financial Power of Attorney, and my own identification to BOA to activate my rights to manage her money. Oh, my God! It took months, many in-person meetings, filling out huge amounts of paperwork, leaving work in the middle of the day over and over just to get the rights that were so clearly her intention. BOA gave me the runaround, always promising it was just this easy, but I was so frustrated. And this was with a simple set-up where her bank account was already in the trust and her entire estate consisted of this BOA checking account, a BOA savings account, and a studio condo in DC all in the trust. That's it! Total of around $500k net worth.

And, get this, the savings account was earning 0.01% interest and they refused to move it to anything even though they offered several accounts paying closer to 1-2% at the time. It was horrendous and even the in-person staff who were kind and trying to help had to sit on hold with call centers to get anything done. Hours and hours of my time. UGH!

I was so glad the day the last check to my cousins cashed, I had paid all the taxes, and I could close the account. All in all, it was a 6 year ordeal.

I agree this sounds very painful…but it is much simpler when there is a death and it’s an inheritance situation.

I wonder if your experience would have been any easier at any other large financial institution.

It is just extremely difficult in general to deal with situations like your situation where the person is still alive, have to prove incompetence, etc.

That’s not necessarily true. Our lawyer advised us to use and avoid certain banks/brokerages based on how easy they were to work with in trust scenarios.

This may be the most useful thing I have read on this thread. I definitely believe that if you have more complicated situations like this, it can matter where you bank. Of course the hard part is figuring out the best choice. Based on my experience with their IT systems (through work), I would stay away from Citi, BofA and Truist. Chase seems to have good IT systems, but of course that doesn't mean their compliance folks know what they are doing.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Get out of BOA/Merril. They are awful to deal with for your heirs. Please. I beg you.

Wait why?? We have a ton of money invested through them and I didn’t know this!! We are leaving a lot to our kids hopefully and my parents are with BOA/Merrill wealth management too!!!
What? Details
Please?

Hi--I'm the poster who said BOA/Merrill was horrible to deal with as an heir. I was the successor trustee for my aunt's trust. She has since died and I was her executor. Her husband was my blood uncle and they had no children. While she was still living, she became unable to feed herself, drive safely, and stopped paying her bills regularly. As successor trustee, I took the letter of diagnosis from a psychologist declaring her incompetent with severe dementia and not expected to ever improve, a copy of the trust naming me as successor, the Durable Financial Power of Attorney, and my own identification to BOA to activate my rights to manage her money. Oh, my God! It took months, many in-person meetings, filling out huge amounts of paperwork, leaving work in the middle of the day over and over just to get the rights that were so clearly her intention. BOA gave me the runaround, always promising it was just this easy, but I was so frustrated. And this was with a simple set-up where her bank account was already in the trust and her entire estate consisted of this BOA checking account, a BOA savings account, and a studio condo in DC all in the trust. That's it! Total of around $500k net worth.

And, get this, the savings account was earning 0.01% interest and they refused to move it to anything even though they offered several accounts paying closer to 1-2% at the time. It was horrendous and even the in-person staff who were kind and trying to help had to sit on hold with call centers to get anything done. Hours and hours of my time. UGH!

I was so glad the day the last check to my cousins cashed, I had paid all the taxes, and I could close the account. All in all, it was a 6 year ordeal.

I agree this sounds very painful…but it is much simpler when there is a death and it’s an inheritance situation.

I wonder if your experience would have been any easier at any other large financial institution.

It is just extremely difficult in general to deal with situations like your situation where the person is still alive, have to prove incompetence, etc.

That’s not necessarily true. Our lawyer advised us to use and avoid certain banks/brokerages based on how easy they were to work with in trust scenarios.

This may be the most useful thing I have read on this thread. I definitely believe that if you have more complicated situations like this, it can matter where you bank. Of course the hard part is figuring out the best choice. Based on my experience with their IT systems (through work), I would stay away from Citi, BofA and Truist. Chase seems to have good IT systems, but of course that doesn't mean their compliance folks know what they are doing.

Successor Trustee poster again. I will say the Vanguard account in the trust FBO my aunt was transitioned to me in a matter of days after providing a copy of the trust, diagnosis letter, my identification, and the DPOA. Totally easy and straightforward. Nothing like my experience with BOA. I kept everything at Vanguard invested in the Conservative LifeStrategy Fund and was able to fund her increasing levels of care while she lived her last years. Vangaurd was always a pleasure to deal with. Not so with BOA.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We have a very high net worth and we are fine banking with Bask and Fidelity. As in…our NW grows by $250K per month through passive income and active investments alone. DH and I are both tech savvy, online influencers.

Not sure about all these other losers leaning on trusts, attorneys, and financial advisors. Seems like a foolish move for the older and less intelligent generations…we possess the technical ability and business acumen necessary to successfully invest and manage our own assets.

Assuming you have the skills (which is a big assumption), this is the only way to go.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My husband’s parents use Goldman Sachs’ private bank (Ayco) with minimum $10m and they manage our money too. My husband has a trust set up by his parents and an investment fund with money we make (HHI ~850K and we are late 30s, so not HNW like many posters) and they manage both. Buy in for hedge funds and I think PE is 500K liquid so very different threshold than minimum elsewhere. My mom banks at Boston Private and likes it but I don’t know anything else about their experience.

The Goldman people also connected us with a tax advisor to help with taxes when we started needing to pay quarterly. We had been using TurboTax and then H&R Block and then in our mid-30s when we started owing a lot more because we were making a lot more we had no idea that paying quarterly was even a thing.

Well, that is just pathetic. Most people do not lack financial savvy to this extent. I can't imagine someone being unsophisticated enough to need a freaking banker at Goldman Sachs to tell them they need to file quarterly estimated taxes.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My husband’s parents use Goldman Sachs’ private bank (Ayco) with minimum $10m and they manage our money too. My husband has a trust set up by his parents and an investment fund with money we make (HHI ~850K and we are late 30s, so not HNW like many posters) and they manage both. Buy in for hedge funds and I think PE is 500K liquid so very different threshold than minimum elsewhere. My mom banks at Boston Private and likes it but I don’t know anything else about their experience.

The Goldman people also connected us with a tax advisor to help with taxes when we started needing to pay quarterly. We had been using TurboTax and then H&R Block and then in our mid-30s when we started owing a lot more because we were making a lot more we had no idea that paying quarterly was even a thing.

Well, that is just pathetic. Most people do not lack financial savvy to this extent. I can't imagine someone being unsophisticated enough to need a freaking banker at Goldman Sachs to tell them they need to file quarterly estimated taxes.

The banker at Goldman didn’t tell us. The tax preparer they recommended did. Our prior tax preparer should have told us this was something to look out for but because our incomes jumped quite a bit in a short period of time it didn’t come up. What have you contributed to this conversation other than being an a**?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Get out of BOA/Merril. They are awful to deal with for your heirs. Please. I beg you.

Wait why?? We have a ton of money invested through them and I didn’t know this!! We are leaving a lot to our kids hopefully and my parents are with BOA/Merrill wealth management too!!!
What? Details
Please?

Hi--I'm the poster who said BOA/Merrill was horrible to deal with as an heir. I was the successor trustee for my aunt's trust. She has since died and I was her executor. Her husband was my blood uncle and they had no children. While she was still living, she became unable to feed herself, drive safely, and stopped paying her bills regularly. As successor trustee, I took the letter of diagnosis from a psychologist declaring her incompetent with severe dementia and not expected to ever improve, a copy of the trust naming me as successor, the Durable Financial Power of Attorney, and my own identification to BOA to activate my rights to manage her money. Oh, my God! It took months, many in-person meetings, filling out huge amounts of paperwork, leaving work in the middle of the day over and over just to get the rights that were so clearly her intention. BOA gave me the runaround, always promising it was just this easy, but I was so frustrated. And this was with a simple set-up where her bank account was already in the trust and her entire estate consisted of this BOA checking account, a BOA savings account, and a studio condo in DC all in the trust. That's it! Total of around $500k net worth.

And, get this, the savings account was earning 0.01% interest and they refused to move it to anything even though they offered several accounts paying closer to 1-2% at the time. It was horrendous and even the in-person staff who were kind and trying to help had to sit on hold with call centers to get anything done. Hours and hours of my time. UGH!

I was so glad the day the last check to my cousins cashed, I had paid all the taxes, and I could close the account. All in all, it was a 6 year ordeal.

Wouldn't it have been easier to just get her userid/password and operate the account instead of going through this process?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My husband’s parents use Goldman Sachs’ private bank (Ayco) with minimum $10m and they manage our money too. My husband has a trust set up by his parents and an investment fund with money we make (HHI ~850K and we are late 30s, so not HNW like many posters) and they manage both. Buy in for hedge funds and I think PE is 500K liquid so very different threshold than minimum elsewhere. My mom banks at Boston Private and likes it but I don’t know anything else about their experience.

The Goldman people also connected us with a tax advisor to help with taxes when we started needing to pay quarterly. We had been using TurboTax and then H&R Block and then in our mid-30s when we started owing a lot more because we were making a lot more we had no idea that paying quarterly was even a thing.

Well, that is just pathetic. Most people do not lack financial savvy to this extent. I can't imagine someone being unsophisticated enough to need a freaking banker at Goldman Sachs to tell them they need to file quarterly estimated taxes.

The banker at Goldman didn’t tell us. The tax preparer they recommended did. Our prior tax preparer should have told us this was something to look out for but because our incomes jumped quite a bit in a short period of time it didn’t come up. What have you contributed to this conversation other than being an a**?

DP. Not sure how you missed this, but even basic software like H&R Block will tell you to pay quarterly if you end up owing a lot of money and pay a penalty for a given year. Your previous tax guy just dropped the ball.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My husband’s parents use Goldman Sachs’ private bank (Ayco) with minimum $10m and they manage our money too. My husband has a trust set up by his parents and an investment fund with money we make (HHI ~850K and we are late 30s, so not HNW like many posters) and they manage both. Buy in for hedge funds and I think PE is 500K liquid so very different threshold than minimum elsewhere. My mom banks at Boston Private and likes it but I don’t know anything else about their experience.

The Goldman people also connected us with a tax advisor to help with taxes when we started needing to pay quarterly. We had been using TurboTax and then H&R Block and then in our mid-30s when we started owing a lot more because we were making a lot more we had no idea that paying quarterly was even a thing.

Well, that is just pathetic. Most people do not lack financial savvy to this extent. I can't imagine someone being unsophisticated enough to need a freaking banker at Goldman Sachs to tell them they need to file quarterly estimated taxes.

The banker at Goldman didn’t tell us. The tax preparer they recommended did. Our prior tax preparer should have told us this was something to look out for but because our incomes jumped quite a bit in a short period of time it didn’t come up. What have you contributed to this conversation other than being an a**?

I've contributed a lot.

Someone like you -- who didn't know they needed to make quarterly estimated tax payments -- shouldn't be contributing to any conversation about finances at all.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Get out of BOA/Merril. They are awful to deal with for your heirs. Please. I beg you.

Wait why?? We have a ton of money invested through them and I didn’t know this!! We are leaving a lot to our kids hopefully and my parents are with BOA/Merrill wealth management too!!!
What? Details
Please?

Hi--I'm the poster who said BOA/Merrill was horrible to deal with as an heir. I was the successor trustee for my aunt's trust. She has since died and I was her executor. Her husband was my blood uncle and they had no children. While she was still living, she became unable to feed herself, drive safely, and stopped paying her bills regularly. As successor trustee, I took the letter of diagnosis from a psychologist declaring her incompetent with severe dementia and not expected to ever improve, a copy of the trust naming me as successor, the Durable Financial Power of Attorney, and my own identification to BOA to activate my rights to manage her money. Oh, my God! It took months, many in-person meetings, filling out huge amounts of paperwork, leaving work in the middle of the day over and over just to get the rights that were so clearly her intention. BOA gave me the runaround, always promising it was just this easy, but I was so frustrated. And this was with a simple set-up where her bank account was already in the trust and her entire estate consisted of this BOA checking account, a BOA savings account, and a studio condo in DC all in the trust. That's it! Total of around $500k net worth.

And, get this, the savings account was earning 0.01% interest and they refused to move it to anything even though they offered several accounts paying closer to 1-2% at the time. It was horrendous and even the in-person staff who were kind and trying to help had to sit on hold with call centers to get anything done. Hours and hours of my time. UGH!

I was so glad the day the last check to my cousins cashed, I had paid all the taxes, and I could close the account. All in all, it was a 6 year ordeal.

Wouldn't it have been easier to just get her userid/password and operate the account instead of going through this process?

That’s illegal.