How to terminate a fee based financial advisor ?

[Anonymous]

Ours charges a percentage of assets under management and really isn’t getting us better than standard market returns.
How to we terminate him? Do we just open an account with a company like Schwab and move assets so we can manage them ourselves? Right now, we log into his company’s online platform to view our investments ( which are a mix of ETFs, mutual funds …)

[Anonymous]

We did this. We said "we think your fees are too high and we are not getting the returns that we want. We are going to move our funds to Charles Schwab and go it ourselves." and then we had Charles Schwab move the money for us, we didn't have to do anything except sign something.

[Anonymous]

If you’re hiring an advisor to beat the market, you’re hiring them for the wrong reason. Any good advisor would be honest about that.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We did this. We said "we think your fees are too high and we are not getting the returns that we want. We are going to move our funds to Charles Schwab and go it ourselves." and then we had Charles Schwab move the money for us, we didn't have to do anything except sign something.

How much did you have and how much do you pay CS?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We did this. We said "we think your fees are too high and we are not getting the returns that we want. We are going to move our funds to Charles Schwab and go it ourselves." and then we had Charles Schwab move the money for us, we didn't have to do anything except sign something.

How much did you have and how much do you pay CS?

We have about $5M invested with him and he charges 0.5%.
He meets with us about 2-3 times a year to go over the investments, switch some things around … but our returns haven’t been better than the market for the past few years so I’m not sure what we are paying $25K a year for.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:If you’re hiring an advisor to beat the market, you’re hiring them for the wrong reason. Any good advisor would be honest about that.

What’s the point then of paying someone a good chunk of your profits if they aren’t getting you better returns? We can all put our money in something like SPY or VOO and slowly move to more conservative investments as we get closer to retirement .

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:If you’re hiring an advisor to beat the market, you’re hiring them for the wrong reason. Any good advisor would be honest about that.

It makes precisely zero sense to pay for AUM if you arent beating the market. Otherwise a flat fee would make more sense if you're paying for advice.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We did this. We said "we think your fees are too high and we are not getting the returns that we want. We are going to move our funds to Charles Schwab and go it ourselves." and then we had Charles Schwab move the money for us, we didn't have to do anything except sign something.

How much did you have and how much do you pay CS?

We have about $5M invested with him and he charges 0.5%.
He meets with us about 2-3 times a year to go over the investments, switch some things around … but our returns haven’t been better than the market for the past few years so I’m not sure what we are paying $25K a year for.

OMG, I turned the $25k into $200k in 2 years. They are not allowed to do that for you and you are paying for that.

[Anonymous]

We pay our advisor the same rate as the OP and he also did not beat the market. Our funds are invested in about 60% equity, so we don't expect them to beat or even match the market. Year to date as of 8/31, our return is 7%. I think that is adequate considering our allocation.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We did this. We said "we think your fees are too high and we are not getting the returns that we want. We are going to move our funds to Charles Schwab and go it ourselves." and then we had Charles Schwab move the money for us, we didn't have to do anything except sign something.

How much did you have and how much do you pay CS?

We have about $5M invested with him and he charges 0.5%.
He meets with us about 2-3 times a year to go over the investments, switch some things around … but our returns haven’t been better than the market for the past few years so I’m not sure what we are paying $25K a year for.

Are you the OP or the person who switched to Charles Schwab?

[Anonymous]

When we discontinued using our CFP, we just notified him by email stating that. Our funds were already on Schwab, but he was listed as manager, so the funds just became “self directed”.

I’m all in favor of managing your own investments but I do not think “standard market returns” is a good way to evaluate whether or not your CFP is good for you.

[Anonymous]

open an account where you want to move them and that company will send you the paperwork to complete to have them transferred. They take care of notify and moving the assets.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We did this. We said "we think your fees are too high and we are not getting the returns that we want. We are going to move our funds to Charles Schwab and go it ourselves." and then we had Charles Schwab move the money for us, we didn't have to do anything except sign something.

How much did you have and how much do you pay CS?

We have about $5M invested with him and he charges 0.5%.
He meets with us about 2-3 times a year to go over the investments, switch some things around … but our returns haven’t been better than the market for the past few years so I’m not sure what we are paying $25K a year for.

If you had researched this ahead, you would find that multiple studies confirm what you experienced. So you wasted money but at least you figured it out.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We did this. We said "we think your fees are too high and we are not getting the returns that we want. We are going to move our funds to Charles Schwab and go it ourselves." and then we had Charles Schwab move the money for us, we didn't have to do anything except sign something.

How much did you have and how much do you pay CS?

Like I said, we decided to go it alone with CS, but we are using their intelligent portfolio, so we pay $350/year and meet with an advisor 2-3 times a year. We meet with the same advisor every time but you don't have to.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We did this. We said "we think your fees are too high and we are not getting the returns that we want. We are going to move our funds to Charles Schwab and go it ourselves." and then we had Charles Schwab move the money for us, we didn't have to do anything except sign something.

How much did you have and how much do you pay CS?

We have about $5M invested with him and he charges 0.5%.
He meets with us about 2-3 times a year to go over the investments, switch some things around … but our returns haven’t been better than the market for the past few years so I’m not sure what we are paying $25K a year for.

Are you the OP or the person who switched to Charles Schwab?

I'm the person who switched to Charles Schwab and that was not me