Smith Barney vs. USAA investments

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I believe USAA is non-profit/credit union. Great company - they've always been more than fair with costs, awesome customer service. I believe any mutual fund would be available from them.

But the best way to decide is to compare costs charged by each to manage your accounts and engage in buy/sell investment transactions. USAA doesn't charge fees except for when you trade stocks/funds/ETFs - I think the amounts vary depending on either how much you trade or the amount of assets you hold with them, but they are generally low compared to other companies.

What you may lose with USAA is some level of investment advice. They have investment advisors that you can speak with to help plan and change your portfolio (I haven't done that, so I can't speak to quality), but no one is going to sit and monitor your investments for you - you're going to have to be responsible about sitting down once a year or so and looking at and possibly rebalancing your portfolio, and contacting USAA if you feel you need some guidance. But on the other hand, I suspect Smith Barney charges a good amount of money for a broker who may not be adding much to the growth of your money.

We have money at both SmithBarney (now Morgan Stanley/Smith Barney) and USAA and I agree with this completely. We love USAA, and the funds we have there have done well. However, you will not get a real "financial advisor" there who watches your assets for you. Depending on how much you have to invest, it may not make financial sense to have a financial advisor (the fees go down if you have more money invested), but our advisor as MS/SB has served us very well over the years. Our funds consistently outperform the market, and, while no one is perfect (he's picked one or two losers), he has consistently guided us in the right direction. For example, we bought gold funds a couple of years ago, and predicting the current market instability, he advised us to start moving our riskier investments to cash a month or so back. He makes sure we are diversified, but changes the mix based upon where he thinks the market is going. We actually made money today (even though the Dow was down over 500 points). We do pay, but it has been worth it over the years.