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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Simple question to any financial advisor/wealth management offering - show me you returns that beat the relevant market index net of fees.  It usually stops the discussion and I never hear from them again.  Investing has been made so easy by the likes of Vanguard and Fidelity.  You can buy target date funds that rebalance over time - it doesn't get any simpler.  Why would you give up 1% when you can get professional management basically for free?

I am trying a SMA account that is suppose to map the S&P with additional tax loss harvesting - it has a .9% fee but outperformed the S&P last year by 10 points.  So we'll see.  Professional management that outperforms is worth paying for all day long, it's just not very common, especially for the average investor.[/quote]

A financial advisor putting you in an S&P 500 index fund will not beat you investing directly in that fund ,that's for sure. There would be 2 benefits to an advisor in that case:
1. If you have a different risk profile. They are going to diversify and put some in bonds, some international, etc. This means you are probably less exposed in down years, for example 2008 when the S&P was down 37% in one year, or 2018 when it was down 4% -- you'll probably do better than that.
2. If you need other financial advice -- tax planning, estate planning, etc.

If neither of those apply, then an advisor isn't worth it.

As for target funds, that's not much different from an advisor except you don't get any advice (#2 above). The funds have built-in management fees in the 0.25-0.5% range usually. It's less than a financial advisor, but you also get less service.

There's no right or wrong answer here -- it comes down to your needs and what works best for you.[/quote]

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