Anonymous wrote:I use one, I paid about $2500 the first year and then pay about $500-$1000 per year to check up. He's great about answering quick questions over email in between. I don't have him manage money, just evaluate the funds and allocations in my investment accounts.

Whoever you use, you want a fee-only fiduciary. The fiduciary part is key!

How did you go about finding yours?

Anonymous wrote:I use one, I paid about $2500 the first year and then pay about $500-$1000 per year to check up. He's great about answering quick questions over email in between. I don't have him manage money, just evaluate the funds and allocations in my investment accounts.

Whoever you use, you want a fee-only fiduciary. The fiduciary part is key!

This is how you do it. Advisors charging a percentage of your assets are generally a big rip-off. The only exception I can think of is Vanguard PAS. And you have to be dumber than a box of rocks if you think that Chatgpt is a replacent for an advisor or someone with actual knowledge.

It isn't brain surgery anymore, there is a lot of investing/financial info on the internet. And now with AI, you can ask Chatgpt if Roth conversions makes sense for you, after giving it your particulars. And it will run scenarios for you on the conversion strategy. That is just one example. But if one doesn't have the time or interest, pay someone a 1% fee to get your accts set up. And you can transfer accts to another firm after a time frame.

A close family member of mine is a financial planner. I have no idea why anyone would ever use a financial planner. It boggles the mind. I don't care how rich you are. All this information is free. And you can practically run a financial firm using just free tools through your standard big firm online.

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]We don't use one. We read Bogle's book, read Bogleheads online, and put our savings and investments in low cost stock index funds. [/quote]

What type of index funds? S&P 500? International large cap?[/quote]

We always avoid international to avoid exchange rate risks.

Most funds are in low-cost S&P500 index. A little in Extended Market Index Fund. We use Vanguard when we have a choice, because they have consistently low fees.

401(k) uses Fidelity, so that money is in Fidelity's S&P500 index fund. Usually this also is low cost, but watch out for the 401(k) fees.

Also, we do not try to "time" the market. We don't trade funds; we mostly avoid watching their value week to week. We just let things compound.

(For any Feds reading, the TSP C-fund is a very low cost S&P500 index fund.)

Anonymous wrote:We don't use one. We read Bogle's book, read Bogleheads online, and put our savings and investments in low cost stock index funds.

What type of index funds? S&P 500? International large cap?

Anonymous wrote:Fidelity Investments is a very good co that’s family run by the Johnsons. They’ve never been part of a major scandal in 80 years in business. I wouldn’t know the first thing in how to invest money so I leave it up to the experts. They take a percentage, the more money you have with them the smaller the percentage.

This is not good advice. If you are going to use an advisor, use an independent advisor (known as an RIA), not one who works for the funds they want to sell you. I guarantee PP's funds are in a bunch of Fidelity funds, even if there are better non-Fidelity options out there.

Anonymous wrote:How hard is it to manage a few million dollars on your own? Get a good accountant for tax purposes. Get an app to run retirement scenarios.

Any you suggest?

How hard is it to manage a few million dollars on your own? Get a good accountant for tax purposes. Get an app to run retirement scenarios.

We pay 1% of assets managed which is typically the case for most CFPs - not net worth. It’s 1% for assets under $5mil. This is our first year with a CFP and only have $1m currently being managed by our advisor. I also interviewed fixed fee advisors which included creating a financial plan which we would manage ourselves and were quoted approximately $4k-6k. We opted for AUM fixed fee since it would be 10k for the plan and management. We both have ADHD and busy lives so we doubted we’d be able to manage or funds effectively (which was a good call since I’ve failed to managed some of our savings we didn’t invest with our advisors). Their recommendations have also been really helpful in these uncertain times and our risk profile - they found some investment options I never knew existed and talking to some friends are less known. For us it’s been worth it but I do plan on self managing in the future once we get the hang of things.

It's worth taking a look at the effect of financial advisor fees on your portfolio to analyze how much it will cost. The advisors like to say 1% because it sounds so small; however, it really adds up over time. For someone like you with likely 20 years ahead of you, paying 1% will mean you end up with 18% less money at your death. If you have 30 years with this advisor, that become over 25% less money. If that is worth it to you, then proceed. Many people find that intolerable and learn to invest themselves with simple portfolios and index funds.

Here is some reading material:

https://www.bogleheads.org/wiki/How_much_do_you_lose_to_annual_fees_after_many_years%3F

https://web.archive.org/web/20161110064941/http://vanguardblog.com/2011/10/28/stopping-the-silent-killer-of-returns/

1% on a $3M portfolio is very high. I pay 0.6% AUM on a $2.6M portfolio, and I still think it’s too much for the services provided.

I use one, I paid about $2500 the first year and then pay about $500-$1000 per year to check up. He's great about answering quick questions over email in between. I don't have him manage money, just evaluate the funds and allocations in my investment accounts.

Whoever you use, you want a fee-only fiduciary. The fiduciary part is key!

We don't use one. We read Bogle's book, read Bogleheads online, and put our savings and investments in low cost stock index funds.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We had a planner in the past. Had a good experience but decided to DYI a few years ago as we didn’t like the AUM fees of 1%.

There are a lot of resources now that weren’t around several years ago. We’ve learned a lot and rely on our accountant. We also have a free planner with Schwab as our account balances have as that perk.

Along with saving the AUM fees, one of the other advantages with DYI is that it made us really get more familiar with finances and retirement planning. We’re able to ask a lot better questions now.

I don’t hate planners like the PP said but I do think it’s easier to DYI if that’s what you want to do. If not, an hourly or fee only fiduciary is what you should look for.

DYI?

DIY.

Sorry. Not sure how that happened.