No. One would first have to define “GOOD” and that can only be known in retrospect. Everyone should invest according to their own interest and ability. Lacking either then a low cost index fund or 3 or even (shudder) a TDF would be better. An hourly fee-based advisor while making the transition to one’s drawdown phase might make good sense. I think paying for AUM is mainly applicable to the UHNW .
mytimetotravel
8 months ago
I recently calculated that if I had been paying a 1% AUM fee since I retired over twenty years ago I would be out more than $225,000, not counting the lost compounding,. It is inconceivable to me that I would have received anything approaching equivalent value. And that says nothing about the decades before I retired.
I pay a fee-for-service planner to run the numbers for me every few years – it cost me $1,500 last year. I invest almost exclusively in very low cost mutual funds, and occasionally check to see whether I need to re-balance. Very simple.
Boomerst3
8 months ago
No
Martin McCue
8 months ago
No, no matter what the size of one’s portfolio. I recall that years ago, some advisers wanted 2%, and then they “generously” lowered it to 1.5%. But don’t be fooled – even 1% is a lot if you have a decent sized portfolio, and advisers generally do the same thing for someone with $20M as $2M, for ten times more money. (And you will incent them to be “active” when that is generally recognized as being unproductive.)
My first experience with these people was with someone who facilitated option exercises for my employer, so he was holding some of my money at the time. He used his role in the exercise as a way to promote himself as a longer-term adviser. He stayed away from his fee percentage until I had to ask outright what it was. It was 1.5%. I listened to this guy, took a very close look at him, and decided then and there that there was no way THIS guy was going to take ANY slice of my money. I moved it all within a week.
Dennis Hurley
1 year ago
No for 99% of us. See Chap 12 in Harry Sit’s concise 200 page: My Financial Toolbox: The Nuts and Bolts of Managing Your Money. Very practical, recent (Sept 2020), and full of useful information. And $10 for Kindle edition which reads fine even for diagrams, etc. I am 75, PhD in biostatistics, very interested in finance and I still picked up 8 new tricks and confirmed other items I was already doing. Harry also has a blog for late breaking news like I-bond purchases right now.
Matthew Lane
1 year ago
1% of your assets for investment management only? Nah, not likely. For real-life financial planning? To me, yep!
For context, I’m 39 and have paid the 1% percentage point for the services my planner, a CFP(R) professional, provides since 2006. She has been my rock for soooo many things over the years for things that have nothing to do with asset management. She and her firm have saved me and my family likely more than I’ve paid her, particularly tax planning and insurance (she does not sell). We have a real relationship with her that evolves so paying her on a continued basis is warranted because we don’t just “turn her on and off.”
Using the 1% as a proxy to charge for the complexity of your situation and how much planning you need seems appropriate to me (insert Behavior Gap here). Others not so much I guess. Humble Dollar readers likely are skewed toward “no” in my opinion. We cannot lose sight that many many people do not like this stuff like we do, and they’ll gladly pay a fee we view as silly. It’s when the fee is silly and mired in conflict of interest that gets my hackles up.
The flat-fee or fee-only argument is certainly a good one. Kitces and his folks have some stats out there about how most folks prefer their payment to an advisor comes out in the assets under management form (and never really seeing it come out) and not paying as an auto-draft or individual transaction. I dunno. All of em have their flaws. An advisor working on commission by selling me things has too much conflict of interest to me. So how about % of net worth, % of income using Line 9 of your 1040, a % of your NFT portfolio? Honestly if you’ve set a fair fee for fair work and it’s reciprocal, isn’t that what’s best for you?
I am a veterinarian and I view myself as a guide to helping people with their furry loved ones achieve the greatest return on emotional investment in the form of happy, pain-free, disease-free years with their pets. Achieving this is the pinnacle of what success looks like to me. I just recently completed the CFP(R) coursework and plan to sit for the exam in March; not so I can do a career change (but hey who knows), but so I can better understand the awesome things planning can do and so I can be a better guide and advisor for my patients. I cost more. I provide more. What Steve or Danielle or Filbert down the road charge should be irrelevant.
*I wish everyone could take the coursework. The breadth is amazing. The industry just hangs on managing assets and it’s hard for them to scale real financial planning. My opinions of course.
Last edited 1 year ago by Matthew Lane
Rob Thompson
1 year ago
Investing is simple math. So the first question needs to be “Do you need an advisor because you truly can’t do this yourself or are just “refusing” to do this yourself?
Our kids will tell you that I’m always preaching that nobody cares more about your money than you do.
I’m currently trying to “guide” my sister-in-law through the “advisor decision”. She has about $750,000 most of which is managed by a big investment house. The 51 (!!!) mutual and ETF funds they have her in cost almost $600/year. The advisor fee adds another $5500. Yes, that’s $61,000 over the next 10 years and $120,000 plus by the time she is 77 (!!!). And I haven’t even addressed the capital gains taxes as they rebalance monthly.
So if you insist on burying your head in the sand when someone utters the word “investing” then sure pay the 1%. Or suck it up buttercup, learn how to invest in a lazy portfolio, and pay yourself $6 grand a year.
No, if you follow the advice that over the long haul you can’t likely beat the returns from investment in no load Index Funds.
John M
1 year ago
Only if it’s keeping you from making big mistakes. If we assume you were going to put your money in a Target Date Fund appropriate to your age, then under almost any scenario that 1% will cost you over 15% of your final portfolio balance. It’s a pretty steep cost to pay for 30 or 40 years.
Carl Book
1 year ago
If all they are doing is move you’re money around using a robo system, they aren’t adding any value. I would much rather pay a fee for the service provided rather than pay a percentage of assets.
Purple Rain
1 year ago
No. There are fee-only financial advisors who can do the job equally well. Mine charged $1200 for three sessions, well under a percentage of my portfolio.
William Ehart
1 year ago
Only if your own investing impulses really need restraint and you have less than $1 million in assets. If you are prone to shooting yourself in the foot, you probably are costing yourself well more than 1% a year. Following the advice of an advisor may help steer you away from the typical costly mistakes many investors make.
johntlim
2 years ago
This depends on your level of assets. The larger your financial assets, the more likely the answer to this question is no. A good financial advisor can be worth it if she 1) puts your interests ahead of hers; 2) does more than just manage your portfolio; 3) keeps investment expenses very low; and (especially) 4) keeps you from making major behavioral mistakes.
Interesting; however, think about this, if they work for a big firm Vanguard, Fidelity, Schwab, Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs, or any other of hundreds of fiduciaries, can they really “tailor” a portfolio to your needs other than following their internal investment committee portfolio recommendations? I doubt it and they will not let you decide where to invest the money, since you give over full investment discretion to them.
I told them (fiduciaries or non-fiduciary investment advisors) where they could go when I interviewed 15 of them back in 2016, before I retired. Even Vanguard (where I held my 401k and were the distributor of my defined benefit plan assets), would not allow me to “approve” where or how to invest my money, since their portfolio investments/diversification was based on their risk profile questionnaire, which is nothing more than a legal ploy to avoid liability IMO. Oh, and you pay that fee even if they hold some of your money in cash/money market. And, cash is an investment.
Right on! Also nobody mentioned the time it takes to manage a portfolio. I would rather be spending time with my grandchildren than going over financial information. Which you can’t get back no matter how much money you have.
Once you set your asset allocation and choose a mix of low or no cost index mutual funds, all you need to do is rebalance occasionally. You could do fine just checking your balance a couple of times a year.
No. One would first have to define “GOOD” and that can only be known in retrospect. Everyone should invest according to their own interest and ability. Lacking either then a low cost index fund or 3 or even (shudder) a TDF would be better. An hourly fee-based advisor while making the transition to one’s drawdown phase might make good sense. I think paying for AUM is mainly applicable to the UHNW .
I recently calculated that if I had been paying a 1% AUM fee since I retired over twenty years ago I would be out more than $225,000, not counting the lost compounding,. It is inconceivable to me that I would have received anything approaching equivalent value. And that says nothing about the decades before I retired.
I pay a fee-for-service planner to run the numbers for me every few years – it cost me $1,500 last year. I invest almost exclusively in very low cost mutual funds, and occasionally check to see whether I need to re-balance. Very simple.
No
No, no matter what the size of one’s portfolio. I recall that years ago, some advisers wanted 2%, and then they “generously” lowered it to 1.5%. But don’t be fooled – even 1% is a lot if you have a decent sized portfolio, and advisers generally do the same thing for someone with $20M as $2M, for ten times more money. (And you will incent them to be “active” when that is generally recognized as being unproductive.)
My first experience with these people was with someone who facilitated option exercises for my employer, so he was holding some of my money at the time. He used his role in the exercise as a way to promote himself as a longer-term adviser. He stayed away from his fee percentage until I had to ask outright what it was. It was 1.5%. I listened to this guy, took a very close look at him, and decided then and there that there was no way THIS guy was going to take ANY slice of my money. I moved it all within a week.
No for 99% of us. See Chap 12 in Harry Sit’s concise 200 page: My Financial Toolbox: The Nuts and Bolts of Managing Your Money. Very practical, recent (Sept 2020), and full of useful information. And $10 for Kindle edition which reads fine even for diagrams, etc. I am 75, PhD in biostatistics, very interested in finance and I still picked up 8 new tricks and confirmed other items I was already doing. Harry also has a blog for late breaking news like I-bond purchases right now.
1% of your assets for investment management only? Nah, not likely. For real-life financial planning? To me, yep!
For context, I’m 39 and have paid the 1% percentage point for the services my planner, a CFP(R) professional, provides since 2006. She has been my rock for soooo many things over the years for things that have nothing to do with asset management. She and her firm have saved me and my family likely more than I’ve paid her, particularly tax planning and insurance (she does not sell). We have a real relationship with her that evolves so paying her on a continued basis is warranted because we don’t just “turn her on and off.”
Using the 1% as a proxy to charge for the complexity of your situation and how much planning you need seems appropriate to me (insert Behavior Gap here). Others not so much I guess. Humble Dollar readers likely are skewed toward “no” in my opinion. We cannot lose sight that many many people do not like this stuff like we do, and they’ll gladly pay a fee we view as silly. It’s when the fee is silly and mired in conflict of interest that gets my hackles up.
The flat-fee or fee-only argument is certainly a good one. Kitces and his folks have some stats out there about how most folks prefer their payment to an advisor comes out in the assets under management form (and never really seeing it come out) and not paying as an auto-draft or individual transaction. I dunno. All of em have their flaws. An advisor working on commission by selling me things has too much conflict of interest to me. So how about % of net worth, % of income using Line 9 of your 1040, a % of your NFT portfolio? Honestly if you’ve set a fair fee for fair work and it’s reciprocal, isn’t that what’s best for you?
I am a veterinarian and I view myself as a guide to helping people with their furry loved ones achieve the greatest return on emotional investment in the form of happy, pain-free, disease-free years with their pets. Achieving this is the pinnacle of what success looks like to me. I just recently completed the CFP(R) coursework and plan to sit for the exam in March; not so I can do a career change (but hey who knows), but so I can better understand the awesome things planning can do and so I can be a better guide and advisor for my patients. I cost more. I provide more. What Steve or Danielle or Filbert down the road charge should be irrelevant.
*I wish everyone could take the coursework. The breadth is amazing. The industry just hangs on managing assets and it’s hard for them to scale real financial planning. My opinions of course.
Investing is simple math. So the first question needs to be “Do you need an advisor because you truly can’t do this yourself or are just “refusing” to do this yourself?
Our kids will tell you that I’m always preaching that nobody cares more about your money than you do.
I’m currently trying to “guide” my sister-in-law through the “advisor decision”. She has about $750,000 most of which is managed by a big investment house. The 51 (!!!) mutual and ETF funds they have her in cost almost $600/year. The advisor fee adds another $5500. Yes, that’s $61,000 over the next 10 years and $120,000 plus by the time she is 77 (!!!). And I haven’t even addressed the capital gains taxes as they rebalance monthly.
So if you insist on burying your head in the sand when someone utters the word “investing” then sure pay the 1%. Or suck it up buttercup, learn how to invest in a lazy portfolio, and pay yourself $6 grand a year.
In a word: EXACTLY!
No, if you follow the advice that over the long haul you can’t likely beat the returns from investment in no load Index Funds.
Only if it’s keeping you from making big mistakes. If we assume you were going to put your money in a Target Date Fund appropriate to your age, then under almost any scenario that 1% will cost you over 15% of your final portfolio balance. It’s a pretty steep cost to pay for 30 or 40 years.
If all they are doing is move you’re money around using a robo system, they aren’t adding any value. I would much rather pay a fee for the service provided rather than pay a percentage of assets.
No. There are fee-only financial advisors who can do the job equally well. Mine charged $1200 for three sessions, well under a percentage of my portfolio.
Only if your own investing impulses really need restraint and you have less than $1 million in assets. If you are prone to shooting yourself in the foot, you probably are costing yourself well more than 1% a year. Following the advice of an advisor may help steer you away from the typical costly mistakes many investors make.
This depends on your level of assets. The larger your financial assets, the more likely the answer to this question is no. A good financial advisor can be worth it if she 1) puts your interests ahead of hers; 2) does more than just manage your portfolio; 3) keeps investment expenses very low; and (especially) 4) keeps you from making major behavioral mistakes.
Interesting; however, think about this, if they work for a big firm Vanguard, Fidelity, Schwab, Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs, or any other of hundreds of fiduciaries, can they really “tailor” a portfolio to your needs other than following their internal investment committee portfolio recommendations? I doubt it and they will not let you decide where to invest the money, since you give over full investment discretion to them.
I told them (fiduciaries or non-fiduciary investment advisors) where they could go when I interviewed 15 of them back in 2016, before I retired. Even Vanguard (where I held my 401k and were the distributor of my defined benefit plan assets), would not allow me to “approve” where or how to invest my money, since their portfolio investments/diversification was based on their risk profile questionnaire, which is nothing more than a legal ploy to avoid liability IMO. Oh, and you pay that fee even if they hold some of your money in cash/money market. And, cash is an investment.
Food For Thought!
Right on! Also nobody mentioned the time it takes to manage a portfolio. I would rather be spending time with my grandchildren than going over financial information. Which you can’t get back no matter how much money you have.
Once you set your asset allocation and choose a mix of low or no cost index mutual funds, all you need to do is rebalance occasionally. You could do fine just checking your balance a couple of times a year.