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My parents recently decided to complain to me about how their retirement savings don't seem to be appreciating very much these days. I asked them if they wanted me to take a look and to my surprise they said yes. It turns out for over the last 15 years they have been using Edward Jones after they changed jobs and wanted to consolidate their 401k's, etc.
I started looking through all of the funds they are in and found that nearly all of them came with a 5.75% load except for the bond funds which were 2.25%. The funds themselves also had a wide range of expense ratios but mostly .5% to 1%. They have also been placed in annuities with something like 1.5% to 2.5% expense ratios. The lack of short term performance in their account seems to be more related to the actual stock market than then fees from Edward Jones but I can only imagine it has cost them a significant amount of money over the longer term.
After reading the plan documents I think my parents are stuck with the annuities for the long term, luckily it is only 25% of the portfolio...if that is luck anyway.
They have about 800k in the retirement fund. My dad will have both a private pension and a small gov't pension of which I cannot even guess what the amounts will be. My mother will have an additional pension. They don't spend much money...like ever. Their goal (which I found interesting that they had one) is to spend 30K per year in retirement.
Neither of my parents really want to make their own investment selections or have to "deal" with the complexity of the issue.
I don't want to be their financial advisor as it would be too much stress so I'm looking to find a good financial advisor option for them. I perused the site here and started down the path of looking at weathshape but the fees didn't seem to be as cheap as the 0.35% described on the page for advisors here.
Does anyone have any suggestions?
I started looking through all of the funds they are in and found that nearly all of them came with a 5.75% load except for the bond funds which were 2.25%. The funds themselves also had a wide range of expense ratios but mostly .5% to 1%. They have also been placed in annuities with something like 1.5% to 2.5% expense ratios. The lack of short term performance in their account seems to be more related to the actual stock market than then fees from Edward Jones but I can only imagine it has cost them a significant amount of money over the longer term.
After reading the plan documents I think my parents are stuck with the annuities for the long term, luckily it is only 25% of the portfolio...if that is luck anyway.
They have about 800k in the retirement fund. My dad will have both a private pension and a small gov't pension of which I cannot even guess what the amounts will be. My mother will have an additional pension. They don't spend much money...like ever. Their goal (which I found interesting that they had one) is to spend 30K per year in retirement.
Neither of my parents really want to make their own investment selections or have to "deal" with the complexity of the issue.
I don't want to be their financial advisor as it would be too much stress so I'm looking to find a good financial advisor option for them. I perused the site here and started down the path of looking at weathshape but the fees didn't seem to be as cheap as the 0.35% described on the page for advisors here.
Does anyone have any suggestions?
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