Done with financial advisers, need advice from DIY investors

[rq]

Leaving my financial adviser (and all advisers in general) because the % of AUM fee model is excessive and expensive. Even flat-fee options I explored were no less than $1800/yr and that adds up over time. I realize this is controversial but there an old thread on this topic for those that want to debate.  :P

 

My question for the DIY folks: how are you holistically looking at all of your accounts to determine asset allocation, especially to rebalance? Between mine and my wife's taxable and tax-advantaged accounts, there are 10 accounts. The account aggregation software I've looked at include:

• Rightcapital, $100/month


• Personal Capital, free but not very specific


• Vanguard Watch , free, but has some inaccuracies.


• Sharesight, seems catered to overseas investors.


• Have no idea how to make my own spreadsheet

 

Any tips appreciated !!

 

 

[PhysicianOnFIRE]

It's worth learning how to use a spreadsheet like Excel. If you've seen my Guide to DIY, a snapshot of the one I use is there. It might take a few hours to set up, but after that it's just a matter of updating it when you want to. I still use Personal Capital to track all the accounts, which makes updating the spreadsheet a breeze.

I've thought about making an Excel template, but it really has to be individualized.

[rq]

Ok, will give learning spreadsheets a try. Looks like google finance can be used in the google spreadsheets for extracting data such as NAV. Thank you.

[childay]

Personal capital works decently.  With 10 accounts I would try PC first and see if you need to bother with a spreadsheet.  PC gives you percentages of the total and the $ amounts.  So if you want 30% of stocks to be international for instance you still have to do some math (ie: use a spreadsheet)..

[The White Coat Investor]

I've been using a spreadsheet for years. When I update it every couple of months or so I simply go to all my investing accounts and put in the NAVs manually. Excel has a function that will pull in the NAVs, but I found it unreliable years ago and stopped using it. Maybe it's better now.

These tasks seem intimidating at first, but they're really pretty basic. This is a low value function from a financial advisor in my opinion. I mean, it doesn't make any sense if you mow your own lawn, do your own vacuuming, wash your own car etc and then pay somebody else $10K to run a spreadsheet for you.

[Sneezy]

Sorry if everyone already know this but both Google and Yahoo finance sites allow you to put in your own set of ticker symbols so you can just read off all your symbols quickly whenever you want to update your spreadsheet.

Only takes a few minutes to set up.

[conniebird]

PhysicianOnFIRE wrote:

It’s worth learning how to use a spreadsheet like Excel. If you’ve seen my Guide to DIY, a snapshot of the one I use is there. It might take a few hours to set up, but after that it’s just a matter of updating it when you want to. I still use Personal Capital to track all the accounts, which makes updating the spreadsheet a breeze.

I’ve thought about making an Excel template, but it really has to be individualized.

Click to expand...

I really like this article And actually recently shared it with a group of female MDs.

I use this excel template I found on doughroller, really like it and it's google docs based: http://www.doughroller.net/investing/an-awesome-and-free-investment-tracking-spreadsheet. I still use Personal Capital to see how things are going, but this spreadsheet is great - nice graphics too. Once you add your investments, just need to update the # shares you own of each 1-2 times a year.

[mgarf]

The lack of a handy investment re-balancing tool to track my and my wife's accounts lead me to make an iphone/ipad app that does it for you! It gets current prices from the web... all you need to do is put in your initial asset proportions and how much you'd like to contribute. Here's a link to a screenshot of it in action:



 

Visit www.investlogic.ca for a link to it in the appstore.

Hope you guys find it useful! Feedback is very welcome, it was just released last week.

 

 

 

 

[huruta]

We also just have all of our many tax deferred accounts and our portfolio allocations in an excel spreadsheet. We update it once a year and rebalance. It took several hours over a couple of days to set up and it takes an afternoon to update.