Unless you have a very small amount to invest, those seem like quite high fees.
Why can’t you do it yourself? Barring that, why not see an hourly rate financial advisor for a 2-5 hours per year for a tune-up? The National Association of Personal Financial Advisors has a pretty good list of potential candidates. See http://www.napfa.org
I don’t have time or interest to do it myself.
Also, this advisor has been getting consistently much higher rates of return than the portfolio of ETF’s we currently have… So to me, the fees justify the expertise and the increased rate of return.
"Consistently higher rates of return" -- in a market like the past 10 years, it's very easy for advisors to play with Beta, and claim Alpha. Risk Adjusted returns, net of fees are the only numbers you should be looking at. Plus, he's directly incentivized to churn your account with his transactional fees, which is a huge conflict of interest -- and I'm sure not included in his return measures. And, as has been mentioned, 1+% AUM is HIGH. I wouldn't ever recommend someone working under these fee schedules.
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