Luv Bunnies
DIS Veteran
- Joined
- Sep 3, 2006
- Messages
- 9,138
After leaving my last job, I rolled my 401(k) over into an IRA. My DH did a lot of research, watched the markets and how the various funds were performing and would occasionally change the investments for both of our IRAs. Of course, the poor market conditions caused us to lose some, but we didn't do too badly. Last year, my DH decided that we should turn our IRAs and a stock account over to a professional advisor. He was interested in a guy who advertises heavily in our area, mostly on the radio. He went to one of his free seminars, liked what he heard and set up an appointment for him to look over our finances.
We went ahead and signed up with the guy for his company to manage our finances, including college accounts for our boys. I wasn't thrilled that his services are fee-based. He charges 1% per year to manage the accounts. Supposedly, he has an arsenal of "nerds" (as he calls them) who continually watch the markets and move their customers' money for maximum profit. He didn't promise any particular results, but said we should do well in the longterm.
I guess I was under the impression that the fees would be automatically deducted from our accounts and it would be mostly transparent to us. However, you can't deduct anything from an IRA without penalties. So my DH said it would all be deducted from our stock account. That didn't turn out to be the case. We have been receiving quarterly bills to cover the fees on all of the accounts. We can withdraw from the stock account, but we have to request a check and it takes a while. We've ended up paying the fees for all of the account from our checking account! That's our money for household expenses and I'm not liking these big quarterly bills.
We just got our statement for last quarter. I know the market has been cruddy lately and I didn't expect we would make money, but we lost quite a bit! We could have lost that much without paying a 1% fee to anyone! After getting that statement, we got a bill for the advisory services! I'm really having a hard time justifying these payments and would like to go back to managing our own investments. My DH thinks it's better to leave the money with the advisor and ride out the poor market. My sister has an advisor, but she doesn't pay any fees out of pocket. Apparently the funds in which he invests her money pays him commissions. Anyone have experience in this kind of situation? Am I being too quick to drop the advisor? What worked best for you?
We went ahead and signed up with the guy for his company to manage our finances, including college accounts for our boys. I wasn't thrilled that his services are fee-based. He charges 1% per year to manage the accounts. Supposedly, he has an arsenal of "nerds" (as he calls them) who continually watch the markets and move their customers' money for maximum profit. He didn't promise any particular results, but said we should do well in the longterm.
I guess I was under the impression that the fees would be automatically deducted from our accounts and it would be mostly transparent to us. However, you can't deduct anything from an IRA without penalties. So my DH said it would all be deducted from our stock account. That didn't turn out to be the case. We have been receiving quarterly bills to cover the fees on all of the accounts. We can withdraw from the stock account, but we have to request a check and it takes a while. We've ended up paying the fees for all of the account from our checking account! That's our money for household expenses and I'm not liking these big quarterly bills.
We just got our statement for last quarter. I know the market has been cruddy lately and I didn't expect we would make money, but we lost quite a bit! We could have lost that much without paying a 1% fee to anyone! After getting that statement, we got a bill for the advisory services! I'm really having a hard time justifying these payments and would like to go back to managing our own investments. My DH thinks it's better to leave the money with the advisor and ride out the poor market. My sister has an advisor, but she doesn't pay any fees out of pocket. Apparently the funds in which he invests her money pays him commissions. Anyone have experience in this kind of situation? Am I being too quick to drop the advisor? What worked best for you?
