I would HIGHLY recommend you find an investment manager who is "Fee ONLY." Preferably one who is at least an RIA (Registered Investment Advisor).
There are three kinds of investment managers:
1. Commission based. These will churn your portfolio for the sole purpose of generating commissions (Hello, Fidelity!);
2. Fee-Based. These are part commission, and part fee;
3. Fee ONLY. These charge a percentage of your portfolio (usually about 1% annually taken quarterly) and are motivated to do what is right by you. When YOU make money, THEY make money. Same with the losses.
We have been fortunate to find one in Southern California (we live in FL and TN) who is not only fee-ONLY, she is also a CPA. She knows exactly the tax consequences of the advice she gives. She also fire-tested our retirement plans to ensure we were in a position to be able to retire. She ran our budgets through a software that gives you percentages of success rates of surviving past economic cycles. We were 99% (it never tells you 100%) to survive every past economic cycle in the last century or so, except were were only 95% certain to survive the 1929 Wall St crash and subsequent depression.
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