[tommy steam]

Originally Posted by l2ridehd

Managing "your" money is really very simple, so why pay someone else to do it. Pick the lowest cost mutual funds you can find, Vanguard or Fidelity Spartan funds work just fine. Set up a very diversified portfolio covering the globe with an asset allocation to match your age -15. If you are 60, then go with 45% bonds and 55% stocks. Re-balance once a year and adjust the % to map to your new age. Go to lazytraders.com if you need advice on funds to select to map to a global market. Use all index funds which have a cost basis of under 15 basis points where you will pay an advisory 100 to 150 basis points. Because your paying such small fees, you will beat 85% of all wealth advisers every year. This has been proven over and over by any measure you want to use. And yes, every money manager will tell you they can do better. They can't. And I am sure there will be many responses of folks that tell you they have done better. They are embellishing. Anyone can beat the market for a day, a week, maybe a few months. No one can do it long term, for which we all need to do. Even Peter Lynch who did it for several years got out because he said he could not continue to beat the market averages.

The people who get rich in the market are the ones who manage other peoples money and collect fees for doing it. People who trade stocks for you and charge for it. The people who want to sell you something and charge a fee for doing it.

you have given great advice..only thing would add to that ,if one must go to an advisor, find a Fee Only Advisor...google it for the area you live in....They usually charge by the hour.