Is Your Adviser charging You A Fair Price?
 

Is your adviser charging you a fair price and providing the services you want and need?

In our case yes... because I DIY. IOW, we avoid the expenses.


I will spare you the details of our plan and approach. Except to say, it covers all the bases and is based on common methods employed in the industry.

The only things I seek professional help with is estate planning (we use an attorney).

Every once in a while some tax advice or service from a CPA.

What do you consider a fair price and what are your expectations?

The question has been proposed by the Intelligent Investor because most professional advisers simply apply computer models to make predictions and less than 27% apply human intelligence.

Also many annual fees are negotiable and investors are unaware of that fact.
Paying fees of 1.5 and above can be self defeating

You hint at one issue.

Define the service offering!

What exactly are the services that are being performed?

Price should be based upon services performed and size of your portfolio. After a fixed point in time its easy to compare against gains/losses with other indexes.

I pay .05% on my portfolio.

I made a sizable amount of money with this devisified portfolio, and it is managed, by my financial firm. This works for me, as I don't have to worry, because it is in good hands.

Getting good returns, with very little fee.

Yes, I pay myself $100k per year in lieu of giving it to someone who needs to make a tremendous amount of money to fund their personal lifestyle and feed their parent company for overhead costs.

I can buy alot of toys with that money, if I wanted to. :D

Do you actually avoid $100k in expenses each year?

Sure do.

WOW, Gustavo, you must have one hell of a portfolio if it would cost $100k for a CFP to manage it. Can't imagine someone with that amount of money not working with a professional.

By chance do you see dorsal fins circling you now?

;)

No one can look after my money better than me. I have no exotic strategies so I don't need a "real" professional. Most advisors used a canned strategy anyway.

OK - you missed my point. God speed.

I got it.


Some people have turned themselves into experts... combination of formal education, career experience, and self-education.


But, those people tend to be a relatively small segment of the population.

When discussing financial/risk planning and management, people are often not talking about the same things... often one is talking apples and the other is talking oranges.

Many many people read a few articles and dive in and wing it.

To some planning means... I bought low cost mutual funds and pretty much follow basic academic advice on allocation that is commonly available in print media.

Others it also means, tax planning, asset protection, etc. The dustier corners of the planning continuum.