Financial Advisor Review
 

Has anyone dealt with Steven Van Voorhees from the Ameriprise office on Wedgewood Lane? If so, what are your opinions? Are there any other financial advisors you would recommend?

Check the professional qualifications. Look them up and make sure they are not just letters given to anyone.
Look at your expenses.
Go to several companies and compare.
Ask for performance data for current clients.
How much experience? What has his personal investing results been?

www.finara.org to check on any financial person.

I suggest you look at paulmerriman dot com and read his three FREE ebooks as part of making your investment choices.

Books:
Get Smart or Get Screwed
- How to-select the best and get the most from your financial advisor

First Time Investor
- Grow and Protect your Money

101 Investment-Decisions

JMHO

Jayne Wakeman with Edward Jones on 466 by Bonefish Grille. Our Financial Advisor for the last 10 years. She is in the top 3% of 1000's of EJ Advisors. I would highly recommend her.

I have used Ameriprise for several years, but I kept me advisor from up North, and have not used the local office. I have been happy with the experience with Ameriprise.

If you hire an advisor, I would make them sign this pledge. We work too hard for our money and retirement to be sold stuff we don't need and charged high fees or hidden fees.

Most people think it is ok to pay a 1% fee but in reality, this fee is more like a 20% fee from profits. Let me give you an example.

The gold standard for institutional portfolios is a 60% stock and 40% bond portfolio. Most advisors/ individual investors have a difficult time beating Vanguard index funds after fees.

Vanguard LifeStrategy Moderate Growth (VSMGX) is a 60/40 portfolio. 10 year return is 4.97%. Most advisors can't beat this before their advisor fee. So if you pay a 1% advisor fee, you are paying 20% of your return each year! 1%/5%

Times have changed. Most real, fee only advisors should be charging around .5% to .6% for a $500k portfolio (depending on the scope of work).

Bogle vs. Goliath

How the Bogle Model Beats the Yale Model

Good luck.

Example. $500,000 portfolio. Withdraw 4% per year=$20,000. Advisor fee 1% per year = $5,000. Bottom line 20% of your annual withdrawal goes to those friendly folks who should be fulfilling their fiduciary responsibilities.

I have never paid a penny to a financial advisor. In my opinion, Vanguard index funds are all that any investor needs. Your financial portfolio is too important to trust it to a financial advisor, many of which are not trustworthy. With a little knowledge, you can do it yourself. It's just not that complicated.

That link should be FINRA.org

follow up question. Are there any "fee only" financial planning companies in the villages?

this is interesting information. I wish I could do it myself and work with Vanguard, however, my minor experience with Vanguard was not a good one. I look at it this way, if I make enough money with a full service FP, then I am happy. I am not trusting me to invest wisely for the money I worked hard to attain for retirement.

anyone have history with Merrill Lynch in the villages? comments?

I will teach you how to do it yourself for free. It is really easy. And I like Vanguard, but if you prefer Fidelity or Schwab, I can show you how to do it with them for free. Hiring a financial advisor is throwing away money. And you will NEVER, and I repeat NEVER make enough money with a full service advisor to justify their cost. There is only one way they can improve returns and that is take more risk. And that will eventually hurt you significantly. You cannot get higher returns without taking on higher risk.

I will teach you or anyone else how to manage your own investments in a very short time. Your workload doing it once set up will be less than 1 hour a year. Pretty good pay for a 1% savings on your investment $$$. And that is the minimum savings.

:BigApplause: I agree.