[Barbara]

I know the opinion on financial advisors, but I’m going to ask about my situation anyway haha.

I’m wanting feedback and your experiences NOT having a financial advisor, because I’m considering leaving mine but also second-guessing myself.

My parents started using Falcon Wealth Advisors (a Kansas City firm of Hightower Advisors out of Chicago) about 4-5 years ago shortly after my dad retired and before my mom was going to.

They really liked their experience and encouraged me to sign up with them.

Now that I’m more proactive about my finances and starting to research FI, I honestly don’t even know why they took me on as a client back then because I barely had anything other than a decent 401K.

They handle $1M+ accounts.

They did put together a nice packet for us with our balance sheet, asset allocation, and a lifetime portfolio estimate based on our current retirement accounts.

In 2020 before the pandemic hit, I gave them $1000 to start an Roth IRA they manage through Schwab.

I have not touched that account since then.

I had gotten divorced a few years before that and my exhusband had really decimated our finances so I was slowly rebuilding and paying off consumer debt.

Got remarried in 2020, pandemic hit, had a baby, and now we finally almost have the higher interest consumer debt paid off and are about to be debt-free other than the mortgage. We both recently had promotions with higher salaries (and me a bonus)

so that we can get serious about hopefully getting retirement into better shape. (Live off my salary, while saving/investing my husband’s.)

The Roth with them is now about $1700 – 29% of it is cash/money market, and 71% is individual stocks I believe.

If I remember correctly, they charge a 1% fee (which decreases as your total investments increase) – I have a couple cents coming out every month in ADR management fees, and then a $3-4 advisor fee coming out every 3 months.

Which over the 4+ years I’ve used them, is only about $50 which really doesn’t even pay for the services they’ve provided so far.

I’m considering just cutting my (thankfully small) losses with them, opening a Fidelity brokerage and Roth IRA, and have Fidelity contact Schwab to move that money over.

Handling our investments myself and then working with a fee only advisor when we need advice and closer to retirement when we need to figure out a draw down strategy.

I made the mistake of mentioning this to my mom who thought it wasn’t a good idea, then just happened to listen to a Money Guys podcast episode this morning where they discussed hiring one not always being a bad thing.

So now I’m second guessing myself.

BUT, unless we’re able to really do well with throwing money at investments, we probably won’t retire for another 22-27 years.

As we (hopefully) grow our savings and investments, I know that 1% fee of theirs is going to really add up over the next ~25 years and I’m not sure that they will make us THAT much more to make it worth it?

Currently reading “I Will Teach You to be Rich” by Ramit Sethi, and I have The Simple Path to Wealth and The Little Book of Common Sense Investing on the way, and in general trying to research online as much as I can between work and managing a toddler.

I guess I’m just looking for reassurance that people are able to do this and be successful with it.

My husband thankfully is fine with whatever I want to do, but hates handling money, so I do all of it.

I consider myself reasonably intelligent and have a MBA, but I’m waffling daily on whether I can really do this by myself and build a comfortable retirement for us and set our daughter up well.

If you got this far, I really appreciate it.

[Lori]

My parents “guy” RIPPED them off. Fired his ass. I handle it all at Schwab and Vanguard.

I have hired a FA flat fee twice in last decade to take a look, give me ideas, tax and conversion advice.

$350 for a year.

Money well spent.

[Betsy]

Barbara Halter Ford just call and say you’re moving your account to Fidelity.

Be pleasant but feel no need to offer a lengthy explanation.

If there is a lot of pushback, don’t engage.

Just thank him for his past work, say you’ve made the decision and the wheels are already in motion.

It’s your money. You get to decide where it goes.

[Lori]

Barbara Halter Ford I just opened “inherited” accounts as they couldn’t mix into mine.

Did the electronic transfer request.

I didn’t call the “guy” believe me he knew it was coming.

[Adam]

You can absolutely do this without an advisor (and this is coming from a financial advisor myself).

There is no need for you to have someone else manage your investments as long as you take the steps to learn enough about it yourself and you’re already on the right track.

As you mentioned, there are plenty of us who can provide advice-only financial planning which goes beyond investment management, so that can be very valuable especially to get the foundation set and during bigger life events, but the investment side of things is not that difficult to DIY.

[Martina]

Girl, there is 0 doubt in my mind you can 1000% do this. I get the time constraints, and here’s what I would say:

focus your time & energy at understanding and developing an asset allocation strategy.

There will be lots of gurus that have the “best allocation strategy” but its really somewhat of a personal thing to a degree, so educate yourself on that, develop a plan, and then use index funds to build it.

Then you can just auto-contribute and leave it alone for years, with maybe an annual rebalance if needed.

I think this is the quickest, least time invested win for you.

Over time you can get more educated and more hands-on, but this will get you 80% of the way there and get the ball rolling in a low fee way.

Good luck!

[Richard]

No need to spend 1% for someone to manage your investments at this stage.

Maybe when you get close to retirement and you have a lot of moving parts you can reevaluate.

[Bill]

There are good fee only financial advisors. If you need help, you can pay someone a flat fee or for a certain number of hours.

There isn’t good reason to pay 1% forever though.

[Justin]

You can do it.
The fees are what kill you.

If you need guidance there are fee only advisors to help you lay out a plan.

[Amy]

A 1% AUM will cost you 18% of your investment over 20 years. It will cost you 26% over 30 years.

If you can learn to manage your own investments, you’ll be better off for it.

Fortunately, the investments you need during accumulation are simple—100% equities is good.

You can automate your investments so that there’s really not much for you to do other than wait for your money to grow.

While you’re waiting, keep reading and learning so that you know how to transition your investments for retirement when the time comes.

[张扬]

You are obviously a very smart person, and once you’ve read the books you mentioned, you’ll realize that anyone can manage their own investments if they can follow a few basic principles and avoid reacting out of fear or greed.

Getting second opinions can be valuable, and there are advice-only professionals as well as places to get free peer reviews such as here and on the Bogleheads forum.

You’ve got this.

No one else is more vested in your success than you, so keep going!

[Kevin]

You can do this! Dump the advisor and just use index funds for the next 20+ years!

[Author]

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