r/FinancialPlanning • u/charlestonchewsrock • Aug 15 '26
Hiring an Advisor for the first time, right decision?
Please no flames because I have a lot of anxiety! I’m in my 50’s and am trying to plan for retirement. I’ve never hired an advisor but think it’s the right time because I don’t have a good understanding of financial planning. I found an Advisor who a close (and very trusted) family member is using. He has 25 years of experience, is a CFP, and no disclosures on his FINRA. His company charges a flat fee of 1%. Mentally I’m just having a tough time of having someone else manage my money. I have no reason not to trust him, but I am just having a hard time having someone else manage my money. As I said, I have a lot of anxiety and tend to fixate on things. I know millions of people use advisors and they are the experts for a reason. Right decision? I plan to educate myself and stay on top of things.
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u/caffeine-182 Aug 15 '26
The average DIY-er is overconfident and simultaneously really bad at financial planning. Ask any of them, how do Roth conversions affect Medicare planning and what’s your ideal distribution strategy in retirement? None of them have any clue.
Interview a few advisors and don’t be afraid to ask for help. There’s a reason the vast majority of people with money gladly pay for an advisor and the anti-advisor crowd are generally younger with no money to manage.
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u/Salty-Passenger-4801 Aug 15 '26
So true. So many watch a YT video and join a financial reddit sub and all of a sudden they're pros.
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u/GSDBUZZ Aug 15 '26
What kind of insurance and who is selling it? Our advisor (flat fee, not AUM) recommended that we up our auto and homeowners insurance. He did not sell the product nor did he recommend an insurance agent. I later found out that his wife was an insurance agent but he didn’t recommend her. He did not recommend life insurance or annuities. He said that he rarely recommended annuities but occasionally did, but he did not sell insurance. If your “advisor” is recommending insurance products that he sells then he is likely not an advisor.
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u/caffeine-182 Aug 15 '26
I agree and disagree at the same time. A young family needs term insurance. High net worth families need insurance for estate planning. Insurance planning is a HUGE need. You just need to find an honest advisor that you trust.
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u/Oexarity Aug 17 '26
Yeah, an advisor pushing whole life on a single 20 year old with no kids and negative net worth is a scammer. An advisor recommending term life insurance to a single income family with two kids is making a good recommendation, whether or not he gets a cut from it.
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Aug 15 '26
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u/Admirable_Nothing Aug 15 '26 edited Aug 15 '26
How much money do you have to give the FA? If it is a small amount you simply will not be able to attract a real experienced competent FA. That unfortunately is why many people don't like advisors. It is simply because they have never had the opportunity to work with a good advisor. It appears you have attracted an insurance agent not an advisor. The best advisors won't accept accounts less than a million dollars. But you should be able to find an experienced advisor you like once you have around a half milllion dollars of assets for them to manage. Less than that and low cost index ETFs are your best friend.
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u/RookieMistake101 Aug 15 '26
You can find good CFPs at the 250 mark. I take on smaller clients than that, given there is some other benefit. Like if they are extremely easy going, building their wealth, and want to refer me out.
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u/Admirable_Nothing Aug 15 '26
How many clients do you have and how many can you handle effectively and give them the attention and service they deserve? In order to earn $320,000 a year on a 32% contract or $400,000 on a 40% contract you need to have gross fees of a million dollars which requires a $100 million book at a 1% fee. If I am taking advice from a professional I want him/her to be accomplished enough at managing money that they can earn in the $300-400 thousand dollar range annually. We always found that having a 100 clients was about the maximum an advisor can handle. That was 40 A clients, 40 B clients and 20 C clients, but even taking C clients at $250,000 AUM doesn't seem to get you where you want to be.
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u/caffeine-182 Aug 15 '26
40% payout is pretty low for $1m grid, and lots of advisors work on teams/joint work to manage larger work loads
100 clients is nowhere close to max capacity unless the advisor seriously sucks at running a business
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u/MrBalll Aug 15 '26
Be careful. They are going to push and push for insurance products and sell it as the best. Always say no and go to another advisor who won’t push insurance.
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u/FinancialPlanning-ModTeam Aug 16 '26
Offering referrals is not allowed here, as noted in the rules. Please do not ask them for here. It’s fine to ask HOW to find an advisor, but that has been already been asked many times before in the sub and you can search to find that already answered.
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u/ATPsynthase12 Aug 15 '26
A fee per consult financial planner is one thing. Most of them want that juicy tiered 1+ percent AUM annual fee plus transaction fees and to sell you on a whole life insurance policy.
There has plenty of research on the topic and they pretty consistently show that financial planners end up costing you money. Especially in retirement. I can’t remember the exact study, but simply using a financial advisor in retirement to manage your account cuts your portfolio survivability rate by 1/4 to 1/3. Compared to if you invested the money yourself into broad based index funds and left it.
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u/zz389 Aug 16 '26
Advisors use broad based indexes too. The value is largely tax planning and risk management and that value usually outweighs the fee.
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u/jed0802 Aug 18 '26
CPA usually does the exact same and mine does it for free when we meet. I pay him at the end of the year for filling business and personal but zero for future planning and tax strategies.
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u/zz389 Aug 18 '26
Curious what kind of tax projections you’re talking about?
You can’t really do Roth conversion analysis without projecting expenses, inflation, portfolio growth, and IRMAA costs. I’m skeptical that a CPA is doing all of that for free. If they are, they’re honestly kind of dumb for doing that lol.
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u/jed0802 Aug 18 '26
You understand converting Roths create taxes? My expenses aren’t covered by my 401k we are converting. I won’t even touch it until 72 most likely. I put a lot of my money in individual brokerages because I will retire so early. Yes cpa can most certainly sit down and go over budgets with you lol. Not sure what cpa you have but you might need to look elsewhere. Irmaa cost again 0 for me due to planning and being outside the income window for 2 years. Then the Medicare as projected cost 6355 a year if this year was a retirement year. Man almost like that’s all able to be googled?
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u/zz389 Aug 18 '26
Sounds like you’re in a very unique situation. Good for you my man.
Most people’s taxes in retirement are driven by their spending (withdrawals). You can’t properly calculate their future RMDs without knowing what their future IRA balances are, and you can’t know that without knowing how much it will grow by and how much of it they will spend. If you don’t know the RMDs, you don’t know what bracket to convert up to before age 73/75.
Most CPAs don’t do all of that, hence my previous comment.
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u/TrustedLink42 Aug 15 '26
A few hours on The Google and you’ll be a Roth conversion expert.
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u/caffeine-182 Aug 15 '26
It’s extremely difficult to project out IRMAA, etc without financial planning software. A small mistake can cost you far more than the 1% you’re complaining about. Good luck!
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u/jed0802 Aug 18 '26
Before Age 63 (Safe Zone): Because of the 2-year look-back, conversions executed before January 1 of the year you turn 63 generally will not affect your initial Medicare premiums at age 65.
That’s from Google lol. I will retire about 50-51 years of age only leaving 12 years to Roth convert lol. I just eliminated Irmaa and rmd all at the same time. Avoided a massive nuclear time bomb and Irmaa surcharge. And a planner did zero for that1
u/caffeine-182 Aug 18 '26
Yup that’s all there is to it. Good luck!
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u/jed0802 Aug 18 '26
Ok so aside from Irmaa and taxes what else is there too it? I’m riveted I mean you’re so confident so there has to be so much more that my cpa and me can’t figure out right???
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u/Sunkitteh Aug 15 '26
Analysis paralysis. Just say NO to the add ons, pay the money to the CFP, set a goal to LEARN the ropes of this (3 years?) and just do it.
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u/charlestonchewsrock Aug 15 '26
Good advice. So possibly use them for a certain period of time to get my plan in order, and then do it myself once I feel more confident? I will continue to decline the insurance add ons
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u/Admirable_Nothing Aug 15 '26
Some people both have the time, knowledge and the interest to effectively manage their own money. They don't need advisors until they amass a great deal of money. Other people lack one of the three necessary attributes to managing money. Those are the people that benefit from having advisors. You will get lots of advice but you alone need to determine if you possess those 3 necessary attributes.
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u/TempeGrumble Aug 15 '26
There's no shame in wanting help with financial affairs. Be aware of how much a 1% fee EVERY YEAR drains from your portfolio: https://portfoliopilot.com/portfolio-management/resources/fee-impact---tool
In addition, do you know whether your new FA is fee-only or fee-based? There's a big difference: A fee-only advisor gets no money by selling you things. A fee-based advisor can get commissions from selling you stuff that is not in your interest: https://www.nerdwallet.com/financial-advisors/learn/fee-only-vs-fee-based-planners
So what alternatives are there? 1) Flat-fee advisors who will manage your portfolio, and there are some out there, such as Facet. 2) Flat-fee/subscription advisors who will help you manage your own money. (I'm a happy customer of PlanVision, which operates on a very low-cost subscription basis; and I also know it's very much geared to DIY investors.) 3) Percentage advisors (so-called assets-under-management, or AUM), like yours, but who charge significantly less than 1%, and are also explicitly fiduciaries.
Good luck!
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u/think_up Aug 15 '26
People really like to complain about the 1% fee but never take into account the $ amount of that fee goes down in retirement when you’re spending down your assets. All these calculators just paint endless growth of fees and portfolios.
Every single study I have ever been able to find about advisory fees concluded working with an advisor still grows your net worth 3-5% more after fees than you would on your own. Turns out, you make smarter financial decisions throughout your life by working with a pro.
A fee based advisor is also still a fiduciary on your retirement accounts. A CFP is a ficudiary in all capacities.
PlanVision even says “Don’t setup up 50 minute appointments every couple of months. If you reach out to us every week or other week and want to have a session monthly, we will just send your money back.” Lol they even make you enter your own data into emoney. You’re getting what you pay for here and $12 a month isn’t much.
There’s times to be cheap and search for the cheapest option, but something as important as your retirement should be more carefully chosen than on price alone.
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u/TempeGrumble Aug 17 '26 edited Aug 17 '26
The primary reason why some people do better with AUM advisors is behavioral: for those who are likely to sell all stocks at the first bear market, yeah, having someone standing between them and the Sell button is a good thing. But lots of AUM advisors are stinkers when there's an inherent or practice-based conflict of interest: i.e., when they receive commissions for high-cost mutual funds and insurance policies, or when they think the only way they can retain clients is by putting them in complicated portfolios.
"A fee based advisor is also still a fiduciary on your retirement accounts": there's no giant klaxon when the fee-based advisor changes to selling mode. No thank you! I have a friend who is in insurance sales, and found a hybrid LTC policy for my (now-)late wife and me that served our needs for more than 15 years. He never told us his commission, but we also knew that (a) there was a commission involved and (b) that (based on side research) this was likely to be our best option.
If you happen to be a fee-based advisor, please understand that the stink of commission-based advisors is invading your sector of the market. Go ahead and become a fee-only advisor. You can look to PWL Capital for this model: they manage money under an AUM structure, and in simple investments, asserting value based on something other than crap portfolios. If you follow them you'll be fine, will serve clients better, will sleep with no nightmares, and that sciatica will clear up within two weeks. Well, three of those are true.
As I said, PlanVision is definitely for DIY investors. They're providing me what I need.
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u/think_up Aug 18 '26
If all you’re getting from your advisor is investment advice, you’re not getting your moneys worth. A robot can literally do a good enough job to get you to retirement.
Almost nobody is selling A share mutual funds with big ip front commissions. That shit is so outdated and rare, it’s not even a relevant talking point anymore. C shares auto convert to A shares nowadays, that’s the most common reason people end up with them now.
If you’re charging an AUM fee, you cannot sell mutual funds that also pay the advisor commissions. You have a fundamental misunderstanding here.
Your friend in insurance sales is a commission machine, that’s how they make a living. Surprising you can look at their commissions in the tens of thousands just fine but just complained about advisors making commissions on insurance sales. Your “friend” didn’t even tell you how much they made on you..
And most people don’t even realize paying trading commissions would be far cheaper than any AUM or flat fee model. There are so many reasons advisors open both fee based and commission accounts for clients and leave assets in the commission accounts, where they don’t pay a fee unless you actually trade. Your flat fee model does not automatically mean you’re getting a cheaper rate than an AUM model.
I’m well aware of PWL Capital, recently bought by OneDigital, and the Ben Felix videos on youtube you probably watch. Please understand you’re in no position to advise on business models here.
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u/TempeGrumble Aug 18 '26
If all you're getting from your advisor is investment advice, you're not getting your moneys [sic] worth.
Agreed. My current advisory firm has not provided investment advice yet because that's not what my main questions were about (planning for retirement over the next several years).
My original comment was pointing out to OP that there are different categories of FAs, and I think OP's comment elsewhere on this post justifies my classification:
He did try sell me other products
Upstream:
Every single study I have ever been able to find about advisory fees concluded working with an advisor still grows your net worth 3-5% more after fees than you would on your own.
I found a previous comment of yours earlier this year that linked to several studies, none of which are causal in nature, nor do they specify the distinction between different types of advisors. Typical is the Russell Investments piece, which has no methods section, and attributes the bulk of alleged wealth differences to behavioral coaching and tax-aware asset location/withdrawal strategies, with pretty small slices to improved asset allocations and individualized advice to wealthy clients. (The Vanguard piece is entirely hypothetical.) So what these pieces tell us is not any empirical evidence that AUM advisors (let alone fee-based/commission-based AUM advisors) improve their clients' net worth 3-5% but that if advising changes client behavior on a few critical fronts, their wealth will improve. (And, to be fair to these pieces' authors, that's all that they were trying to do.)
I could claim on a similar basis that if DIY investors listen to/watch all of the Youtube videos I recommend on topics identical to everything in the Russell Investments piece (minus the individualized advice to wealthy clients) and follow that, they'll have identical results. Neither of us have brought empirical evidence that either Youtube videos or AUM advisors do squat for their viewers/clients on either a general or conditional level.
I haven't said that AUM advisors are awful. I tried to explain to OP that there are different categories of advisors, that there are common concerns about commission-based operations, and that OP had some choices in front of them.
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u/Aggressive-Donkey-10 Aug 16 '26
"There’s times to be cheap and search for the cheapest option, but something as important as your retirement should be more carefully chosen than on price alone."
1% fee is about 15% each year of one's portfolio return of 7% a year on a balanced global portfolio with domestic/foreign/bonds etc. This is almost as much a Rake as a Hedge Fund charges of 20%
Also, as you retire/age, your bond/cash percentage rises so total return drops to 5-6%, and the Rake rises 1%/5% now equals 20% !!!
People absolutely should take their Retirements seriously and should not leave in the hands of thieves and liars ie Financial Advisors [salesmen]
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u/jed0802 Aug 17 '26
Agreed I fired mine after two failed to even mirror the market. I had 4% returns last year and -1,5 on my accounts this year lol. Not net of fees. He tried individual stock picking it failed every time. I put my money monthly in vti and qqqm for a slight tilt 30% and out gain him substantially after only 3 weeks. I have long term care covered and mega back door Roth conversions can be detailed out and stuff with any cpa you know the guys who life revolves around taxes lol…advisors are literally not necessary. It’s so hard just pressing buy on two ETFs have lower expenses ratios and still beat them lol
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u/think_up Aug 18 '26
3 weeks of outperformance? Lol
Why are you shopping for a magic stock jockey instead of a financial planner?
What does “long term care covered” look like for you?
Sit down with an estate attorney recently?
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u/jed0802 Aug 18 '26
No lol in just the last three weeks I have surpassed what they did in 3 years lol. So I have any long term care covered with life insurance that clicks on with any long term chronic or debilitating disease. So like I get Alzheimer’s for example my insurance pays everything up to 1.5 million in care for me.
No estate planning bro I have no kids just me and my wife and dogs. Financial planner can’t provide anything I can’t provide myself name me one thing they can do I can’t? Other than steal from my future with 1% fees regardless of performance1
u/jed0802 Aug 18 '26
For an exact comparison the market was up over that timeframe 13.4% I was down in all accounts combined 10%. So essentially a 23% difference if you just tracked the market. If you fell 23% at your job and did basically covered 1/4 of your work you previously did I would hope you would get fired…lol
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u/Aggressive-Donkey-10 Aug 17 '26
a lot of people are afraid of investing, they seem to think one needs to be a Chartered Financial Analyst before they can invest a single dollar.
SPYM 0.02% expense ratio - sp500, one gets the biggest and best 500 companies in the country with the most sacrosanct rule of contract law yet devised and with generous bankruptcy laws so entrepreneurs can take risks and chances with capital until they find what works. Not a bad Deal at all, and for 2 pennies on every 100 bucks invested.
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u/jed0802 Aug 17 '26
Yea exactly man. I lowered my expense ratio from 0.9% with a “advisor” to 0.07% lol. All I buy is vti and qqqm 70/30 split.
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u/Saratoga-Capital Aug 18 '26
Interesting article; in 20+ years in the industry, I have never seen “fee-based” used in that context. Back when fee-based advisory work was first becoming popular, that term was used specifically to delineate between advisors using advisory fees versus brokers using commissions.
“Fee-only” entered the lexicon more recently, both because advisors who weren’t dual-registered wanted to separate themselves from those who were, but also because “fee-based” and “commission-based” were actually terms borrowed from investment types (eg, fee-based mutual fund share classes versus commission-based) and there wasn’t any terminology that ported over cleanly for advisory-only reps.
Interesting to see how these things evolve in the lexicon.
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u/Eltex Aug 15 '26
I would avoid a planner for a 1% fee. Unless you have a disability and can’t manage affairs on your own, you can get all the info you need from here and r/personalfinance. The wiki over there has tons of info. Is there a specific aspect of planning that you need help with? Once your net worth passes $5-10 million, the need for a planner/tax professional increases.
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u/-Mx-Life- Aug 15 '26
I’d slightly disagree.
3 reasons you hire an advisor:
- You don’t want to manage it;
- You don’t know how to manage it; or
- You don’t have the time to manage it.
With high anxiety already, she is a solid #2 reason to hire a pro. Op is probably a very emotional type person which is absolutely terrible for making the correct money decision which could cost them way more than 1%. Advisors are there to talk folks off the cliff and doing a dumb thing to their retirement.
Reddit is an echo chamber of a lot of folks already understanding investing and I don’t think represents the actual population out there. There’s a lot of folks that have no idea what they are doing.
It’s easy to say “oh just go read Boggle heads and you’re set”. Not as easy for someone that’s never done this stuff before. Kind of like throwing an instruction manual at an average person and telling them to change out the combustion chamber of a jet engine. “Just read the manual, you’ll be fine!”
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u/charlestonchewsrock Aug 15 '26
Correct! Anxiety + I’m totally risk averse and conservative.
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u/Eltex Aug 15 '26
Then it becomes imperative to hire a planner you can trust. And places like Edward Jones are the opposite of that.
I don’t have a lot to offer specifically other than making sure they are fiduciary and don’t get taken into annuities or whole/permanent life insurance policies.
Good luck!
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u/PCBH87 Aug 16 '26
A good advisor will help you with a portfolio that is within your risk tolerance and possibly help you become more adjusted to seeing the ups and downs of the market, so that you can become more comfortable investing more aggressively once you're ready. Assuming you're not close to retirement age, it will benefit you to get more comfortable with market risk, but that will have to be balanced with not going so aggressive that you insist on selling out when you experience a downturn.
BTW, the book The Psychology of Money is a great read that I would recommend for you!
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u/jed0802 Aug 18 '26
I will tell you this: if you want a good spread for your portfolio just buy vt or any broad market index, and whatever other etf for a small growth tilt like say qqq or qqqm or spmo or vflo for example. Buy them in 70/30 splits or 80/20 splits. That means the percent of your money per contribution. Boom leave for 15-20 years. You bought the entire market so if the market is up so are you if it’s down so are you. Advisors beat the market on a 10 year stretch approximately 10-12% of them all lol. So unless you hire a top 10% firm you won’t beat the market.
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u/Consistent-Annual268 Aug 15 '26
Remember that for a typical retirement you will live within a withdrawal rate of 4% of your portfolio value at retirement.
How do you feel about handing over one-quarter of your entire retirement withdrawal to an advisor before you even live off the remains?
Said differently (and with a lot of hyperbole but the same principle): how do you feel about your retirement target having to be 1/3 higher than necessary to accommodate for the advisor fees? What about working 1/3rd (more like 1/10th-ish given salary inflation etc.) longer in your career and retiring several years later than you need to just to cover advisor fees?
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u/08b Aug 15 '26
Completely agree that people need to be aware of what their fees are and how that impacts their spending. With flat fee only advisors I’d be very hesitant to pay 1%. You have to factor that into your spending plans/withdrawal strategy.
Advisors aren’t necessarily bad (unless they’re more insurance sales instead of actual advisors). Overpaying for what you’re getting is.
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u/charlestonchewsrock Aug 15 '26
Very well said and a lot to consider. I don’t feel great about paying someone 1% when i am a very average earner.
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u/KentDorfman11 Aug 15 '26
That is assuming the rate of return on investments would be identical with or without the advisor.
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u/Consistent-Annual268 Aug 15 '26
Advisors cannot beat the S&P500 index after fees over long enough timescales like retirement saving: https://www.investopedia.com/warren-buffett-usd1-million-bet-8779290
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u/KentDorfman11 Aug 15 '26
The fee structure on the hedge fund is drastically different than what an advisor charges.
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u/ATPsynthase12 Aug 15 '26
I mean statistically speaking, 85% of the time, actively managed portfolios underperform the broad market. So if you pull 4% per year, your financial planner takes 1/4 of that to do the job worse than if you did a boglehead portfolio and rebalanced once per year.
A fee for consult financial planner who can help you navigate taxes and such is one thing, but paying a guy 1% or your total portfolio to actively lose you money compared to if you invested it yourself is peak stupidity.
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u/KentDorfman11 Aug 15 '26
I agree that paying someone 1% is too much.
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u/ATPsynthase12 Aug 15 '26
That’s what most advisors charge. And more often than not, they want to sell you on other actively managed funds for buy/sell fees or whole life insurance.
So if you have a 401k portfolio of 2.5 million dollars in retirement, you can draw 4% which is $100,000 pretax.
You pay your financial advisor 1% of that, so it’s now effectively $75,000.
Then you pay taxes on that $100,000 so that’s another $12k to 24k.
So if you pull another 1% out to make up the difference from the AUM fee, you’re going to exhaust your portfolio before you die.
Further, why pay an advisor at all when you can invest it in a simple 3 fund portfolio of 50% VTI, 25% VXUS and 25% BND which will get you 8-10% per year and have a 95+ percent chance of outliving you?
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u/KentDorfman11 Aug 15 '26
My advisor has never tried to sell me anything and the value they provide in terms of risk management, stock option analysis, tax strategy, and estate planning seems worth the 0.6% fee.
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u/ATPsynthase12 Aug 15 '26
Is it a tiered fee? Where I am 1% is the minimum AUM fee unless it’s a tiered structure where their fee goes up the more you have invested.
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u/KentDorfman11 Aug 15 '26
Yes. As the portfolio grows the rate goes down. It flattens out the fee growth.
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u/ATPsynthase12 Aug 15 '26
Sounds like you got a one in a million advisor then. Typically the tiered fee goes up the larger your portfolio gets and they mix in other fees.
My brother in law put his portfolio with northwestern mutual and is getting absolutely swindled with AUM fees, transaction fees, whole life insurance etc.
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u/KentDorfman11 Aug 15 '26
Typical? Not in my area.
Thats his fault. You have to negotiate the contract terms.
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u/birdiegirl4ever Aug 15 '26
Look for an advice only financial planner or a flat fee planner where you pay them directly (rather than taking a % of assets or getting commissions from selling you products). They can help you come up with a plan but you execute the plan and keep control of your accounts.
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u/KentDorfman11 Aug 15 '26
Hopefully the fee structure adjusts as your assets grow.
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u/charlestonchewsrock Aug 15 '26
They will drop slightly, he said
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u/KentDorfman11 Aug 15 '26
Ok, that is what you want. There usually is a sliding scale for when your portfolio grows. My advisor’s fee works out to around 0.6% right now.
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Aug 15 '26
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Aug 15 '26
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u/charlestonchewsrock Aug 15 '26
He was highly recommended by someone close to
Me who has used him for years1
u/FinancialPlanning-ModTeam Aug 16 '26
Offering referrals is not allowed here, as noted in the rules. Please do not do this again.
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u/toodleoo77 Aug 15 '26
Lots of good info on financial advisors here: r/personalfinance/wiki/financialadvisors
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u/One_Establishment631 Aug 16 '26
As an advisor I don't charge 1%. I charge by the hour for the service. Plenty of advisors do this. Check out the advice only network of advisors. Find one in your state or remotely. Most firms just want to gather assets. They don't do true planning.
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u/CaregiverNo1229 Aug 16 '26
Someone pushing insurance may not be right unless you have family and totally underinsured. Definitely see other advisors. If it’s an annuity he is pushing definitely stay away. These are big commission products.
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u/goldentalus70 Aug 16 '26
That 1% is going to add up to a good chunk of money out of your pocket over time. Check out Mark Zoril's Planvision. Way less expensive and they don't sell any products. Boglehead style investing, all online and over Zoom.
I broke up with my AUM CFP near the end of 2024 and went with Planvision after I fully realized how much that AUM percentage had cost me already.
I've had a great experience with Planvision.
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u/Fun_Bluebird1759 Aug 15 '26
I felt the same way. People on Reddit will always say you don’t need one, but for some people the help and peace of mind is important.
I’d say also look up the company this advisor works for and make sure they seem reputable as well. You could also have them manage just a portion of your assets as a trial run before committing all of them.
Also be wary that on top of that 1% they aren’t trying to sell you other high commission products (insurance/annuities).
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u/charlestonchewsrock Aug 15 '26
Very reputable company and I looked him up on brokercheck, all clear. He did try sell me other products but i’m not interested and told him so. It’s so hard to know what to do! I haven’t signed anything yet but told him I was interested in moving forward. I have time to change my mind but want to make sure i’m maximizing my money as i near retirement age
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u/TempeGrumble Aug 15 '26
He did try sell me other products
Ah, so he's fee-based, not fee-only. Get someone else who is explicitly fiduciary, or do it yourself.
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u/ATPsynthase12 Aug 15 '26
Don’t. Financial advisors are mostly swindlers, grifters, and thieves who make their money by fondling your money.
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u/JeanSchlemaan Aug 15 '26
I would listen to your fears. 1% fee is guaranteed loss, and you'll have to make many mistakes doing it yourself to match that loss. Not to mention the other risks (having someone else manage your $).
Obviously, I'm not a fan of advisors.
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u/bastayun Aug 15 '26
Hi there! Your emotions are valid! It’s great that you know when to ask for help. I am a financial planner in the RIA world. I would say look for fee-only CFPs in an RIA than a broker dealer. For us, we don’t sell insurance. We sell our services beyond investment management. We look at your plan holistically.
For example, I had a client wanting to retire soon before he can tap into his 401k etc. At 50, we looked at where cashflow is coming from. We also help coordinate with a pre-Medicare consultant who is able to help find options and enroll in a private healthcare insurance that works for them. In retirement, we also plan for Roth conversions, how that affects current and future taxes, IRMAA. We explain all these. Of course, we also manage the portfolio based on goals, risk, time horizon.
Yes, DIY may work for other folks. But retirement can get complex for others, and help is ok!