Got a call from my FA, good news or bad?

My thanks to davebarnes & scrapr for catching and correcting my error about the link.
it is https://www.qmadvisors.com/darren-heil-bio
I have looked on the FA search site to see if there is a local certified FA near me that we could talk to and it looks like Chattanooga Tn or Atlanta Ga. area are the closest, and the closest Fidelity office in in Atlanta area as well. I guess since they are all so far away emails and phone meetings will be best for us,so it will probably end up being Fido or Vanguard. Just need to decide between them which is best for us.
 
michael274 said:
My FP is from Toledo Ohio. The last time I spoke to him, he claimed the company‘Private Wealth’ was sending him to an office in Pgh. I dropped him when I got a call from an attorney from the securities exchange commission of Toledo asking numerous questions about said FP’s spending. Found out there were multiple suits against this guy. Other problems started showing up too numerous to go into here. Never again.
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It won't expose all problems, but IMO it is critically important for investors to run their advisors at https://brokercheck.finra.org/ before signing and periodically thereafter.

I got one of those invitations to a steak dinner one time and brokerchecked the guy. He had 23 customer disputes, almost all settled in favor of the customer, and many for six figures. He must have been one hell of a producer, because his employer didn't fire him until a few days after #23 had been filed.
 
Venturer said:
My thanks to davebarnes & scrapr for catching and correcting my error about the link.
it is https://www.qmadvisors.com/darren-heil-bio
I have looked on the FA search site to see if there is a local certified FA near me that we could talk to and it looks like Chattanooga Tn or Atlanta Ga. area are the closest, and the closest Fidelity office in in Atlanta area as well. I guess since they are all so far away emails and phone meetings will be best for us,so it will probably end up being Fido or Vanguard. Just need to decide between them which is best for us.
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I use both Fidelity and Vanguard. I had an office we went to in KC for Fidelity and it was great. We moved to a rural area 3 years ago. Vanguard does remote support much better than Fidelity. Makes sense all their interactions are remote. It shows, I waited for almost an hour for a Fidelity technical resource to set up desktop sharing.
 
davebarnes said:
You don’t have to self direct.
You have 1000 [-]busybodies[/-] experts here who will tell you what to do.
All of them will give better advice than your FA and their collective fee is quit modest.

That's so funny, but true. Lots of good advice here.:dance:
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A Translation Guide to Asset Manager-Speak

Sticking with the prevailing streams of thought here.
https://www.institutionalinvestor.com/article/b1kbbc0zfxg4mp/Asset-Managers-BS-Decoded
"Investors ...often hearing out multiple fund pitches in a single day....The investment chief for one institution-sized single-family fortune decided to put pen to paper, translating these overused phrases, sales jargon, and excuses into plain — and satirical — English."
"A Translation Guide to Asset Manager-Speak

Now is a good entry point = Sorry, we are in a drawdown
We have a high Sharpe ratio = We don’t make much money
We have never lost money = We have never made money
We have a great backtest = We are going to lose money after we take your money
We have a proprietary sourcing approach = We invest in whatever our hedge fund friends do
We are not in crowded positions = We missed all the best-performing stocks
We are not correlated = We are underperforming while the market keeps going up
We invest in unique uncorrelated assets = We have an illiquid portfolio which can’t be valued and will suspend soon
We are soft-closing the fund = We want to raise as much money as we can right now
We are hard-closing the fund = We are definitely open for you
We are not responsible for the bad track record at our prior firm = We lost money but are blaming all our ex-colleagues
We have a bottom-up approach = We have no idea what markets are going to do
We have a top-down process = We think we know what markets will do but really who does?
The markets had a temporary mark-to-market loss = Our fundamental analysis was wrong and we don’t know why we lost money
We don’t believe in stop-loss limits = We have no risk management"
 
MRG said:
+1

I remember when Megacorp was cutting heads there were two really nice guys who needed maps to find their cubes. They both ended up at Uncle Ed's Bad Investment Advice Firm. Pay 1% for a nice guy who really is a blithering idiot and probably needs the GPS to drive home?
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My mother's advisor at that place had her in bonds maturing when she's 112 years old. Also stock churning and underperforming load funds. She didn't want to hurt his feelings but ultimately saw the light. It was a pleasure to help her with the paperwork to transfer to Vanguard. I did meet him and he's was a good salesman.
 
Ok folks, I got another call yesterday from my guy. I informed him that we would not be meeting with him and his new wonderful boss. He said again that I really should let them come to the house and talk. I said once more that we would not be interested and to please take my name out of his phone since we would not be needing his advice. He then ask what was wrong and I told him that I understood that he wasn't supposed to contact me about going with him to another firm,isn't that called "churning"? He hesitated and then said I could call him later if anything changed. I said ok thanks and hung up. We were in the car and my wife thanked me for "not getting ugly"! I have been diligently searching for more info. watching some video's and listening to podcasts from folks on Bogleheads, and looking at info on Vanguard and Fidelity. I also looked at Bettermont,and wealthfront. Whew mind mind is spinning. I am a little confused about the fund fees. I think we are going to go the advisor route for now at least. But I'm not sure which will serve us best. VG or Fido? Here is a quick summery of our situation. My 401k is still at Prudential 306k ,my rolled over Ira at WF 55k,wife's rolled over 401k and rolled over ira 225k total at WF. We want to do I think an in kind transfer to which ever one is best. I'm 68 in march wife is 67 in June. We have also 65k in stock at TD from my former employer through payroll deductions & 40k in cd's and money markets in local bank because wife says she wants quick run to bank and get money for emergency on hand just in case,and she won't budge from that! We both were poor growing up and have tried to live within our means. Looking around and seeing some of the post here I know we don't have the money some do but we got each other. We have lived off of our social security and 2 small pensions for our daily stuff since we retired in June and July.
So thanks again for all who have posted to me so far & thanks in advance for any who may do so in the future. Have a great day.
 
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Venturer said:
Ok folks, I got another call yesterday from my guy. I informed him that we would not be meeting with him and his new wonderful boss. He said again that I really should let them come to the house and talk. I said once more that we would not be interested and to please take my name out of his phone since we would not be needing his advice. He then ask what was wrong and I told him that I understood that he wasn't supposed to contact me about going with him to another firm,isn't that called "churning"? He hesitated and then said I could call him later if anything changed. I said ok thanks and hung up. We were in the car and my wife thanked me for "not getting ugly"! I have been diligently searching for more info. watching some video's and listening to podcasts from folks on Bogleheads, and looking at info on Vanguard and Fidelity. I also looked at Bettermont,and wealthfront. Whew mind mind is spinning. I am a little confused about the fund fees. I think we are going to go the advisor route for now at least. But I'm not sure which will serve us best. VG or Fido? Here is a quick summery of our situation. My 401k is still at Prudential 306k ,my rolled over Ira at WF 55k,wife's rolled over 401k and rolled over ira 225k total at WF. We want to do I think an in kind transfer to which ever one is best. I'm 68 in march wife is 67 in June. We have also 65k in stock at TD from my former employer through payroll deductions & 40k in cd's and money markets in local bank because wife says she wants quick run to bank and get money for emergency on hand just in case,and she won't budge from that! We both were poor growing up and have tried to live within our means. Looking around and seeing some of the post here I know we don't have the money some do but we got each other. We have lived off of our social security and 2 small pensions for our daily stuff since we retired in June and July.
So thanks again for all who have posted to me so far & thanks in advance for any who may do so in the future. Have a great day.
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An easy solution is to call Vanguard and have them transfer your money and sign up for PAS, it costs .30 yearly. They'll do a plan for you and invest your money in cheap index funds. After you see what they do for a while you probably will feel comfortable with DIY, or not.

I don't think you should do a TIK as your assets seem to be in tax advantaged accounts. The funds that you are in are a great way for the advisor to be paid, not necessarily for your benefit.
 
I think you may be a bit better at Fidelity than Vanguard. Just for the face to face aspect. It would be similar to the FA route you just had. I'm fine DIY but looked at VG PAS if I passed before my wife. But she was a people person and needs the face to face. She would not do well with a phone conversation. Mrs Scrapr passed before we got to the point I had to make a decision on that.
 
RetMD21 said:
My mother's advisor at that place had her in bonds maturing when she's 112 years old.
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This part isn't necessarily bad- they probably went for longer maturities to get higher yields. I'm 67 and may not live to see some of mine mature.

I agree with you on the rest of their practices, though.
 
Either Fidelity or Vanguard would be a good choice. Fidelity does have 3 offices in the Atlanta area, so it would be possible to have some face-to-face time to actually get things moving, if you desired to do that. I have never seen a Fidelity office, and have done everything on-line or through the mail.

You could also move some to Vanguard and some to Fidelity. It is nice to be able to see all of the accounts on one summary page.

Wherever you start, you need to determine what asset allocation is appropriate for you. There are several threads and numerous websites that discuss this. If I remember, you are in that 40% equities, 60% bonds/fixed range.

If you send everything to Vanguard, put your 401k and rollover IRA into Wellesley VGYAX. Put your wife's 401k into Wellington VWENX. Move the TD stock into VGYAX as well. This should end up as effectively 42% Equities, 58% Fixed.

You can adjust the mixture if you want to get more or less aggressive. If you study the many plans for diversified portfolios, you will find suggestions for putting money into a dozen different funds. I was trying to find the spot on the Fidelity site where you can put in an asset mix and it will spit out % in many different funds, but I can't find it right now. The variety of funds will make your head spin, and work well with an FA who needs to convince you how complicated investing really is.

You could also move DWs 401k to Fidelity, if you want to sample the experience. Put 60% of it into FZROX (Total Market) and 40% into FBNDX (Investment Grade Bond Fund). This would be roughly equivalent to the asset allocation in the Wellington fund.
 
Venturer said:
... Whew mind mind is spinning. ...
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@Venturer you are doing great at this but in a year or two you will not even remember whether you moved quickly or slowly on this decision.

Slowly wins.

Take your time, let the spinning stop, make a thoughtful decision and execute. If this takes even six months that is not particularly important in the big picture.

I used to teach sports car racing, even wrote a very successful book on the subject. One of the things I emphasized was "Slow hands, fast lap." Jerking the car around eats kinetic energy and reduces speed. I have found that my slow hands mantra applies to many things in life. Like investing.
 
Venturer said:
We have lived off of our social security and 2 small pensions for our daily stuff since we retired in June and July.
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Step 1: Get the money moved to Vanguard or Fidelity
Step 2: Relax, breath, Repeat
Step 3: Repeat Step 2
Step 4: Step into Uncle Clones investment advice office- have you thought about ROTH conversions...

Financial advice at a fair price!
 
Clone said:
Step 1: Get the money moved to Vanguard or Fidelity
Step 2: Relax, breath, Repeat
Step 3: Repeat Step 2
Step 4: Step into Uncle Clones investment advice office- have you thought about ROTH conversions...

Financial advice at a fair price!
Click to expand...

LOL thank you. Yes when we had our taxes done the lady ask us about that. We figured we would look at that later this year since this will be our 1st full year of not working,so we will know where we stand.
 
I think you need more assistance than Vanguard offers and the PAS is pretty useless for someone in your situation. In your shoes, I would meet with Fidelity and have them look over everything you currently have. Figure out what should be transferred in kind and what should or must be sold. You should be able to simplify the accounts and the holdings. Once everything is at Fidelity, you can decide how you want to proceed. While the paperwork machine grinds through the transfers, spend more time reading and becoming familiar with investment choices. Once the dust settles, move forward with investing the money.
 
There's no reason to focus on any one of the brokers right now.

In due time, when you are calm and ready, talk to VG, Fido and Schwab. Start by deciding what kind of advisor you prefer (sex, age, experience, investing interests, etc.) and ask the branch manager to set up a couple of candidates for interview. Get as much free advice as you can and try to understand what they will do for you if you move your assets to them.

All have free services at various levels depending on your assets. IIRC at Fido and Schwab you need $100K or $250K to be assigned a personal advisor, but I don't remember which is which. All have fee-based services starting with very inexpensive robo-advisors, and all can refer you to independent FAs if that's the level of support you want. Deliberate on all this stuff before deciding (sometime in the next 6 months, remember :)) which way you want to go.
 
I am auditing an investment class at a local university. The professor has a Ph.D. in Finance; the textbook is Essentials of Investments, first author Bodie. Lots of math!!

I am concluding that computer-driven investment advice is not all bad particularly in asset allocation. My Fidelity mobile device tells me returns for the last year for the S&P 500, Total Bond market, 3-mo T-bills, and my personal return.

I know that many use just two index funds: total stock market and total bond market and call it good. Using historical data simple algebra one could construct an allocation formula to achieve the desired return. Investors need to understand that the desired return is not a guarantee because black swan events do occur. Also doing that doesn't provide for 'fun' investments, taking a flyer on a stock you love or shorting a stock you think will go down. An investor needs to set aside a portion in a safe harbor if you will need cash the foreseeable future (1-5 years).

So, take your investable assets and make 3 buckets: No risk (safe), High risk (fun money investments), long term investments using the allocation formula. Let Vanguard/Fidelity build your long term bucket using their tools. Our Fidelity Rep wants us to meet with her once a year or if something significant happens that could change our risk profile. These conversations have been fruitful, we learned how charitable donations could be made with our RMDs (a bit complicated for my taste but good to know that they exist).

An independent FA should also cover things like insurance and college savings programs for children/grandchildren. We don't need that advice.

The key is to know yourself and your needs.
 
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Thanks to all for the help and suggestions. I am seriously considering calling Fido office in Big A. and set appointment to talk.
 
Venturer said:
Thanks to all for the help and suggestions. I am seriously considering calling Fido office in Big A. and set appointment to talk.
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Fido is a fine choice. Great web site, great funds, great service.

Just have your guard up when you talk to them. Some advisers will treat your request to "review my portfolio" as just that, and others will treat it as a selling opportunity.
 
mrfeh said:
Fido is a fine choice. Great web site....
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It didn't seem so great yesterday when people were loggin on and seeing gooseeggs. :LOL:

attachment.php
 
I got a notice when I logged on to Fido that they had been having issues with their website but that no transactions were effected. My screen looked normal. A week or so ago there was a notice that they were upgrading the website. My guess is that the upgrade had issues.
 
REWahoo said:
^ This. You will almost certainly be better off going with either one of these vs. staying with that "nice guy" and helping him make his boat payments.
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I recommend Charles Schwab if you use ETFs. You can get access to all the Vanguard ETFs and have much better customer service than Vanguard.

I'd definitely use this as an opportunity to change to self-management.
 
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