urn2bfree
Full time employment: Posting here.
- Joined
- Feb 14, 2011
- Messages
- 852
These forums have been wonderful for educating me. We have a fee only financial advisor and have about $2.5M under management... All in passive investments -DFA stock funds and Vanguard bond funds.
Reading the various posts and links found here I am concerned that our advisor may be overpaid. The fee structure is 0.5% of assets plus $2000 "planning fee" every year.
This seems excessive to me as I have learned of other alternatives, alas all out of my state but available nonetheless.
With passive investing the whole notion of charging more just for a bigger portfolio seems dubious to me. How much more work is needed to manage $2 million vs $1 million? $5000 more work? HOW?
Today -in anticipation of our portfolio review next month my advisor called to let me know they are looking to RAISE my planning fee! "Funny," I said, "because I intended to ask why it should not be lower." They hemmed and hawed claimed more money creates more liability. but come on, that still cannot justify these levels of fees. How much could liability cost for them? They are by statute protected by arbitration requirements and Fidelity is my custodian carrying liability as well.
Is it worth thousands of dollars to have an in town, face to face advisor rather than a similarly passive. FAM FRENCHmodel/philosophy advisor with low fees but out of state like Portfolio Solutions,or Evanson or Cardiff? Seems for a fraction of those thousands I could fly to those advisors if I really wanted to. they all seemed to do DFA fund mixes, tax leveraged and rebalanced regularly to maintain AA.
Any thoughts or experience working with out of state passive advisors?
Reading the various posts and links found here I am concerned that our advisor may be overpaid. The fee structure is 0.5% of assets plus $2000 "planning fee" every year.
This seems excessive to me as I have learned of other alternatives, alas all out of my state but available nonetheless.
With passive investing the whole notion of charging more just for a bigger portfolio seems dubious to me. How much more work is needed to manage $2 million vs $1 million? $5000 more work? HOW?
Today -in anticipation of our portfolio review next month my advisor called to let me know they are looking to RAISE my planning fee! "Funny," I said, "because I intended to ask why it should not be lower." They hemmed and hawed claimed more money creates more liability. but come on, that still cannot justify these levels of fees. How much could liability cost for them? They are by statute protected by arbitration requirements and Fidelity is my custodian carrying liability as well.
Is it worth thousands of dollars to have an in town, face to face advisor rather than a similarly passive. FAM FRENCHmodel/philosophy advisor with low fees but out of state like Portfolio Solutions,or Evanson or Cardiff? Seems for a fraction of those thousands I could fly to those advisors if I really wanted to. they all seemed to do DFA fund mixes, tax leveraged and rebalanced regularly to maintain AA.
Any thoughts or experience working with out of state passive advisors?
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