How many totally manage their own nest egg?

Amethyst said:
Have never had a FA. We do have a CPA to do our taxes. Every year I say "This year we'll do them ourselves!" and then something happens to shake my confidence.
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Funny you say this. I originally did all my own taxes by hand. As my career developed and my financial situation became more complicated I turned my taxes over to a CPA. Shortly after retirement I did them in parallel with the CPA using software and came out to the penny, so took them over again myself. Now I'm considering going back to a CPA to make sure my wife has someone to help her when I'm no longer able. Hopefully that'll be awhile.

I have an innate distrust for financial advisors and so have always handled my own investments. This will not change but I have simplified them as far as possible both for my benefit and for my wife's. They're now to the point that it should be a simple process for a CPA to give one or both of us guidance on where to withdraw the desired amount of funds from.
 
My wife would have a very hard time figuring out the mess of my trading across 8 different accounts. The Robinhood account alone has around 250 trades.

This is what you call marriage security!
 
Self-managed for our entire adult career and now retirement. Currently 50 Y.O. and retired just over 8 years ago.

We've read a number of books on subjects related to finances/investing, talk to lots of people with like interests, met with an FA three times to see if they would do anything different - but have never paid anyone to manage our finances. Our investing assets at held at Fidelity and they finally stopped calling us to "sell" us on their investing program.
 
NoMoreJob said:
Funny you say this. I originally did all my own taxes by hand. As my career developed and my financial situation became more complicated I turned my taxes over to a CPA. Shortly after retirement I did them in parallel with the CPA using software and came out to the penny, so took them over again myself. Now I'm considering going back to a CPA to make sure my wife has someone to help her when I'm no longer able. Hopefully that'll be awhile.

I have an innate distrust for financial advisors and so have always handled my own investments. This will not change but I have simplified them as far as possible both for my benefit and for my wife's. They're now to the point that it should be a simple process for a CPA to give one or both of us guidance on where to withdraw the desired amount of funds from.
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I did my own taxes since I was 18 until about 4 years ago (age 37). It was a busy time in my life, my taxes were a bit more complicated this year, and I was running out of time, so I hired a CPA. I found out I was missing out on a few minor tax credits that more than covered the cost of the CPA. Since then I've just paid to have my taxes done. So much easier too!
 
NoMoreJob said:
Funny you say this. I originally did all my own taxes by hand. As my career developed and my financial situation became more complicated I turned my taxes over to a CPA. Shortly after retirement I did them in parallel with the CPA using software and came out to the penny, so took them over again myself. Now I'm considering going back to a CPA to make sure my wife has someone to help her when I'm no longer able. Hopefully that'll be awhile.

....
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Why not have your wife do the taxes , while you watch or help... a couple of years of that and she will be a whiz at doing them. :cool:
 
Sunset said:
Why not have your wife do the taxes , while you watch or help... a couple of years of that and she will be a whiz at doing them. :cool:
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Some spouses or partners just don't want anything to do with managing investments including taxes.
My DGF is in this category unfortunately.
 
Mostly self managed.

But I've seen enough cases of people losing the plot as they get older so I've put enough money with an external manager to at least cover my daughters' remaining school fees, university and a bit more.
 
I always figured the key to my success was that I had an adviser at 22 who was terrible, all front loaded, etc and so when my results were not what I expected I started teaching myself, switched, still got bad advice and started receiving notifications for class action law suits against all the funds he suggested, and so at 30 I stopped and have done it myself ever since.
 
dirtbiker said:
...so I hired a CPA. I found out I was missing out on a few minor tax credits that more than covered the cost of the CPA. Since then I've just paid to have my taxes done. So much easier too!
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I hired our CPA to do our taxes a couple of years before I cashed out on my company options. It was enough money that I didn't want to mess up the taxes and end up owing more that I expected. The worked out well.

Over the years I've thought about doing my own taxes again, but each time the CPA points out something that saves us enough money to pay his bill and then some. He had some great ideas for optimizing college expenses and he's the reason we now have over $70K in our HSA invested in vitsx among other things.
 
mpeirce said:
I hired our CPA to do our taxes a couple of years before I cashed out on my company options. It was enough money that I didn't want to mess up the taxes and end up owing more that I expected. The worked out well.

Over the years I've thought about doing my own taxes again, but each time the CPA points out something that saves us enough money to pay his bill and then some. He had some great ideas for optimizing college expenses and he's the reason we now have over $70K in our HSA invested in vitsx among other things.
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I don't expect I'll ever do my own taxes again. Every filing year my taxes seem to get more complicated. As much as I'd hate to miss out on any taxes, exemptions, etc., I'd hate even more to not pay enough and get audited...
 
albireo13 said:
I am curious ... how many folks totally manage their finances themselves ... no FA or service?

We currently have a FA (Raymond James) managing just my IRA. (~$440K).
I also have a 401k and pension that I will be getting plus my wife has a 403B and pension. His fee is 1.3%. I am not excited about that and am thinking of moving everything into Vanguard index funds when I retire next year ... no FA. I would like to be a hands-off investor.
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Don't sweat it too much. Do your due-diligence; it's not as difficult as the industry likes you to believe. This is coming from an ex-registered advisor for one of Raymond's competitors before strictly as a trader.

There's been a paradigm shift in the retail investor space if you haven't noticed with all the robo-advisors and what not...This goes for everyone.
 
I manage our finances by myself, no advisor. I do have Block Advisors do my taxes.
 
Used one when I was nearing the end of my working years to be sure our retirement plans and timing were solid. After I retired I tired of paying the 1%+ in fees for something I knew I could handle. Been very happy with that decision so far.
 
I do, but now retired hired a fee only FA (on retainer) that does not manage our assets. He just gives us advice and we take it from there.


I always do our taxes but this year with moving during tax season and selling our home and my husband's retirement and dealing with medicare and my health insurance, I am on overload, so I will have to very quickly find a CPA in our new state to do them because I can't handle it this year and I assume I won't want to ever again as we start drawing down our assets and doing Roth conversions and all that good stuff.



They were always kind of simple in the past.
 
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Had an Amex FA about 22 years ago... then I read about Bogleheads sometime later and the rest is history.
 
When I first wanted to start putting savings into stocks, rather than just the bank, I didn't know how/where (and still don't) to purchase stocks/bonds. I was told I needed to go through a financial professional associated with a bank or financial institution as a conduit to get it done. So, I have always had a financial advisor, but he has never "advised" me to really do anything. When I first brought him money, we talked about my goals and he gave me his opinion on what distributions to make. But he has never called to suggest rebalancing, or advise that buying or selling one stock or the other would be beneficial. He really just administers my account and sends me distributions when I request them. So not so much an advisor, as an administrator. He recently joined Raymond James and my accounts moved from Wells Fargo to Raymond James. I get an invoice every year for like $75 administration fee, but I don't know how much more he gets in % of my account. He says just a pittance. I will probably not be adding any new money, now that I'm not working anymore, so it will just sit and draw/lose interest. How would I go about taking it back and administering it myself? And would that not require selling all and reinvesting the cash elsewhere. If so, that sounds like it could incur big losses, since I know nothing about when is a good or bad time to sell and I've always heard accumulation over the long haul is how to grow investments, so never to cash out. Obviously, I am clueless about how investing works.
 
I set my DW up with a trusted planner. Her IRA is 1/5 of our portfolio. Ameriprise. he charges 1.25 to manage. I don't like paying and I manage mine 4/5s via Vanguard but in the case of something happening to me I wanted her to have something to rely on with a little trust. We attend the quarterly updates ad meets.. I sometimes get a few ideas but for the most part its just to listen and insure she is OK.
 
I do. Took my pension lump sum when they terminated the plan. Had an investment guy for 3 years and went back to diy at Vanguard, saved 25k + per year and simplified the portfolio.
 
Fermion said:
I pay a fund manager 4% a year to manage our portfolio. He just happens to be me.
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Hahaha I'm doing the same.
Tax is another thing,like mechanical stuff, I don't get any close. Always hire someone lol
 
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I do manage our portfolio. But I was a RIA (Registered Investment Advisor) in my previous life.
 
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