merlin3942
Recycles dryer sheets
- Joined
- Jun 9, 2014
- Messages
- 67
Hi everyone,
Was very excited to find this forum a couple of days ago. Have been reading lots of interesting threads. Finally screwed up my courage to actually register so I can start posting. I'm in that "FIRE now, or wait n more years" stage. The more I read here, the more I feel like I'm ready to FIRE!.
I'm 59, single, no kids, and through "living below my means" for over 35 years, have managed to build up a retirement nest egg of just over $3 million. I'm finally convinced that I'd have a hard time out-living that (especially since I don't expect my lifestyle to change much in retirement).
A little over half of my retirement portfolio is currently with TIAA-CREF (I've worked in academia for all of my career). The remainder is split between 3 separate brokerage accounts with Morgan Stanley, Wells Fargo, and M&T Bank. They are each individually balanced with the typical 60/40 stocks/fixed split.
As you might imagine, the advisors at each of the individual brokerages, including TIAA-CREF, are all wanting me to roll all my assets into a single account at their particular institution, so they can manage it all for me at one place (they all push their version of a "managed account"), and if I combine everything, the fee is less than 1%.
I really don't want to have to spend a lot of time tracking paperwork in retirement. It sounds pretty complicated to start keeping track of the various asset classes (i.e. 401K, Traditional IRA, Roth IRA, taxable accounts w/ capital gains, etc, etc) to figure out what the "optimum mix" would be to minimize the tax hit as I start to use those accounts to generate income. So it's very tempting to just "turn the keys" over to one of these firms, and let them handle it for me.
I've always had the philosophy of not keeping all my eggs in one basket - I thought that was part of "diversification". I actually used to have 3 or 4 more separate accounts at separate institutions, but over the years, through various mergers and acquisitions in the financial world, I'm now down to the 4 mentioned above.
SO, my first post on this forum is to ask about what others' experiences may have been with any of these firms in particular, and whether it makes sense to combine all the accounts with a single institution, and whether it makes sense to let one of them "run the show" for me (i.e. go the "managed account" route).
Thoughts?
Thanks!
--Merlin
Was very excited to find this forum a couple of days ago. Have been reading lots of interesting threads. Finally screwed up my courage to actually register so I can start posting. I'm in that "FIRE now, or wait n more years" stage. The more I read here, the more I feel like I'm ready to FIRE!.
I'm 59, single, no kids, and through "living below my means" for over 35 years, have managed to build up a retirement nest egg of just over $3 million. I'm finally convinced that I'd have a hard time out-living that (especially since I don't expect my lifestyle to change much in retirement).
A little over half of my retirement portfolio is currently with TIAA-CREF (I've worked in academia for all of my career). The remainder is split between 3 separate brokerage accounts with Morgan Stanley, Wells Fargo, and M&T Bank. They are each individually balanced with the typical 60/40 stocks/fixed split.
As you might imagine, the advisors at each of the individual brokerages, including TIAA-CREF, are all wanting me to roll all my assets into a single account at their particular institution, so they can manage it all for me at one place (they all push their version of a "managed account"), and if I combine everything, the fee is less than 1%.
I really don't want to have to spend a lot of time tracking paperwork in retirement. It sounds pretty complicated to start keeping track of the various asset classes (i.e. 401K, Traditional IRA, Roth IRA, taxable accounts w/ capital gains, etc, etc) to figure out what the "optimum mix" would be to minimize the tax hit as I start to use those accounts to generate income. So it's very tempting to just "turn the keys" over to one of these firms, and let them handle it for me.
I've always had the philosophy of not keeping all my eggs in one basket - I thought that was part of "diversification". I actually used to have 3 or 4 more separate accounts at separate institutions, but over the years, through various mergers and acquisitions in the financial world, I'm now down to the 4 mentioned above.
SO, my first post on this forum is to ask about what others' experiences may have been with any of these firms in particular, and whether it makes sense to combine all the accounts with a single institution, and whether it makes sense to let one of them "run the show" for me (i.e. go the "managed account" route).
Thoughts?
Thanks!
--Merlin