Vicki,
I'm sorry for your loss.
That $800 a month calculates out to about 1.7 percent of your assets per year. It's high but I've seen lots worse, particularly in insurance based investment products. Sadly, while $575,000 of investment assets is far more than most people have, most of what I call the "legacy distribution system" firms have such gigantic overhead costs that they focus on much larger accounts.
It's also important for you to distinguish between the task of managing your money for you and the task of helping you make major personal finance decisions. While most money management firms talk about providing broad advice the reality is that few do it and, of those who do, most aren't qualified. So let's take the problems one at a time:
Money Management. You've got several alternatives that are much less expensive and likely to produce better results for you. Here are those choices:
1) You can open an account with AssetBuilder and we'll build a risk and cost efficient portfolio for you. For an account of this size our fee is 0.30 percent a year. You would also have the cost of the funds we use which runs about 0.40 percent. This would bring your total annual cost to about 0.70 percent.
2) You can become a do-it-yourself investor and follow the Couch Potato Building Block method for building portfolios. This will get you great cost-efficiency but it won't be as risk-efficient as AssetBuilder. We provide information on how to build the portfolios free on our website, along with monthly performance updates. These portfolios will cost you a bit over 0.30 percent a year in expenses, with a lower cost for fixed income heavy portfolios and a somewhat higher cost for equity heavy portfolios. This is a good path for interested, self-directed investors who have come to understand the value of index investing.
You can find support for both of these choices on the AssetBuilder website. The column archive includes more than 10 years of columns on investing, financial planning and personal finance. It also includes active forums where you can read answers to questions similar to ones you might have--- or ask them.
3) You can take the most simple route and opt for one-stop shopping by buying a mutual fund that invests in a mixed portfolio of asset classes. The funds I recommend for this are no-load, low-expense funds with long track records. I regularly suggest Vanguard Wellington, Dodge and Cox Balanced, and Fidelity Puritan. If you search the website for those names you can learn more about those funds. These funds cost 0.60 percent, or less, per year in expenses.
Scott
