AssetBuilder Inc. Registered Investment Advisor - Simple Investing. Smart Future.

 Thank you!

Sounds like you need a "fee-only" financial planner. There are ones that read this forum so maybe they will chime in.

Bruce

There are fee-only financial planners. Go to the NAPFA website, http://napfa.org/ , and click on "Find an Advisor."  This will give you a shot at consolidating and making sense of your various accounts.

That's the good news. It should help you avoid advisors who are commission-maximizers. The NAPFA members that I have met have a serious interest in financial planning and are true students, looking for the best ways to help people with their financial planning. Like most planners, however, they have a significant bias toward high-net worth individuals.

This isn't a moral failing. It is a response to an unpleasant reality. Most people are very reluctant to pay for professional services. The same person who won't pay $2,000 for professional services/consultation will mysteriously accept paying a $5,000 commission. I don't understand it. Professional planners don't understand it. But that's the way it is. Significantly, people with a more money than most often recognize the value and need for professional services more than other people do.

Your question is at the opening wedge of something I see coming--- an unbundling of asset management (what we do at AssetBuilder) and financial planning. Do the unbundling and you can cut the cost of asset management dramatically and allow economies of scale to be passed through as lower fees.

Scott

Thanks for the tips.  I pullled a list, but it looks like I have more work to do to sort through that.  Most of the friends I talk to are all brokerage folks and not fee-only folks, so they are not much help with a recommendation.  As for the high net worth, what is that ballpark; 500k, 1M, 5M, 10M+?

I am on the low end of that scale.  Reaching for the higher end, though.

The major wirehouses discourage small investment accounts. They do this by virtually eliminating any payout to their brokers for accounts under $100,000. This happens because having small accounts would limit the "production" of brokers who are typically expected to generate at least $250,000 a year in fees and commissions, with the major wirehouses expecting a good deal more.

The consequence is that there is heavy competition for large accounts--- $1 million plus--- and people with less money are often pursued only by those selling the most expensive financial products.

Here's a 2005 article in Registered Representative magazine that discusses the issues and expectations: http://registeredrep.com/mag/finance_money_squeeze/index.html.

As far back as 1999, wealth researcher Mark Hurley described those with a net worth of $1 million to $10 million as "semi-affluent," so you can see that the definition of high net worth is inflating faster than most people are accumulating money.

Scott

As you can see, it is 4 months on the follow up note.  Subtract a month for me being tardy and this was a 3 month process.  Much longer than I expected.  I got several recommendations for one advisor, so that is who I went with.  We met several times honing goals and assumptions.  In the end, I did not get the advice I was seeking.  There seemed to be a lack of "reality check" or "smell test" when we got our analysis back.  (I am married, in my mid-40s, household making $175k, 3 kids who will eat a lot and cost a lot to educate, and I have less than $1M in net worth.)  By 65, the advisor projected $25M.  The numbers did not make sense becasue of invalid assumptions used by the advisor.  I thought I was paying them for at least that level of expertise.  I did that poorly with Quicken's planner (multiple assumptions with X being high and Y being low for really poor results).  I admit that it could have been me or this one advisor, but neither of us has the wherewithall to pursue this furhter.

Final analysis is this cost $1500 and produces little result.  I'll go back to couch potato investing, muddling along, and praying that I end up where I and my family need to be.