Professor bry911 ( Houzz forum admin) might know the answer. Send him a message, he might help you out.

A number of years ago, we talked to a local planner associated with Garrett Financial Network. All in all, it cost about $2000, and very well worthwhile. They do not sell anything at all. Nothing except your plan. They will recommend Schwab or Vanguard or other no-cost funds.

https://www.garrettplanningnetwork.com/

I've been very happy with Edward Jones. They offer a wide range of financial planning and investment services that can be as personally directed as you want - completely hands off or totally hands on (minimal input or oversight from agent/planner).

As an aside, why anyone would think a Houzz admin person would be helpful in this regard staggers the mind..........!! Just saying!.

Professor bry911 is not a normal forum admin. He is a Dept head of a university and also a real estate investor, he has many years experience in finance. :-)

Following, also needing this.

Also, need someone to create a system for my sibling, to maintain a regular cash flow into his bank account to meet his needs. Would a CFP do this?

We've also been very happy with Edward Jones.

Thanks, all. We're currently with someone who charges half a percent as an affiliate of a large, nationally advertised firm. but...do we *need* to pay anyone to largely send out statements on (our choice of) very conservative and mostly unchanging holdings? We have no complaints, we just wonder if this makes sense.

Twenty years ago we set up with Mesirow. Our long-time stock broker died... and his SIL was a jerk. We also wanted to sell off portfolio to pay for our new house. Mesirow had a 'one year free' deal, and we wanted advice on what to sell or retain. However, once we'd pared the portfolio, why pay 1% on 'widows and orphans' holdings?

I'm prompted by a story I read today where a man made a fluke fortune on cripto currency he invented. The final paragraph of the story quoted him as saying he's basically not at all a risk taker. He's put his venture capital in index funds. (Reminds me of the old adage of stock brokers, "Sell in May and go away." I want to 'go away'!)

Thanks for the brainstorming.

No advice on what to look for or how to find only advice that you sit down and make a list of what you want. What you expect from a manager. What you do not want.

I also agree with sending Bry a message but only asking about things to both look for and to look out for. Giving you suggestions of who/what to use would put him in a bad position if his suggestion turned out to be wrong for you so if you do contact him do not expect names.

If you don't "need" your nest egg for living expenses, then you're essentially investing for the benefit of your heirs or unforeseen expenses. In my opinion an 80-something couple in that situation needs a reasonably diversified portfolio but not a financial plan or active management. All the fund sponsors, like Vanguard, will help you pick funds to diversity, for free.

I've had thread conversations in the part with the person cited above. I haven't found him to be particularly knowledgeable.

How familiar are you with the market, have you followed it as something of a hobby that you expect to pay it's way, yourselves, chi sue?

I've suggested to a number of friends, and some whom I haven't known well, e. g. some young men building a large (about 120' x 60' storage building with four big doors 14' and 16' high) for my sod farmer landlord last summer, that he says cost him about half what he paid for the farm about 16 years ago) that learning how money works is an interesting hobby - that pays well.

While I have a number of mutual funds, bought mainly many years ago, and some exchange-traded funds, whose annual fees are much lower, I bought some individual stocks years ago, on which have paid no ongoing fees at all.

I pay a lower rate of income tax on Canadian stock dividends in the year they're paid, but ongoing growth in mutual fund values is regular income when reported, whether reinvested or paid annually. That is another reason that I prefer to own Canadian tocks rather than mutual funds, which doesn't relate for you.

Have you done any investigation among friends whose judgement you respect?

Good wishes for wisdom as you work on this important matter, chisue.

ole joyful

In your situation, I too would go with Edward Jones.

Amen to Edward Jones...have had agents in several States as I moved around,

and all were very good...honest and would answer all questions thoroughly.

Would tell about promising leads, but would never try to talk you into anything

that went against your goals. Great way to "fatten" your retirement years,

or just build up funds you want to leave to your loved ones if your retirement

plans are sufficient for you.

I used to work for Edward Jones. It's a good place for someone just like you. Let your prospective financial advisor know exactly what you want, like you did in your opening post. The FA will take it from there, with no surprises. There are fees involved, of course. Edward Jones is not really the best investment house for the adventurous investor. It's better for someone such as you and your dh. Interview more than one as you will want to feel comfortable with him/her personally, and they are people. You may not get along well/feel comfortable with Prospect FA #1. Prospect FA #2 might be more your style. Likely, there are several in your area working out of different offices. Each office is independent from the other. What happens in your office, stays in your office. They have different risk/no risk tiers for customers and you could opt to be in a low risk tier with absolutely no pressure.

For those suggesting Edward Jones or similar: How are fees established? A percentage of portfolio? We aren't going to be buying insurance, annuities, other commissionable products.

My thought was to consider a one-time, one-fee advisor, not replace what we already have.

Well, it's been a few years, so things may have changed since then. Back then it was a % of portfolio. If you wanted to be in certain funds that are not part of their in house set up, there may be an extra fee, which that particular fund establishes--EJ doesn't have a say in that of course. Life insurance and such is separate, not included, i.e., outside vendors that your EJ FA would be a facilitator for, thus earn a commission off of that, but there is no pressure to buy those products, unless you express an interest.

I was also going to suggest Vanguard. I have money in one of their Index funds; my financial planner suggested it. Very low to no fees and they will help you figure out how to get your money over there.

Here is some info:

https://investor.vanguard.com/mutual-funds/fees

I like a fee based planner vs someone like Edward D. Jones. I have a rollover IRA with Fidelity, and they do help me manage it - I have been assigned an account rep who touches base with me quarterly or as needed. Other than that, we use a local fee based financial planner. With the fee based local guy, we always know what our costs are, whereas with someone like Jones, it fluctuates and the more we make, the more they take.

Forget Edward Jones or any other "advisor" or manager that holds the funds and sends you statements and takes a percentage fee (that they willl never explaon or tell you what it is.). And law requires brokers to be fiduciaries, (that ad just bugs me), https://www.thebalance.com/new-investment-fiduciary-rule-4140367 . A Garrett planner will suggest funds and set up a plan, but will not do the investing for you. Money well-spent, probably less as a one-shot deal, plus check ups, with your finds self-invested thru low/no cost companies. The only time I lost money was when we tried E. Jones with a small account.

If you had... " manager that holds the funds and sends you statements and takes a percentage fee (that they willl never explaon or tell you what it is.). "

you certainly should have looked into that one. Wow...never knew an EJ

Advisor who wouldn't explain absolutely everything. Sorry that happened

to you.

Another vote for Vanguard; we've been investing with them for 35 years. They're conservative in their advice, which suits us well, and their fees are very reasonable.

Yea sushi. That sounds out of character for EJ. Sorry that happened to you. Corporate HQ would like to hear from you if you were hoping for more than that. Some clients will specify that they do not want to hear from FAs for anything other than emergency concerns. Usually, this will result in such an experience, but those clients don't want more than that in the first place. Receiving statements in some form is required. I liken EJ to when you have money invested in something, but you don't want to be brow beat all the time about it. It takes care of itself and the FA should contact you if things go sideways to discuss/advise what you would like to do, i.e, move monies, stay the course, diversify, cash out, etc...One can have a much more involved relationship if so desired. The client sets the tone, unless of course the FA is less than stellar, which can happen like with anything.

This was years ago, I admit. How are EJ's fees determined now?

Can I make an appointment and actually meet someone from Vanguard? There's are more than one account to establish and an IRA. I'm not good at doing these things online or by phone. I know that one of the ways costs are kept low is by NOT doing much hand-holding, but I need some!

I don't think so (meeting Vanguard in person). You could always call them and see if you think you could work with them via phone or email; explain your difficulties with online or phone and see if they are helpful. I think if you want in-person you're going to have to go with a company that has offices and will pay more for what you get.

"Can I meet with a Vanguard Advisor?You can schedule time to speak with an advisor over the phone or videoconferencing, and advisors are also available for quick email questions."

Maybe a zoom meeting would work for you? or similar. They are easy to set up.

To my knowledge they only have one office as such in Pennsylvania. They used to have a processing office here in KC that I used to work with. If you do not feel comfortable working directly with the company either online or over the phone you will need to find at least a brokerage firm to handle it. Again they will be of little use if you do not know what you want to do with your account. Vanguard and various subsidiary companies handle thousands of types of mutual funds.

If you only are looking to buy index funds such as the s&p 500, the just go to a place like schwab and buy the index funds you want and be done with it. Unless you have a large portfolio where you want to have custom diversification done, then I'd just stick with the simplest and cheapest.

80% of stock funds underperform the S&P500 so you'd have to make a strong argument for how a custom portfolio will do any better. Moreover, the S&P500 is simply mirroring the index so they tend to have low management fees.

We do have a larger portfolio and we do have an investment firm that charges a percentage based on the size of our portfolio with them. So they only make more money if we make more money. Mostly we use them for custom work managing the bond side of our portfolio. And while they've done well with some of our individual stocks, it's not clear it's any better than what I've done on my own. Only thing is now, I don't really pay any attention at all any more so I'm just as happy letting them mind the store for me. Sort of like the choice of whether you want to clean your own house or hire someone to do it for you.

We also have diversification with who is managing our money so we have it invested in a number of different brokerages with different objectives on them...one more growth oriented, one more convservative, one for reinvestment, one for income generation.

Make sure they are licensed, make sure you understand their fee structure, that they are in fact fiduciaries, and if you can get recommendations from friends, do that.

Some of you really don't know what you're talking about. Sorry.

There's nothing special about Edward Jones - it's a retail brokerage firm. Like Morgan Stanley, Merrill Lynch, and others. They all do the same thing. Stock brokers are salesmen like any other kind of salesmen, compensated on transactions. Nothing wrong with that but they are what they are. All have advisory management ops too. The costs and practices of such traditional retail brokerages are why the discounted brokers like Schwab, ETrade, etc., came along, to do the same thing at lower cost to customers.

I kind of agree but kind of disagree with annie. If your portfolio is invested in funds (which is the best approach for most people), other than mix for diversity, there's nothing to "manage", that's what the fund managers do with underlying stock or bond investments.

As for

"80% of stock funds underperform the S&P500 so you'd have to make a strong argument for how a custom portfolio will do any better."

This is far from true. Just as a for instance, if you bought a S+P 500 index fund, its performance would be EXACTLY the same as that index it was mirroring, adjusted for costs. As do all the others. Costs for index funds is typically very low because there's no management of the fund portfolio, only balancing and rebalancing to keep in the right percentage ratios. Pick the index or indexes you want to mirror and the job is done.

If you want to see the relative performance of a given fund versus its peers in the same sector, go to the Morningstar site. It tells you the ranking of fund performance compared to their benchmarks. Five stars is the highest. There is no correlation between costs and performance- paying more doesn't necessarily get you more, either with funds or with investment advisors. In a way, it's the opposite, because annual fees diminish net returns.

Go with Fidelity or Vanguard. Do not use Edward Jones! Fees add up! From what I understand, EJ charges a 1% fee, which is significant. You will always pay fees, no matter where you invest, but you can choose to pay .04% versus 1.0% if you manage a conservative portfolio yourself. We use a local company and they manage our portfolio for 0.5%, but they do so much more for us. Our portfolio is complicated, with IRAs, inherited IRAs, SEP IRAs and stocks. Going with a fiduciary is important as they cannot advise you to purchase funds that they will make a commission on. If I had a simple portfolio I would manage it myself with the above mentioned companies. And when I say fees add up, you will pay a fee to the broker (say Fidelity) and your manager. So if you can manage it yourself, you will only pay the fee to Fidelity (or whoever you choose).

Have you talked to your bank? Quite often they have financial advisors.

Merrill Lynch, the last time I checked, required $100K to open an account. They were also insolvent in 2008 & sold.

quote: many Merrill advisors do not accept new clients below a certain threshold. Individual Merrill advisors may have minimum account sizes as high as $10 million.Apr 16, 2020

I "had" a Merrill account through my employer years ago....otherwise ....I would not have used them.

Edward Jones was sued in 2018: the firm has pressured its more than 16,000 brokers to switch their largely middle-income brokerage customers from commission accounts into advisory accounts that charge as much as 2% of assets annually, even though the clients “generally engaged in very little trading.”

Hopefully Edward Jones had their hands slapped and it's now safe to use them. (That was my logic)

As for

"80% of stock funds underperform the S&P500 so you'd have to make a strong argument for how a custom portfolio will do any better."

This is far from true. Just as a for instance, if you bought a S+P 500 index fund, its performance would be EXACTLY the same as that index it was mirroring, adjusted for costs.

Elmer, I believe you misunderstood me. Of course stock *index* funds perform the same as the index they are mirroring. I was talking about nonindex stock funds like mutual funds that are managed. They often underperform the stock indexes.

From investopedia:

Generally, when you look at mutual fund performance over the long run, you can see a trend of actively-managed funds underperforming the S&P 500 index. A common statistic is that the S&P 500 outperforms 80% of mutual funds. While this statistic is true in some years, it's not always the case.

A better comparison is provided by Burton Malkiel, the man who popularized efficient market theory in A Random Walk Down Wall Street. The 1999 edition of his book begins by comparing a $10,000 investment in the S&P 500 index fund to the same amount in the average actively-managed mutual fund. From the start of 1969 through June 30, 1998, the index investor was ahead by almost $140,000: her original $10,000 increased 31-times to $311,000, while the active-fund investor ended up with only $171,950.

If you go with A Garrett Planner, s/he will incorporate all your assets, including real estate, insurance, etc, and have a far more sweeping picture of your finances, as well as discussing legal arrangements that you may need to make. If all that is okay, then talk to Vanguard/Fidelity about your accounts (and Schwab if you have individual stocks). The last time I looked at my Vanguard account, there was a nice breakdown of how my account is invested. And a note that compared to how "others my age" are invested. Yes, Looks like the stocks have run up quite a bit, so I am lopsided and may need to adjust a little.

Be sure to look at all your accounts as one big basket. We have IRAs for two people, also Roth IRAs for two people, a taxable account at Vanguard, plus a taxable account at Schwab that holds our individual stocks. So if you want (wild numbers, not real) 33% in stock funds (not just total market index, but lots of different indexes, 33" in long term bond funds, 34% in cash reserves, that does not apply to each account. Instead, you can break those down by your several accounts.

Call Vanguard and talk. They're nice people.

Glad someone mentioned EJ's fee structure. That's what I was talking about, but 20 years ago they were far less transparent about their fees.

I would look beyond Vanguard at some of the other companies. The Deferred Comp plan that received when my husband died has 8 different types of funds and Vanguard was out performed on the fund groups they were in. It is the 8 different types for my suggestion to think of what the OP wants and write it down before finding someone. Since it appears my traveling fund is meaningless until 2023 or later I too have been doing some research. It all comes down to how comfortable you are with your selections.

All fund sponsors have a range of fund performance results, from the best to often average or below. Morningstar 4 star and 5 star ratings are the better choices, signifying better results than peers of a similar type. This information is available to all on the Morningstar site.

It doesn't matter whether a fund sponsor is Vanguard, Fidelity, or any other, all have their dogs and top performers, and ones in-between, among their pool of funds.

Also to be considered is the type of underlying investment. Risk and reward go in opposite directions. Less risky sectors are more stable, offer less upside and less downside when prices change. More risky investments in a fund portfolio provide more upside potential in up markets and go down more when markets decline. Bonds and stocks go in opposite directions, so having some of both provides a hedge for preservation of capital.

If you don't like the performance of a fund your money is in, switch to another. Within a fund family, there's usually no fee to do so. If it's not in a retirement plan (thus held directly by an individual), a disposition does trigger a capital gain or loss.

One of the main reason why index funds evolved in the first place is that fund managers tired of investors complaining about sometime or recurring underperformance relative to indexes. The better managed ones of course seek to beat index performances but more risk and less diversification (and so more volatility) are usually required to do so.

"You don't like that our fund underperformed the segment index last year? Fine, we'll set up a new fund that will exactly parallel the index and you can be happy having that. In the meantime, we'll keep working hard to beat the index in the fund you dislike". And the better ones do. Not always though.

Thank you all for taking the time to so kindly share your knowledge. It's a great help. I'm struggling partly because I'm not as 'swift' as I used to be, but there also seem to be a lot more options. I can see why people just go 'somewhere' and, 'Let George do it'. I'd prefer to at least try to set a course simple enough for me to follow. Finances will never be my 'hobby'!

I am one who, years ago, fell for the management scam (pay a 1% of assets fee yearly). What I found was, after the initial account set up meetings, and my current holdings were transferred in, the "advisor" was indeed only a salesman who couldn't answer basic questions such as, "why did you recommend this particular bond fund?". I also discovered that the "management" was nothing more than a computer program that automatically rebalanced the asset mix. Once, when I added some money and bought a new fund, the computer's rebalancing sold some shares then rebought shares in the same funds at a higher price!

I have used Vanguard and T. Rowe Price ever since (my past two employers have my 403bs at Fidelity), using their online tools to review my asset allocations and doing my own rebalancing. I have met with an advisor at Fidelity, and talked with one at TRP, who both gave me great advice and information, no pressure.