▶ Full Post Text
Hi everyone,
I've been using my family's financial advisor for years without a second thought, but recently fell down the rabbit hole of this sub. I'm now trying to decide what the best path forward is.
When I was younger and asked my parents what they paid the FA, they said something like "they make some money here and there on the trades." Digging into it, it looks like a 1% AUM fee, at least for the amount I have. Of course, it's been two months since my FA responded to my email asking for a breakdown of fees, so I don't know for sure. Also, it is hard for me to see the actual performance over a long window due to a change in platforms and some significant movement of money between accounts.
I am trying to understand the quality of my current portfolio and decide whether to do it myself with something like a three fund portfolio. I've tried to condense the info so this post doesn't run on forever.
Account #1 (Roth IRA): \~50k in American funds, w/ ERs between 0.4% and 0.8%. The funds are AMCFX, ANWFX, FINFX, GFFFX, ICAFX, NEFFX, and SMCFX
Account 2 (Taxable): \~$100k in individual stocks, split roughly evenly across 100 big US companies (AAPL, BAC, CSCO, VZ, PYPL, etc.)
Account 3 (Taxable): \~ 100k primarily dominated by low cost ETFs (FLCOX, FSPGX, VEA, and VOO make up 80% of this one)
Account 4 (taxable): \~30k all cash (26k in money market, 4k in actual cash)
All I have so far is chatGPT's take on my portfolio, which I know may give bad advice. It says the portfolio is decent, but redundant and overly complex with high fees in the roth. In particular, holding 100 individual stocks apparently makes rebalancing hard and can be less tax efficient.
Questions I am trying to answer:
1. How amazing/good/bad/rotten is my advisor? I could drop them but they still manage non-trivial amounts of money for family members.
2. Should I drop my advisor and do it myself? My family always says things about the value of long term planning, having the right insurance, tax efficiency, etc. when I used to ask about this stuff?
3. Why the high expense ratios in the IRA? Could my advisor be making additional money off those funds?
Thank you for any and all information/opinions/input!
Edit: Digging into the documents in my email it looks like I am paying 1% AUM on accounts 1 and 2 and 0% on accounts 3 and 4 for an effective rate somewhere around 0.6%. It seems strange to me that it would be set up this way.
Edit 2: Account three still shows management fees being deducted so I have no idea what's going on with the fees. Thinking it is best to drop this FA and become a boglehead.