How to hire someone to look after investments

[texmati]

So... dh and I have been saving, saving, saving since we got married.

Now what? Neither of us is very good with investments it seems, and I want to do the smart thing with all of our hard earned money.

How can we go about hiring someone to manage money. Does anyone have any experience with something like this? Is their a floor to how much money you need to have before you are considered? And, most importantly how do you make sure you aren't getting ripped off?

[eirual]

I don't have any answers for you, but I'm going to be checking back into this thread for some! The idea of investing has always been overwhelming to me. I know the Dave Ramsey site has a list of DR-approved financial people...might be worth looking into to see if there's one in your area?

[velochic]

Most financial planners will have a minimum amount that they will manage. Around here they usually require a net worth between $750,000 and $1million. They usually charge 1% of your investment worth (what is managed, not net worth) and goes down as your net worth increases.

In all honesty, it's not rocket science. Reading a lot and learning, you can do it yourself. I mean, $10,000/year is a lot to have someone piddle around with your investments. Once you have a portfolio set up, it should only be evaluated and tweaked once or twice a year. If you make a lot of changes throughout the year, you're going to be dealing with capital gains taxes/loses and it makes it messy.

I would talk to Vanguard. They will help you set up something simple that is easily managed by yourself.

A fee-based financial planner can give you an one-time session for about $1000 to help you go in the right direction. Good luck!

ETA: Unless you get a grasp of investing, you won't know that you are being ripped off. Once you have a grasp of investing, you don't need someone else to manage your money.

[cschick]

Originally Posted by velochic

I would talk to Vanguard. They will help you set up something simple that is easily managed by yourself.

Another one to talk with would be Schwab. Their private client group starts handling at investments of half a million (note: my SIL works as part of Schwab's private client). They also have advisers you can work with for investments less than that.

(I and the husband are with Vanguard, because we got our investments set up long before SIL started working for Schwab. We've looked at Schwab versus Vanguard, and for what we want they fall about equal . . . so, talk to both.)

[texmati]

Originally Posted by velochic

Most financial planners will have a minimum amount that they will manage. Around here they usually require a net worth between $750,000 and $1million. They usually charge 1% of your investment worth (what is managed, not net worth) and goes down as your net worth increases.

In all honesty, it's not rocket science. Reading a lot and learning, you can do it yourself. I mean, $10,000/year is a lot to have someone piddle around with your investments. Once you have a portfolio set up, it should only be evaluated and tweaked once or twice a year. If you make a lot of changes throughout the year, you're going to be dealing with capital gains taxes/loses and it makes it messy.

I would talk to Vanguard. They will help you set up something simple that is easily managed by yourself.

A fee-based financial planner can give you an one-time session for about $1000 to help you go in the right direction. Good luck!

ETA: Unless you get a grasp of investing, you won't know that you are being ripped off. Once you have a grasp of investing, you don't need someone else to manage your money.

got it. Thank you for the great advice. I will def checkout vanguard and shwab, and learning it myself. I guess I don't have a lot of confidence with the financial stuff, even though I want to make the right decisions.