Yep, you were paying over 2% a year all in costs. That is quite a drag on performance. Congratulations on making a very hard decision. My guess is that your all-in costs including Advisory fees, expense ratios for your mutual funds, and planning fees were about 2.5%. Ouch.In the last 90 days, I have learned so much about investing - particularly about fees. With my new found knowledge, I recently went through the arduous process of breaking ties with my Ameriprise advisor of about 13 years and moving everything out (IRAs - my Roth and traditional, my wife's Roth and inherited, and a taxable acct.) The advisor had us in all actively managed funds having expense ratios ranging from 45 - 150 bps. My traditional and her inherited IRA were also in managed accounts with a 1.5% annual fee (deducted over 12 months). He was also charging us a $1k annual flat fee "for advice". I'm actually ashamed of myself for not realizing this much sooner. I feel like we were being scammed, but at the same time, everything was very transparent and right in front of me on the monthly statements. I just wasn't diligent enough to take the time to really understand exactly how much we were actually being charged for everything. All that said, I got us out of all of the expensive funds and into low cost indexes with allocations appropriate to our current risk tolerances. My question is this. In selling the expensive funds and buying in at today's market index fund prices, my cost basis goes up and total gain percentages go down. Does that even matter? I'm thinking it doesn't since the total dollars invested are still the same, just invested in something else. Do I just forget about the lower total gain and just call it Day 1 after all of transfers were completed and see what the gains are from there? Just looking for some sanity in thinking about this the right way. Thanks!
If you need help with the portfolio, you could post everything in the recommended format and members would be happy to offer suggestions.
I am not against Financial Advisors but I do favor keeping an eye on costs. You can see why Edward Jones and Ameriprise are not recommended here.
Statistics: Posted by nedsaid — Wed Aug 28, 2024 8:16 am