I've had a couple of friends and a relative ask me for advice on a proposal pitched to them by an AUM advisor. I've tried to convey that their claims of consistently outperforming the market over time simply aren't supported by research on the subject, but I guess they still want to believe because they've all gone ahead with the proposal/advisor anyway. I get that some people just want/need to hand their investments off to someone else, but a recent instance was still frustrating. This person had funds in a former employer's 401K plan at Fidelity, but they ended up rolling them into an IRA managed by a small firm that also uses Fidelity as their brokerage provider. For this they'll pay at least a 1% AUM fee, in addition to the underlying fund fees. I'd suggested they could at least first talk to someone at a local Fidelity office since I believe some/one of Fidelity's AUM service rates include the underlying fund fees. I don't believe they did that.
I know you can lead a horse to water etc, but it is starting to seem like I'm doing a bad job of explaining this stuff. Perhaps they'd already decided what they wanted to do and were just hoping to get some confirmation. I'm not looking to preach this gospel, but I'll be reluctant to completely sidestep the discussion if I am asked to give this kind of feedback again. I'm not sure if it was one of these people, but I know at least once I sent someone links to a couple of relevant Bogleheads wiki pages. As I recall, that didn't seem to get much traction either.
I know you can lead a horse to water etc, but it is starting to seem like I'm doing a bad job of explaining this stuff. Perhaps they'd already decided what they wanted to do and were just hoping to get some confirmation. I'm not looking to preach this gospel, but I'll be reluctant to completely sidestep the discussion if I am asked to give this kind of feedback again. I'm not sure if it was one of these people, but I know at least once I sent someone links to a couple of relevant Bogleheads wiki pages. As I recall, that didn't seem to get much traction either.
Statistics: Posted by rustwood — Sun Jan 19, 2025 2:13 pm — Replies 3 — Views 330