If you rely on a financial advisory firm to manage your assets, how do you know if you’re getting what you pay for?
We think the answer to this question comes down to several specific points, one of which (an important one, but by no means the only one) is investment performance. If your advisor hasn’t at least outperformed broad market indexes by the amount of his or her advisory fees, ask yourself whether it might have been simpler to invest in broad index funds on your own.
I’ve written about financial fraud involving seniors before, and it remains a serious concern. Unfortunately, there’s not much we in the investment industry can do beyond warning our clients to be vigilant and working through issues when they arise. As with any sort of fraud, the best defense is an educated and skeptical investor.
Let me share a recent situation encountered by one of Vanguard’s client-service phone groups.
I’m a list maker. I carry around various lists for different parts of my life, and add and delete as I work my way through the tasks. While much in my life has become digital, I always write these lists out on paper. No digital task lists on my Blackberry or in my e-mail system.
But in other ways, I’ve eliminated a significant amount of paper from my life. One benefit is that fewer important pieces of correspondence have to compete with the avalanche of catalogs that seem to pour into the mailbox with astounding regularity. However, there are risks.
One of our readers recently asked about Vanguard’s view on 401(k) loans.
As you might know if you’ve poked around Vanguard.com, we generally frown upon retirement plan loans, to put it mildly. In fact, Vanguard’s intranet for employees recently featured an article cautioning us against borrowing from our own retirement accounts.
Thank you for all of your comments on my “Generation D” blog post. We heard from students, recent grads, parents, and investors. Your comments were insightful and passionate, and pointed to several major themes.
Some of you admitted to, or alluded to, confusion over the terms of student loans and the implications of those terms. “Read the fine print” was the phrase that struck me. (I was looking at a promissory note from Sallie Mae this week, and it’s not an easy document to get through.)
