Like many, I must give thanks to this group to help open my eyes to what was going on with my accounts, retirement and 529s.
My wife and I got married right out of college. Conveniently, my new brother-in-law was been a financial adviser with Edward Jones... how convenient! So we started to build out our Roths, and when we had kids, the 529s. Then the company I worked for was sold, and I had the opportunity to roll the 401k into EJ... so i did that. All of a sudden there is a sizable (to me) balance, and after lurking here and John Oliver, I decided to take a closer look at what was going on.
Findings: 1) Annual fees ($20 to $40) on the retirement accounts 2) 3.5% front load fees. This pissed me off, because on each investment, i saw a $ for $ investment. However, the following day the investment would be revalued to take the fee out. It's like driving a new car off the lot...loss of 3.5%, boom. 3) 2% charge on all reinvested dividend and cap gains (once hit $250k, this went away. 4) Lowest fund expense ratio was 0.58%, most of the balances were 0.6% to 0.7%.
With the new fiduciary rules being put into place, my wife and I had a call with my adviser (brother-in-law) to review what the plan was with our accounts. I started to poke around with some questions, and at one point asked to see all of the funds available to us, looking for 0.25% ratios. He literally said "If I gave you a list of all of the funds, then what would you need me for." Bingo.
Now he is trying to put our accounts under a "guided solution" which is 1.16% on the balance each yr, and then says, "I'll reduce that to 1.08% because your family"... what!? We end the call, with me needing to "review our options".
Further research ensues. Decide to transfer all accounts to Vanguard. I expect to see cost savings of $2,000/ yr through EJ fees and lower fund ratios... thats around $80k over 20 years.
So once again, thank you!.
TL;DR - started to used Edward Jones because of family relationship, after research and convincing wife the family would be ok, and EJ are just salesmen of financial products...saving ~$2,000/ yr.
Submitted March 10, 2017 at 09:47AM by nowherepa http://ift.tt/2nmGL3Y
