Here's a statement of the obvious: The opinions expressed here are those of the participants, not those of the Mutual Fund Observer. We cannot vouch for the accuracy or appropriateness of any of it, though we do encourage civility and good humor.
Hmm. Never heard of such a thing in 35 years of investing, at least in Mass., and my in-laws neither, in Conn. $3k on $100k? Maybe we're spoiled by Fido, but even when I was wrapped with PW, old ML, and Bear-Stearns, long ago, that was not the case. It is true that if you calculated in the awful trading commissions and other fees, the total was high, though not 3% effective.
Fees have come down dramatically in the past several years. Pretty easy now to get a managed account for somewhere in the general vicinity of 1% AUM. Lots of competition now. Fidelity, Schwab, even Vanguard all do privately managed accounts. A long time ago if you even asked Fidelity, Schwab or Vanguard for advice, they would say something like, 'we do transactions only, we don't give advice.' So many people had to go with a full service broker, load funds, high transaction costs, etc. Now with "robo-advisors" like Wealthfront, Rebalance IRA and others offering very low fees, fees will keep coming down.
Comments
"Criminy, wonder how anyone gets away with charging 2%."
It wasn't all that long ago when "wrap accounts" at brokers, charging up to 3%/year were pretty common.