Financial advisor and trust company

[Tybee]

My mom's money is currently with a trust company that my brother selected. They have been okay--excellent at some things, like taxes, getting money transferred over to them, paying her bills, keeping on top of things--but I was not super impressed with their investment advice, and my brothers are going to keep their money there when we transfer it to the heirs. I could keep it there, but it costs 1% annually, I feel like I am not on the same page investment-wise, and I want separation between my brothers and me. I do really like the head guy that we deal with, but he is older than I am, so who knows how much longer he will be working. I just don't want us to be lumped together as a "family" for various reasons, and would prefer my money be elsewhere. But I like the guy, and it makes things very simple, and he could open an account for me and it would be painless.

What would you do?

[Rogar]

Without knowing more about things, I'd transfer the investments to something like Fidelity or Vanguard and invest in a simple indexed total stock fund and an indexed bond fund with low management fees. One percent could be worth it to have someone else manage things, depending on how comfortable you are with them, how you feel about managing things on your own, and how complicated things are?

[Tybee]

Without knowing more about things, I'd transfer the investments to something like Fidelity or Vanguard and invest in a simple indexed total stock fund and an indexed bond fund with low management fees. One percent could be worth it to have someone else manage things, depending on how comfortable you are with them, how you feel about managing things on your own, and how complicated things are?

That's exactly what I thought, too, and have been managing my own money since the dot.com bust, so I'm probably more comfortable with that than handing it over to someone else.

[Teacher Terry]

I would do what Roger advises.

[iris lilies]

Transfer the money because you are on top of your own investments. The guy at the investment house will still reap a benefit from doing a good job with your mom’s assets because your brothers are keeping their share with him. 1% seems to be the standard fee for managing a few million or less. One of my friends has an amazing amount of family money and they charge her half of a percent.

[iris lilies]

On the topic of transfer of parental assets: I was thinking about it just this week how clever the Edward Jones strategy is to have small brokerage offices on Main Street USA. My mom in her small Iowa town had her money with them and when it came time to transfer to me, The Edward Jones office up the street from my house took care of it. That’s the only reason why we have a Edward Jones account. And then, when DH’s father died it was handy to transfer his father’s Edward Jones money into our Edward Jones account.

I believe Edward Jones limits the amount of assets one office can control. In DH’s very small home town there are two Edward Jones offices on Main Street. It is a farm rich community with the richest farmland in the world so there’s money there.

Our household has several brokerage accounts: Wells Fargo, Edward Jones, and Vanguard. The Wells Fargo account exists because many years ago the young investment guy actively went after our account. It had formally been held at the investment arm of our bank where he then worked, but the subsequent investment officer was rather lackluster in keeping our business and later there was some sort of screwup at that bank with the investment and DH figured it out, and that annoyed me so we got out.

[flowerseverywhere]

Be careful no matter what you do. when FIL died the Edward Jones guy was going to charge MIL a 7% commision to transfer the money to her. Luckily she asked my BIL (who did taxes on the side) to check the papers that were coming in. Naturally he went through the roof. She had so little to live on the rest of her life it was horrible he tried to do that. This guy maybe was 1 in 1,000 but beware.

By the way I would trust Fidelity and Vanguard to have a variety of low fee long term funds with little churning. You can choose one that is 60 bond/40 stock or whatever you are comfortable with.

[iris lilies]

Be careful no matter what you do. when FIL died the Edward Jones guy was going to charge MIL a 7% commision to transfer the money to her. Luckily she asked my BIL (who did taxes on the side) to check the papers that were coming in. Naturally he went through the roof. She had so little to live on the rest of her life it was horrible he tried to do that. This guy maybe was 1 in 1,000 but beware.

By the way I would trust Fidelity and Vanguard to have a variety of low fee long term funds with little churning. You can choose one that is 60 bond/40 stock or whatever you are comfortable with.

I doubt there was a transfer fee (don’t really know) for us to transfer funds from one Ed Jones office to another, but when I transferred a long held dodgy investment to Vanguard, yeah, big charge. Ugh. I say “dodgy”because I bought it in my 20’s and that was before I knew much about index funds at the discount brokerage houses.

[jp1]

I also agree with rogar. If you have an existing investment account elsewhere like E*Trade, vanguard, etc I would just transfer the assets there. That 1% annual fee will definitely eat up a lot of income. I say this assuming that the trust will be liquidated and distributed in a relatively short timeframe post-death.

However, as the future trustee of my best friend’s estate I can understand the desire of the trustee to have all the beneficiaries open an account where the assets are currently held. I will be doing the same thing (my friend’s assets are all in a vanguard account) because it will make my job as trustee much easier. But if the beneficiaries want to then immediately roll stuff out of vanguard and go somewhere else I don’t care. Once they possess the assets it isn’t my issue one way or the other.

[Tybee]

Be careful no matter what you do. when FIL died the Edward Jones guy was going to charge MIL a 7% commision to transfer the money to her. Luckily she asked my BIL (who did taxes on the side) to check the papers that were coming in. Naturally he went through the roof. She had so little to live on the rest of her life it was horrible he tried to do that. This guy maybe was 1 in 1,000 but beware.

By the way I would trust Fidelity and Vanguard to have a variety of low fee long term funds with little churning. You can choose one that is 60 bond/40 stock or whatever you are comfortable with.

Thank you, I forgot about transfer fees. I will look out, for sure.