| Oh, I see your concern. Yep, that's the same concern I had when I started discussing all this with my financial planner. Just to let you know, I have Bachelor's and Masters in in Accounting and an MBA in Information Management. More than a decade ago I worked for a Big 5 accounting firm and then later I worked in corporate finance in the forecasting department. I also did a lot of mergers and acquisitions as well as market segment analysis. Much of this had to do with business portfolio analysis. Not only that, but at one time I wanted to be a Wall Street guy. So I consider myself pretty well-educated in the area of investments in general and know how to really do due diligence. I tell you this not to impress you, but to let you know that I really was against anyone managing my investments, because I didn't think they could do any better of a job than I could. Well, the truth is that they probably can't, if investing was my full time job. But it's not. Once I started talking to my current financial planner, we corresponded and met for about 6 months, before he finally convinced me to transfer some of my assets to his firm. So I did my due diligence on him to. What convinced me ultimately is that he didn't try to pretend he knew more than me. Ultimately, he liked many of my ideas and I liked many of his. It was a good personality match. In addition, his approach is towards disciplined investing and savings towards concrete, defined, and reachable goals. Before him, I knew I wanted to retire and pay for my kids college education. Now I know when I will retire and with how much, and have similar plans set up for all my kids. Not only that, but he has me MUCH more diversified than I used to be. I won't be seeing 100% gains in a year anymore, but I also won't be losing 50% in a year anymore either. In fact, he has it so that if I just earn 8.5% per year, I will retire when I'm 50 with all the money I need for the rest of our lives. Now the S&P500 has earned an average annualized return of 11%, so 8.5% is attainable, I think. The thing I like about him is that he considers all my opinions and gives me an unbiased 3rd party to bounce my ideas off of. He also provides a check against my loonier ideas, so I don't piss away money in a manic fit. In short, he keeps me diversified across asset categories and industries, so that I can achieve my objectives long term, not to mention helping me to clearly define my objectives. So anyway, this thread is to talk about why we think managers can help or why they stink. So hopefully, this provides some insight into why I chose to go with one. Best of luck to you Skeeter! |
