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By Terry Savage on April 24, 2014 | Investments

Hi Terry: Love your books; full of good information provided in a straight forward & understandable way. I’m looking for a new financial advisor for my entire portfolio: I currently have 50% of our portfolio fee based professionally managed by Fidelity & manage the other half myself. Fidelity like many advisors use mainly mutual funds and ETFs to build portfolios and not individual stocks & bonds. I’m considering going the latter route because there seems to be more transparency & better ability to track results not to mention no mutual fund fees. Your thoughts? Thank you.

Terry Says:  If you want to take a small portion of your IRA and manage it yourself in the stock market, you can certainly do that right at Fidelity.  But you say you are looking for a “new financial advisor.”  Are you ready to turn over your entire investment portfolio to someone who will pick stocks for you — knowing that the typical way this person gets compensated is based on commissions?  Think again.  There’s nothing wrong with building a portfolio of mutual funds and ETFs.  It keeps the costs down, especially compared to money management fees and commissions.  I suspect you’re just looking for some “excitement.”  Find it elsewhere and let your investment portfolio be like turtle, slow but sure.

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