THE FATHER BLOG

Happy Monday everyone! I have touched on the topic of utilizing a financial advisor vs doing your own investing in the past. As I’ve also shared, I have a few avenues myself utilizing two financial advisors/institutions (each managing about 25% of my total portfolio) and myself doing the last 50% through a trading platform.

If you are using a financial advisor…do you know what you’re paying them to manage your portfolio? Here are some common fee structures:

• Assets Under Management (AUM): The advisor takes a percentage of the total assets they manage, typically 0.75% to 1.5% annually. A $500,000 portfolio often costs $3,750–$7,500 per year.
• Hourly Rate: Generally costs $150 to $500 per hour, suitable for specific, one-time advice.
• Flat Fee / Retainer: A set annual fee for comprehensive planning, usually ranging from $2,000 to $9,200.
• Project-Based: A one-time fee for a specific plan, such as retirement or estate planning, averaging $1,500–$5,000.
• Commission-Based: Advisors are paid via commissions from investment products sold, usually 3% to 6% of transactions.

Here is my #1 suggestion if you are using them: Look at your statements and see what type of return they have gotten you annually and then adjust based on the fee you are paying. Are they averaging more than 7-8% annually after it’s all said and done? Are you doing some of you own investing through a trading platform (Etrade, Robinhood, Fidelity, Vanguard, etc) and giving yourself a better return without any annual fees? You realize after awhile you can just see where the financial advisors have put your money and you can do the same thing.

Once again, you may not have the time or interest to manage your own money (I don’t understand that but I get that it happens) and the financial advisor/institution is the way to go for you. And if you have money in these institutions, I’m not saying to pull it all out of there and start doing it yourself. But if you can take $10 or $20 or whatever each month and start investing yourself on the side….you just may surprise yourself how well you can do.

I’m back from Florida….got home last night….but not as expected.

I was tracking not only my flight from Orlando back to Philadelphia, but also always track where your plane is coming in from at that time. Last night my Frontier flight (that airline flies fairly often and very inexpensive between PHL and many Florida destinations) was coming down from Philadelphia…and was getting constantly delayed. I was supposed to get home at 10:30pm, then it was 11pm, then 11:30pm, and then around midnight. I didn’t like what I was seeing. That round trip flight only cost me about $100. So I looked to see if anything else was flying back home. Spirit Airlines…another inexpensive carrier…has a 7:30pm flight getting home at 10pm…for about $100. SOLD!

Of course that flight was getting slightly delayed as we sat on runway but only a little and plane was more than half empty…so we landed at 10:15pm…I ran off plane, got to the parking lot, and was home by 11pm.

To me, that was worth the $100. Depends what you think is worth dealing with and what options you have available.

There are many decent flight apps and websites to monitor this stuff. I use Flight Aware (https://www.flightaware.com/) and it serves me well.

Bottom line…I’m back from the Florida sun and into the New Jersey frozen tundra. Happy Weekend everyone!!

Hanging in the Florida sunshine by my buddy’s pool with his awesome pets

The winter wonderland that is still NJ

“The market is crashing! I have to sell off my portfolio before I lose everything!”

“Prices are rising…I have to buy now or I’m going to miss out!”

Yes…this is why many people fail or can’t handle the stock market. They follow the fear/FOMO (fear of missing out) and haven’t done their research and maintain conviction in the stocks they were supposed to do their due diligence. Now who am I to tell you this? I’m nobody….I’m just passing along some advice from Warren Buffett again. And he is someone you should probably pay attention to if you’re in or looking to get into the market.

Here is a snippet of an article from the Motley Fool. They often have very good investing information on their site….worth a visit for sure.

The real secret to Buffett’s success and the biggest danger to average investors

There’s no doubt that Buffett is an excellent stock picker. However, the real secret to his success was that he maintained conviction in his stock picks, even when they underperformed for an extended period. That’s because he continuously evaluated the businesses underlying the stocks relative to their valuations to determine whether they remained great investment opportunities.

But Buffett noted, “Most investors, of course, have not made the study of business prospects a priority in their lives,” in his 2013 letter to shareholders. While studying individual businesses and developing a portfolio can produce excellent returns for investors, someone who does so without a solid understanding of what they’re buying and why they’re buying it can easily be swayed by market forces to buy or sell at exactly the wrong times, leading to poor performance over the long run. That’s why Buffett recommends the investors he describes above invest in an S&P 500 index fund.

But even index fund investors can be susceptible to the behavioral challenges of investing. “The main danger is that the timid or beginning investor will enter the market at a time of extreme exuberance and then become disillusioned when paper losses occur,” Buffett wrote. “The antidote to that kind of mistiming is for an investor to accumulate shares over a long period and never to sell when the news is bad and stocks are well off their highs.” In other words, make a plan to consistently invest some of your income at set intervals (say, every month or every paycheck), and don’t sell when the market crashes if you don’t have to.

Whether you’re an index fund investor or a stock picker, Buffett’s advice is clear: You must maintain conviction in your investments if you want to succeed. Without it, you’re likely to fall prey to the many psychological pitfalls involved in investing. As long as your investment decisions are grounded in solid reasoning that you can back up with logic and analysis, you should be able to withstand the challenge.

Despite his nickname, “The Oracle of Omaha,” Buffett never felt the need to accurately predict the future of every possible investment. Understanding just a handful of investments was good enough to outperform the market for 70 years. “Omniscience isn’t necessary,” he wrote in 2013. “You only need to understand the actions you undertake.”