Needing to make a change...

[MomofFour]

In the past, my dh and I worked with a financial advisor who recommended loaded mutual funds and individual stocks to us. We do not want to work with him anymore. I have been slow to get moving, but have moved our Roth IRA's away from him to Fidelity in the past year.

Now is the time for me to move the rest away, but I get so overwhelmed that I have just done nothing. If I were starting from the beginning it would be easy, I would choose some no load index mutual funds to invest in.

The problem I have now have is knowing whether or not I should sell some of the investments I already own. I have read tons of books, am always reading finance articles, this website, etc.

I'm trying to decide if I should just transfer to another financial advisor or if we should move everything to Fidelity to keep things simple.

So, what do you think- is it ever a good idea to pay someone to help you make decisions or should I go it on my own?

[disneysteve]

You are asking a couple of different questions here.

1. Is is ever a good idea to pay someone to help you make decisions?
Sure. If you feel ill-equipped to evaluate all of the options on your own, there is nothing wrong with paying for some professional guidance. What you should never pay for is someone who has a financial stake in the investments they are recommending for you. If you want advice, hire a fee-only certified financial planner to review your portfolio, help you make concrete goals and work with you to devise a plan to meet those goals.

2. Should you sell your existing holdings or just transfer management to another advisor?
If you own front-load funds, you've already taken the hit from the load. So now you need to evaluate the funds based on performance relative to their peers and expense ratios. If they have low expenses and good performance, you may want to keep them. If not, you may want to sell them and replace them with better options in the appropriate asset classes.

[MomofFour]

Thanks for the response disneysteve! You always give excellent advice here!

I've done some looking for fee only financial planners this afternoon. There are not many, if any, around here! I think the closest one to me is over an hour away...I'm still looking.

Just to clarify, I don't have intentions of selling all the mutual funds that we currently own. I am more interested in selling some of the stocks. I would like to sell them and take the capital loss on our taxes, then put the money into a good mutual fund.

[disneysteve]

Certified Financial Planner Board of Standards Inc. - Search for a CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER™ Professional
Here is a site to search for CFPs, but they don't break down who does fee-only work. I guess you'd have to call and ask. Some will have a choice of payment structures based on the services you are interested in.