My Friend Is My Financial Advisor. Should I Hire a Professional?

0:00This episode is brought to you by SmartVester. Connect with an investing pro near you at RamseySolutions.com slash SmartVester. Juniors in Fayetteville, Arkansas. Hi, junior. What's up? Hey, how you doing? Better than I deserve. How can I help? Well, I have a considerable amount of money that I'm investing. And I have a friend that's a financial advisor. He's giving me some mutual funds to invest in to purchase. And he's not charging me. And my question is, is it okay to go with him and just bank the 1% that typically they charge like a fidelity or e-trade? Or would I get a better return if I went with e-trade and somebody was actually watching over it? Well, I would not go with e-trade because I would want you to develop a personal relationship with a financial advisor that is watching over everything and meeting with you like our SmartVester pros that we recommend.

1:02But we don't recommend e-trade and we don't recommend fidelity. Fidelity is not a bad company. They've got some good mutual funds. But I want you to sit with a financial advisor and I don't mind them charging you a percentage. You will recoup on that. So what's the total amount you're investing? I have like in my individual account, I have about 619. I have some RSUs that are going to mature. I'm going to sell them in about two weeks. That's 276. Then I have a 401K that's 47. So you're bumping up to $100,000? Yeah, yeah, over a million. But 1.2. Yeah. Okay. And I think when you sit with some of the financial advisors, there's break points on that as well when you start getting up to that million dollar mark. So meaning that the commissions won't stay exactly the same. So yeah, I would sit down with Smart Vester Pro and have somebody talk you through that. You can find them at ramseysolutions.com. But the data is this. DIY do it yourself.

2:04Investing does not yield the same rates of return. And the main reason is that you get enamored with the romance of some company or some particular stock or thing. Instead of just looking at cold hard numbers, the second reason is fear. And when you read the wrong headline on the Fox News or CNN website and it triggers your fear button and you start talking about pulling all your money out at usually the exact wrong time to do it, you need someone to talk you off the ledge. And so all the research that we have on investing says that a person who has a calm, conservative, trusted voice in their ear to stay in the market and to carefully analyze these investments rather than getting caught up in the internet romance bull crap of something. Then they're going to keep you on track and you're going to build more wealth over

3:06the scope of your life than when you DIY it. And so I know a lot about this stuff and I don't DIY my mutual funds. I have a smart investor pro Rachel and Winston have a friend was doing it out of just. I think he's just saying pick this from this. Well, I don't think he's actually mad. Okay. He said he's showing me which mutual fund. Oh, I got you. Yeah. And not charging him for that. But there's more in this than just simply which mutual fund. There's staying in it. There's understanding new things that come on board. Different things you can get into as you get above that million dollar mark. There's going to be some things that you can do that are very nuanced, very small things are not going to make you rich. But they're also going to stabilize your life and stabilize your future with that. So no, junior, I would not go with E-trade. I would not go with fidelity and I would not go with my free friend who told me which mutual fund to buy over lunch. I said I would do what I do.

4:06This is when my advice is consistent. I'm not telling you to do something I don't personally do. My personal accounts are with a one of our smart investor pros and have been since I started that program all these years ago. Yeah. And these guys and women who are in this position for if you find a good one in our smart Mr. pros, you know, for sure that is they live and breathe the stuff. And again, there are nuances in that world that you can take advantage of that you will never get by just yeah, doing it yourself. And when you have that much money, junior, that I would. I mean, I know we joke about like tax loss harvesting, you know, one time on the show, you're like, oh, yeah, but it's these little things that you, you know, I mean, the adip over time and they know about that stuff and they can educate you and show you and it's and it's good for you. Take advantage of those things, but you're not going to get that with just someone randomly telling you to pick two or three different types of mutual funds and that's it. So there's some new ones to it and detail that I think could be to your advantage for sure.