I’m Losing My Health Insurance

No, I’m not making this up.  It’s not just that the Carr family will lose their coverage as of June 30, 2014: our insurer pulled out of the entire freaking Indiana market.  We selected the plan two years ago because it 1) met the coverage needs of our employees well, and 2) was a far better cost-value proposition than the one offered by our previous plan.  Yes, that's right, we were able to shop for a better plan way back then.  So, why is this insurance going away? 

I’m sorry.  You didn’t actually need to ask “why?” and I’m not going to pretend you did.

Last year, I laid out my case as to why we should not rehire President Obama.  You can read about it in this post if you want.  To this day, I don’t believe he’s a bad person, although I’ve come to understand that he truly doesn’t care one whit about people with my opinions and he certainly doesn’t want to work with my type.  However, his utter incompetence as an executive leader is glaring. 

I vow to continue praying for him.

But now we’re dealing with much, much more than incompetence and il-suited disposition for office.  Now we have a constitutional issue on our hands because our Dear Non-leader is panicking. 

Folks, President Obama can’t just wave his hand and say that insurers must now bring back the canceled plans for a year (what exactly is magical about a year, anyway?).  The Affordable Care Act was passed along party lines, yes, but it was passed and it’s now the law.  It’s mostly a lousy law, it should be scrapped, and Representative Nancy Pelosi acknowledged that no one among even the key sponsors really knew what it would bring about, yet it is the law.   

But here’s the deal: no one – not even the President – gets to proclaim which parts of which laws we follow.  The notion that he can now just direct Secretary Sebelius to temporarily waive parts of that law and instruct Attorney General Holder to turn a blind eye toward prosecuting its violation isn’t just embarrassing, it’s deeply disturbing.  The independence and rule of law - above personalities - is a prerequisite for effective republican democracy.   

Read this piece from Krauthammer.  

Then watch this video – it’s 2:57 long and low-budget but offers a really well-reasoned argument.

Sure, these guys are both Republicans, and I get that it's not cool to listen to Republicans now.  But, please, just consider their words.

 

May God help us, may he direct President Obama's steps, and may he not turn his back on us in our folly. 

Misunderstanding the Libertarian Mindset

co·erce [koh-urs]

verb (used with object), co·erced, co·erc·ing.

 

1. to compel by force, intimidation, or authority, especially without regard for individual desire or volition: They coerced him into signing the document.

2. to bring about through the use of force or other forms of compulsion; exact: to coerce obedience.

3. to dominate or control, especially by exploiting fear, anxiety, etc.: The state is based on successfully coercing the individual.

***

On Tuesday I forced myself to listen to Terry Gross interviewing Chris Mathews - man, I hope I’m getting credit for this open-minded effort somehow.  Anyway, Terry spent most of the program lobbing – ironically enough – softball after softball Chris's way.  

Near the end of the interview, Terry asked Chris – as a guy who loves the political process – what his view of those who want to limit government is.  Chris proceeded to caricature the American libertarian’s self-image as a “…cowboy sleeping by himself under a tumbleweed.”  He then launched into the standard spiel about how if we only stop to think about it, we actually do need other people, and then rambled on, in his typical loquacious and self-fascinated way, about how he grew up without money, how he and all his brothers got to go to college on federal student loans, and how his Dad worked in city government. 

<delete insensitive comment about Chris sucking it up because we've all had hard times and then made something of ourselves despite the challenges>

Matthews confuses government with community.  He also confuses two distinct yearnings: individualism and libertarianism.  I don’t know whether his errors are rhetorical contrivances or  genuine misunderstandings, but either way, they need correcting.   

The key attraction to liberty for me is the possibility of minimizing the coercive powers of my fellow Hoosiers, U.S. Citizens, UN Subjects, etc. upon my life.  And it’s reciprocal: I’d really rather you not coerce me, but I also don’t have designs on your future.  The key strategic issue for Republicans, I believe, isn’t really what to do about the Tea Party caucus, but coming to terms with the reality that Conservatives want to herd people toward specific behaviors – just like their counterparts on the Left. 

By the way, I still self-identify as a Republican, but my appreciation of non-coerciveness has opened my eyes to the need for more philosophical consistency.  My strongest political impulse is the freedom of association.

Individualism, in itself, is not the goal.  Rather, it gives me the opportunity to choose my associations carefully.  I choose to be in community with others because I recognize that I need that and that I can contribute to the good of the group.  Most of us aren’t hermits, and we don’t want to live like that.

I choose to be in a local church, which is itself a part of the "Capital C" Church.  I’ve made vows to my wife to stay connected to her deeply until one of us dies, and with God’s help, I intend to not screw up that opportunity.  I have obvious moral commitments to my children, which are for the most part joys to fulfill.  I have business partners to whom I am accountable as well, and I do recognize that I have chosen a neighborhood, a township, a City, a state, and a country in which to live. 

The point of individualism – for me – is that I get to control which of those concentric circles are closer in, and which ones are on the periphery.  The point of libertarianism – also for me – is to secure the right to associate as freely as possible.  But in no way do I imagine myself as a “cowboy sleeping by himself under a tumbleweed.”  Though, if that type of lifestyle really butters somebody’s toast, I’d like to see her free to choose it. 

Despite Senator Reid's grand delusion, government, at any level and to any extent, functions by coercion.  If I'm going to be coerced, I want it to come from people close to me.  I do recognize the need to force some people into specific behaviors - one obvious example is when their actions impinge on my liberty - but I want to look for ways to minimize it.  At the very least, if I can't minimize the coercion itself, I want to minimize its destructive products.  In my view, government is a necessary evil – a mechanism by which people come together to meet only the clearest needs of the population.  How evil government's coercion and how effective its regulation are often functions of its proximity to the citizens being served.  What are the odds that some dude in Washington really understands the needs of a woman in Topeka?  

At the same time, I understand that many view government as a good thing, as a positive expression of community, as the most effective means through which to bring about a just society.  Those are fine desires; I may not share those desires or beliefs, but nor do I take issue with the impulse behind them. 

 

I only take issue with that vision in this respect: exactly whose vision of a just society are you promoting?  For whom do you bear a burden of care, and is it necessarily the case that I also share your burden?  Are you so certain that yours is truly the most just vision for society that you are willing to force me into supporting that vision, and would confiscate my property or imprison me if I don’t comply? 

I don't believe this this week's government shut-down spectacle is really about the Affordable Care Act.  It’s really about Massachusetts trying to make Texas behave like they want.  Well, guess what?  Texans don’t want to be coerced into acting in someone's pet societal drama, because Texans rightly see that New Englanders have only a very limited claim on their lives.  We're in some things together, but not many.  This reality is the basis for the Tenth Amendment.


So, no, Chris Matthews, I don't fancy myself a cowboy.  I just want guys like you to quit fantasizing that you have some right to make me do whatever you want.  Don't you want that, too?  Or are Republican tax dollars truly the life blood of your intractable societal ambitions? 

Scratching My Head About Atheism

I don't get Atheism, intellectually.  And the more shrill the Atheist, the less I understand the intellectual aspect of that belief.  Here are a few of the most confusing things to me about Atheism:

What Does it Mean to Believe in a Metaphysical Being's Non-existence?

 

It’s not that I buy the ontological argument; as an explanation for reality, I’m perfectly happy to include “there is no god” as one of the potentialities.  What I don’t get is the positive assertion of no-god.  No example of this is more puzzling to me than materialists – those who assert that all we can know is that which is observable with one or more of the physical senses.  If you can only know what you can touch, see, taste, hear, or smell, then how can you know something about anything that does or does not lie behind the physical?  It strikes me that Agnosticism, not Atheism, is a more honest response for the materialist.  

 

Like it or Not, We All Have Faith

 

In the instant before the Big Bang, you either had God alone, preparing to create, or you had an infinitely dense point of energy / matter which was about to explode.  I suppose you also could have had a prior, imploding universe, shrinking right up to the point where it could no longer continue imploding, and therefore about to reverse its course.  It really doesn't matter what your view is: in that one instant, either there was an agent or there was not.  

What makes either of those explanations, on the surface, more believable than the other?  I’m not talking about indications of divine design in nature or the Problem of Evil yet.  All I’m saying is in that one moment before the beginning of our space-time continuum, either explanation should strike the modern mind as equally outlandish and plausible .  And, heck, if Euclid was wrong and there really are many more than four dimensions, that would make the possibility of additional immaterial planes all the more reasonable, not less so.

Yet, we’re all confronted with the wonder of existence, aren’t we?  Stop and think for a minute about how amazing it is that I’ve written this blog post, and that you’re now reading it. Either God or No-God is behind all of this.  If we’re honest, we have to say that however we come down on that dichotomy, we’re all stepping out in faith.  

 

The Good Atheist

 

Apart from God, there are no ethical imperatives.  Seriously: what keeps the atheist from stealing his neighbor’s Jag?  He may say that it would be “wrong” do so, but why would it?  Why is it better for the atheist to suppress his selfish urges to defer to his neighbor? 

I’m talking about right and wrong, here, not about laws and mores.  There are all sorts of reasons why the Atheist might not steal the car:

he might get caught and lose his freedom;

he might not like the social ramifications of being known as a thief;

he might worry that if he could easily steal his neighbor's car, then others could likewise steal his

- each of which is totally rational, but none of which rises above the level of personal preference.  That's not to say that ethical choices resulting from a desire to follow God's law aren't often selfish, too.  But a transcendent moral code makes objective right & wrong possible.

RANDOM INTERJECTION ALERT!  Here's an interesting dissertation topic for all those of you  contemplating graduate research in religion or sociology: do Secularists hold democracy in higher regard than Theists because the former tend to believe that the majority's opinion carries a greater-than-the-sum-of-the-parts moral authority?  

Finally, what about the guy who chooses not to steal because he wishes to avoid a feeling of guilt from violating the moral code which was either a) emblazoned on mind by his Sunday School teacher, or b) inherited from distant ancestors, who developed a loyalty to other humans for the sole purpose of protecting the species against extinction?

This last one’s a bit trickier, but not much so: the thoughtful Atheist should realize that neither the influence of childhood Bible teachers, nor evolution can explain why he should continue to treat others unselfishly, once he becomes enlightened to the origin of those feelings. In other words, it's no more "wrong" for the Atheist to make purely selfish choices than it is to make noble choices. 

Of course, the Theist may suggest that the persistent drive to uphold fairness as objectively good, for example, simply points to a divinely authored moral standard.  But that's a horse of a different color.

 

I’m Also Sympathetic

 

I know that many Atheists are such because they’ve been so put off by hypocritical, self-righteous religious people and that they can’t bear the idea of associating with them – even to the extent of common belief.  Those of us who are believers have some serious fence-mending and repenting to do in that area.

I also respect that Atheists find the stories of miracles in ancient holy books too far removed from their current experience to make any sense out of the idea.  I’ve often thought myself, about how neat it would be to see a big miracle.  I see small miracles from time to time – often as a result of something my wife is praying about – but I can’t prove that those are miracles; skeptics could certainly offer alternative explanations to what I take as answered prayer.  But as to whether miracles could occur, I come back to the miracle of existence.  Whether the stuff of the universe just exists and, given 15 billion years, can fashion part of itself into a guy typing out a blog post at a computer, or whether that guy was created by God - either way it’s a miracle.  Any God that could pull that sort of thing off surely ought to be able to bring a man back to life. 

I’m most sympathetic to those who have been hurt to the point where they can no longer square an all-powerful God with a God who is also all-loving.  The philosophical Problem of Evil is far easier to confront than is the religious one.  

Where I’m totally unsympathetic is when I encounter smugness and arrogance – whether on the part of the believer or the non-believer. And, maybe I'm unsympathetic in those cases because I've spent so much of my own life being smug and arrogant about these things.  Now, though, and for me, the wonder of existence brings about a deeply humbling, quieting sense - one which I happily call "the peace that passes all understanding."  Sure, I have doubts about my beliefs from time to time, but I'm totally content that my belief in the reality of God's peace is no less reasonable than is the belief which denies it. 

The Business of Investing - Part 6/6: Some Advice

With everything that's wrong in the business of investing, it's absolutely possible to get good quality help, if you need or want it.  The subject of this post - the last in the series - is advice.  It strikes me that the best way to dish out that advice is by putting it within the context of a process - the process someone starting out might go through to find a value-adding investment management arrangement.   You may find that you're already somewhere along the process, not at step one.  So, skip ahead.  This post is intended to be entirely practical, not a narrative. 

Do you need help investing?

Not everybody needs an investment manager, but many people do find value in hiring someone to handle it for them.  Some people can do it on their own, but they don't want to spend the time required to do it well.  Others recognize that they have neither the temperament nor the training to invest.  Still others recognize that because of the offices and roles they hold, managing the money themselves might constitute a conflict of interest.

My friend Steve told me of a urologist known as "the Cowboy."  He earned this moniker because he performed his own vasectomy.

Sorry - I should've warned you to get a bag to breathe into before I shared that one.

I bring the Cowboy up because most people can't do that sort of thing: they don't have the knowledge, nor do they have the practice, nor do they have the stomach to do it.  It's just something beyond their ability.  Investing is a little different.  Many more people can invest well for themselves than can perform their own surgeries, but there are many people who just can't invest well.

For others, hiring an investment manager is more like the decision to hire a lawn care service: they could most likely do the work, but it'll look better if the pros do it and they'll have more free time, too.  Likewise, if you don't need help investing, do you want help investing?  In either case, paying someone else to do it for you is perfectly acceptable, provided the cost is right (more on that later). 

Hire an expert for the work you need.

Later this year, I'm going to enter a contract in what is, for me, a really large deal.  I'm a reasonably well-educated guy, so I'm considering reading the contract carefully and signing it myself.

Oh, sorry, that's what I'm NOT going to do.

I'm no idiot, but I need an attorney to review the contract for me - someone who understands precedent and someone who can say "You know, Steve, I saw this type of structure 5 years ago and it didn't work well."  The unique need I have is to make sure that the big contract doesn't include risks I haven't considered.  Beyond needing help from an attorney, what I really need is a corporate contract specialist.  Even an capable lawyer practicing in torts or family law might not be able to give me the advice I need. 

Medicine works the same way.  I have a friend who has three layers of specialty: 1) he's a surgeon; 2) he's an orthopod; and 3) he deals with traumatic injuries.  His scope of practice is narrow, to be sure, but if you lay your Ducati down on the interstate and crush your femur, this dude is exactly who you want to see.

If you need life insurance, as many of us do, hire an agent whom you respect and who will educate you on your alternatives.  If you need tax return preparation and planning, hire a CPA.  If your financial life is chaotic, consider hiring a financial planner to construct a financial blueprint for you to follow.

But, when these guys go to sell you investment management, remember this: they're not investors.  They may sound like investors.  They may even point to the smart guys at the home office who construct model portfolios for them, saying "But, those guys are investors."  Way too often, insurance guys are really just there to sell high recurring expense annuities.  CPAs can bee myopic with investing - we just had a CPA advise a prospective client against selling her ultra high-cost annuity because it would mean paying a capital gains tax (back when that rate was 15% for her bracket).  And while some financial planners are really good at planning, others do "planning" really as a means of supporting the product sale. 

If you need help investing, hire an actual investor - someone who knows security analysis and portfolio management.  Hire someone who's done the necessary academic work (undergraduate degree in a relevant field from a top university, MBA, MS in Finance, Chartered Financial Analyst, etc.), who has spent years doing the work of an analyst and portfolio manager.   Hire a firm that uses individual securities and does their own fundamental research.  Hire some grey hair, which started getting grey because of dumb mistakes he made 2 or more recessions ago.  Hire a guy who believes that your unique situation demands a unique solution.

But don't ever pay a non-investor to invest for you.  It's just not worth it.

Insist that your needs come first.

A fiduciary is someone who puts others' needs before his own.  Understand that something like 85% of individuals holding themselves out as financial advisors are not actually fiduciaries.  This distinction isn't as important in the institutional space, where knowledgeable investors know the difference between a sales job and analysis.  But when it comes to individual investors, you should always hire someone who puts your interests ahead of their own financial ambitions.  Otherwise, how could you ever tell whether the recommendations given you would be suited primarily to meet your unique needs? 

Fiduciaries are identifiable in a few ways.  One, Registered Investment Advisors (RIAs) are required by the SEC to uphold a fiduciary standard, as laid out in the Investment Advisers Act of 1940.  Generally, you can ask whether a prospective financial advisor (note the strategic similarity of terms) is also an investment advisor, or a registered representative (broker).

Two private designations that force members to adhere to a fiduciary standard are the Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) and the Certified Financial Planner (CFP).  Even if an advisor is not working for an RIA firm, she could still be held to a fiduciary standard by her membership in the groups sponsoring the CFA and CFP. 

Never, never, never over-pay for professional investment management.

Our fee schedule starts at 1.00% per year on the first $500,000 of assets we manage for clients, and declines from there:

• 0.90% on invested assets between $500,001 and $1,000,000
• 0.75% from $1,000,001 to $2,500,000
• 0.65% from $2,500,001 to $5,000,000
• 0.55% over $5,000,000
• We discount the above fee schedule by 0.15% at each tier for non-profit clients

Three years ago, we participated in a national benchmarking study, which looked at advisory fee structures at scores of firms like ours across the U.S.  The results were illustrative: our pricing was in line with the average for account values over $2.5 million, but below average for the lower tiers.  It's most common for fee schedules to start between 1.25% and 1.50%

Our objective is to keep "all-in" costs below 1% annually for the vast majority of our clients.  However, adding custodian commissions (of which we receive none) to the total cost will generally push clients with account values below $500,000 up to an annual range of 1.03% to 1.07%.

We like this level, because it allows us to appropriately resource our business, without claiming too much of the appreciation due to our clients.  In one recent client review, we discovered that our total fees over the last decade amounted to roughly 10% of the portfolio's total income and capital gains during that period.  That level will vary from client to client, certainly, and in this case it also includes a period of time when they were subject to an even lower fee level.  However the key point is this: you want to pay enough to ensure quality management without losing too much of your capital to management costs.  

This is a good objective for investors: strive to keep "all-in" costs below 1.00% annually.  Because we are slightly under-pricing the business (at least on a peer basis) at the low end and because we believe sticking with the fee schedule for everyone is important, we don't discount our fees.  However, many advisors do discount their fees, and you ought to try to negotiate a fee that favors your situation. 

Keeping all-in costs to less than 1.00% annually is far harder to do with mutual funds, annuities, and third-party money managers than it is with individual securities.  My 1.00% fee on top of shares of a particular company's stock works out to be...drum roll please...1.00%.  However, if I were to layer my 1.00% fee on top of a mutual fund with a 1.00% fee, your all-in cost would double.

I'm humble enough to acknowledge that we are neither the smartest nor the best resourced investment team in the game, and that some managers will out-perform us.  But the level of out-performance (if it occurs at all) will be a small fraction of 1.00% per year.  Thus the all-in costs for our clients are compelling on an after-fee basis, than if we used mutual funds.  To put it another way, if your advisor charges you 1.00% and subcontract the investing work to a mutual fund manager who also charges 1.00%, my "hurdle rate" becomes 1.00%, or the difference between 1.00% (my fee) and 1.00% + 1.00%. 

Folks, I'll happily take that hurdle rate.  All.  Day.  Long. 

What About Mutual Funds?


I don't mean to make it sound as though mutual funds are bad.  They're not.  If you have too little money to diversify adequately in individual securities, you may have trouble attracting the interest of quality investment managers.  That's absolutely not something to be embarrassed about; I'm just being frank.  If you find yourself in this situation, a mutual fund may be a good solution for you.  And here, frankly, you can keep it pretty simple.  I would contact Vanguard and ask them about their LifeStrategy Funds.  These funds  will offer you a great way to accumulate long-term wealth and can be helpful until you have a portfolio of enough size to use individual securities.

Another firm worth noting is Dimensional Fund Advisors.  DFA, like Vanguard, is low cost.  Unlike Vanguard, though, DFA only works through financial advisors - many of whom are independent fiduciaries.  DFA's site will direct you toward an advisor in your area who uses their funds, which is important because DFA is selective in which advisors they allow to use their funds.  You can find a DFA advisor here.   

Keep in mind that if you do go with an advisor using funds before you have much money, it may be difficult to leave them when you accumulate more.  One of the most important long-term considerations is the total or the "all-in" cost, which includes the advisor fee and the mutual fund fee.  If you can keep those two fees to less than 1% of assets annually, then you're probably in a good spot.  If not, you should recognize going in that you should probably switch advisors down the road.

OK, I'm done.

My hope is that this series has positioned you to be a better consumer of financial advice.  Obviously I hope that for you, because you'll be better served if you have some tools to use as you go "shopping."  But I also hope this information gets out because the whole industry will become healthier - consumers and providers alike - when we raise the bar.

For obvious reasons, I cannot give you much specific advice here.  That's one of the reasons why I wanted to take the first 5 posts to describe the current situation in our industry.  If you remember to 1) hire an expert for the need your have, 2) hire someone who's bound to put your interests first, and 3) find a solution with reasonably low on-going costs, you'll do better than most.

And, friends of mine should know, if you have more specific questions, just ask.

The Business of Investing - Part 5/6: Price vs. Value

In the last post, I claimed that in the pursuit of scale, investment management companies have spawned negative consequences.  The majority of those negative consequences can be grouped into two main classes: Price and Value.  Warren Buffett has famously distinguished that "price is what you pay, but value is what you get."  That applies to any service, product, or investment. Unfortunately, in the business of investing, retail investors often pay too high a price for too little quality.  


Value

Let's pick on my internist again, shall we?  Suppose my sleeplessness didn't improve, so I head back to Doc to find out what's next in the plan.  Doc listens - not exactly carefully - but practically before I can stop to breathe, interjects with:

"I've got it!  What you really need is a complete bedroom makeover.  Let's start by toning down the yellow on the walls a bit, then we'll tackle the furniture.  Speaking of furniture, a four-poster bed would just be the bomb in your bedroom!"

"Doc, my bedroom isn't all that bad.  I actually like the color and the furniture works just fine.  Frankly the idea of changing it all around right now makes me tired - is that where you're headed?"

"No, no, no.  You see, while I am also a doctor, what I really am is an interior designer.  Doctoring is just a great way to make money.  Now, how do you feel about modern art?"


Hyperbole again?  Yes.  Out of line?  Hardly.

The vast majority of investment advisors don't know how to use individual securities, and a huge percentage of them actually don't even select mutual funds for you.  Here's how scale works: the home office hires a small number of smart, number-cruncher types to construct model portfolios (read: "mass customization"), which are then distributed through an army of glad-handing, relationship-managing, asset-gathering, socializers.  The socializers are compensated based on production - a variable cost - so, there's relatively little risk in bringing another one, or ten, or two hundred on.  What kind of training do they get?  Ha!  The exams FINRA makes you take (the Series 7, Series 6, etc.) are not only barely worthy of the word "training," they're also not supported by the home office.  No joke: after one of those exams, I came back to the office and told my branch manager that I got a 96% (you needed 70% to pass).  His response?  "You studied too hard."    

Also remember that the glad-handers aren't in it for diversion; they're trying to make a lot of money.  And how do they make money?  Scale, of course!  Their incentives are 1) to plug as many customer assets into model portfolios, and 2) keep them there.  That's it, plain and simple.  Could an advisor manage 100 customer "relationships" this way?  (You must be joking.)  How about 200?  (Seriously: piece of cake.) Is 500 customer relationships too many? (No, I'll just hire a few assistants who know less than I do).  You get the point.

Now, to be fair, not all investment advisors are asset-gathering drones.  Some have other, primary fields of expertise, like accounting, insurance, banking, or financial planning.  But remember the fictitious example of my doctor: what if, because some insurance products are constructed to look like investments, your insurance salesman considers himself a true investment manager?  What if, one day long ago, your CPA thought to herself: "Gee whiz, my clients really get lousy advice from their brokers; I'll bet the competitive bar is set so low that I could get in on some of that action!"

Here's a newsflash people: investing well is hard work.  It's not impossible for you to do on your own.  Nor do you need advanced degrees to succeed as a money manager.  However, if your investment advisor is just some guy who picks mutual funds for you, what is the probability he's adding sufficient value to your life? 

I want to say a few words about financial planning.  This is an area where I'm critical, but it's also distinct from both the glad-handing broker and the mutual fund-selling insurance guy.  Let me start off by saying that financial planners mean well.  Their profession grew part and parcel with the fee-only business, which looked disdainfully at transactionally compensated brokers.  Financial planners - if they hold the Certified Financial Planner designation - are held to a fiduciary standard.  These guys really mean to do the right thing.

And often times, financial planners bring clarity to your finances.  They can help you paint a picture of your financial future - help you understand the future implications of delaying gratifying purchases right now.  They might even introduce you to budgeting for the first time.   

There are a few areas of financial planning that are good to do once (learning how to set up and live with a budget), there are other areas which should be reviewed every several years (the amount of life insurance you need, whether your estate plan - i.e., your will - still fits), but there aren't many that should be done every year.  One that comes to mind is tax planning.  If you happen to own interests in a few small businesses, or if you're contemplating making either a large or illiquid charitable gift, spending good money on a sound tax plan can make a ton of sense.

But here's the thing: tax planning should be done by a CPA, shouldn't it?  Ask any CFP (who's not also a CPA) if they're offering you tax advice, and you'll get a disclaimer a mile long.  Also, if your taxes are complex enough to require help, don't you really want your CPA focused on tax planning and not dabbling in investments because she can make some easy money that way?

As I mentioned in a previous post in this series, I spent two and a half years in financial planning.  I will say that even though we charged a lot for the plans ($5,000 - $15,000 per year), there were enough honest to goodness tax experts in my branch to add some real value to client tax planning.  And yes, for that kind of coin they'd keep a very close eye on all of the other planning areas that actually require less attention.

In many cases, financial planning is a function meant only to help you feel secure about handing over your investment accounts.  Fortunately, that was not at all the case in my experience.  However, my firm did have one giant problem.  While the heartbeat of the organization was planning-focused, 80% of their revenues actually came from investment management, which was - no surprise here - derived from client money, virtually all of which was parked in model portfolios constructed by a small team of "experts" back at the home office.  Unfortunately, the experts weren't that: none of them had ever actually managed securities portfolios before.  Their careers were simply focused on selecting mutual funds, not on understanding value.   

The June issue of National Geographic has a fascinating piece about the climbing conditions on Mt. Everest.  The short version: everything from tattered tents, to human waste, to corpses of dead climbers litters the world's highest peak.  One point the article made was that there exists a wide range of prices and quality of guide services.  Any guide can get you up the mountain; but the experts are the ones that get you back down - alive.  

The same holds for investment management.  If you need a periodic financial plan, hire a planner.  If you need to buy life insurance, hire an insurance broker.  If you need tax return preparation and planning, hire a CPA.  And if what you need is someone to manage investments for you, do yourself a favor by hiring an actual investor. 

Price

You probably get the idea that I'm not wild about commissions.  It just doesn't make sense to hire someone who's actually compensated to place financial products, if what you want is an objective professional service.

But again, recalling the Edward Jones example, it is possible to pay a commission on a fund and amortize that cost over a long holding period.  Furthermore, you can't avoid commissions entirely.  Your no-load mutual fund manager pays some small commissions to trade her portfolio's securities.  And if you had your money managed by an actual money manager, you'd pay a small amount in commissions as well - usually $10 or less per trade these days.

In contrast to commissions, fees better align your interests with those of your advisor.  Regrettably, the practice of investing customer money in mutual fund model portfolios means layer upon layer of fees. The first layer goes to the mutual fund manager, while the second layer goes to the advisor.  Together these fees can add up to 1.75% or more of assets every year.  Let's say that 1.00% of that goes to your advisor, while 0.75% goes to the mutual fund managers.  How much difference does that actually make?

Let's assume you park $100,000 with a manager charging you a total or "all in" fee of 1.75% (1.00% for himself, 0.75% for the mutual fund fees).  We'll also imagine that your investments will earn 7% per year before fees, which makes your after-fee return 5.25%.  After 20 years, your portfolio would've grown to $278,254.43.

Instead, let's say you chose the identical funds yourself, thus avoiding the 1.00% advisor fee, but still paying the 0.75% mutual fund fees.  The actual after-fee return would be 6.25% and the end value 20 years hence would be $336,185.34.

You would've paid an excess of $58,000 in fees and given up 21% of your potential return just by paying the advisor to pick funds for you.  Hey, I'm all for lawn mowing services, but...

What's worse is that often times the mutual fund + advisor arrangement generates an all in cost for investors north of 2.0% annually.  The truly strange phenomenon here is that while lower value mostly means lower cost, in the investing world - because of fees on fees - the opposite holds true.

Folks, if all you need is someone to help you select some mutual funds, you really shouldn't have to pay dearly for that service.  It's really pretty basic.  Mutual funds were designed with you in mind.  That they're viewed as complex is a construct of an industry hell-bent on finding someway to justify its exorbitant fees.

The next post is the last in this series.  In that one, I'm going to try to wrap it all up and offer you several recommendations for getting good investment management at a reasonable cost.