htxag09 said:
LMCane said:
do not pay for a financial advisor when you are just starting out investing.
that's a total waste of money.
get a Vanguard (I use Fidelity) brokerage account and as others have said, if you don't know what you are doing then just start using a sector SPDR ETF
As someone who started working with a financial advisor a couple years after graduation and has been working with him since, I'd have to say I disagree.
Sure, it's a waste of money for some people.
But there's a lot of people, like my wife and I, who didn't really know where to start nor have the time to research where to start. We sat down with him, talked about our situation, what we want to do now, what we want to save for, where we need to be in retirement, and laid out a plan.
The changes we made, the money we've saved, and the returns we've seen on our investments have been well worth his expenses, IMO.
I think this is a fair point and a lot of it depends on what the individual is looking for or needs. I personally think the average person who says they don't want to spend much time on it like the OP should either do something very simple like the Boglehead 3-Fund investing style where they minimize their expenses and just try to generically match the market or they should use a financial advisor. I am personally leery of the financial advisor model simply because of the amount their fee takes out of your total return over time. No individual year is too bad but the compounding on the difference in expense over time can end up being a huge amount of money in the long run. However, I also think every person's situation is different and their needs are different.
To the OP, if you decide not to use a financial advisor there are a lot of simple portfolios at
https://www.bogleheads.org/wiki/Lazy_portfolios or
http://www.lazyportfolioetf.com/. I personally recommend something like the two or three fund portfolio because of the simplicity if you really do want to pay next to no attention to it (not necessarily a bad idea because trading too much is what hurts a lot of people). The advantage of these systems is diversification with simplicity. The second advantage is that it actually is a system for people who don't understand everything and don't really want to.
There are also some retirement date funds out there that will do the rebalancing for you but I would NOT use them in a taxable account under any circumstances. Some people got screwed last year in those mutual funds from Vanguard because of tax issues. Its a long story but I personally would stick to simple portfolio of ETFs with VTI, VXUS, and BND that I rebalanced myself in a taxable account to avoid any tax issues that can crop up inside mutual funds of this nature.
Once again, I'm making this recommendation based on the assumption you don't want to actively manage it much. This process has historically provided good returns in the past without much in the way of expenses but htxag09 is right that a good financial advisor can help you with an actual plan based on your individual situation. This has a LOT of value in my opinion but it really depends on your situation.
Once again, this is just my opinion but I was in your shoes at one point and I have tried a lot of random things. Some I would recommend... others not so much. This is the advantage of htxag09 going to a financial advisor right from the beginning. He probably didn't fumble around for as long as I did before he found something that fit his knowledge/risk profile but now that I'm comfortable with what I do I really don't want one. Once again, its an individual decision based on your circumstances.