Bucks Blog: How to Get Reasonably Priced Help With Investments

This weekend’s Your Money column is of a piece with several I’ve written in the past, all revolving around the question of how to get competent people to help you with your investments for a reasonable price.

Over the years, most of those competent people have tended to work only with customers who have a lot of money, with the exception of a small cohort of financial planners who deign to work by the hour. Reasonably priced (or free) help tends to come from people who are earning commissions of some sort from the provider of the investment product that they are selling you. And all too often, they are more concerned about their payment than your long-term financial health.

Now comes Rebalance IRA, the latest in a series of services like Wealthfront, Betterment and others that want to put you in the right kind of investments for a price much lower than the standard 1 percent of assets per year that wealthy people tend to pay for full-service financial planning.

So would you give up one half of 1 percent of your investments each year to an adviser like the ones at Rebalance IRA? Or are you among the few people who are in control enough of their emotions to be able to manage their own money effectively?

Article source: http://bucks.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/01/18/how-to-get-reasonably-priced-help-with-investments/?partner=rss&emc=rss