Bucks: The Right Model for Lower Cost Investment Management

In this weekend’s Your Money column, I take a look at Betterment and Flat Fee Portfolios. These are the latest efforts to bring investment management to the merely six-figured — the people who many fancier wealth managers no longer want to help.

Many of you, I know, prefer to manage your investments yourself. And for those with a steely discipline and a commitment to low-cost funds, this can work. But the majority — maybe even the vast majority — of people ought not to be running their own money. They simply don’t have the right combination of knowledge or emotional resolve to do it well.

So for those inclined to pay for advice and investment management, I ask you this: Do the fees for Betterment and Flat Fee Portfolios seem fair to you?

And for people in the business of selling advice (and thus compete with potentially lower-cost offerings like Betterment and Flat Fee’s), how would you poke holes in their business models?

Article source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=a0c179b126c27e4ce34cd8ef98ed7993