Fidelity-using their advisors?

[wemberly]

I need to roll over several 401ks into an ira as well as set up two Roth IRAs. I was planning on using vanguard or fidelity, and have an old 401k with each one. I noticed that we have a fidelity location in town. I wondered if anyone has any experience with their in person services or if there are more fees for doing that way rather than figuring it out myself online. I was just planning to do something with an age target, not anything that I really want to pay to have ‘managed’. Thank you!

[farmvillelover]

We are with Fidelity but not actively managed. In my experience, unless you're paying for active management (roughly 1%), you will only get pretty generic advice about your investment allocations. However, if what you say is true, that you just want something with an age target, it might be simple enough for them to just recommend target funds to you (Fidelity calls them "Freedom Funds"). If you want to have a target fund type allocation without paying the higher expense ratios associated with those types of funds, then it will just take more research and legwork on your part to to do it yourself.

[wemberly]

Thank you for your advice! I’m really new to this, we’ve always just maxed out our 401ks so doing this on our own/investing beyond 401ks is new to us. Would you recommend letting them manage it? I don’t mind the fee if it’s normal, but don’t want to overpay for services we don’t need.

[farmvillelover]

Jan 19, 2019 19:31:08 GMT -5 wemberly said:

Would you recommend letting them manage it? I don’t mind the fee if it’s normal, but don’t want to overpay for services we don’t need.

I don't know what level you're at as far as investing but I think at some point some people feel like it's too much of a number to feel comfortable doing on their own. I know some people that don't have much but they do not want to do it on their own so they pay the fee.  RockNVoll will probably have better advice on this topic.

[wemberly]

Thank you for the info! It is in the low six figures, and we probably have about 25 years until retirement. If there is any other info that is helpful let me know.
I definitely prefer something hands off, I’m questioning if just the target date is good enough or if I should be looking at something more.
I guess I’m also looking to see if either will help with just setting them up, not so much investment advice, more that I’m getting checks from the old 401ks correctly dispersed, etc. I can call our fidelity branch, but I wondered if they’d help do that in person vs. trying to figure this out myself online.

[flygirl]

I was disappointed with the Fidelity advisor. They basically gave me a canned option but called it an actively managed account. For the cost, I thought it would be more tailored. The advisor was not very good about answering questions either. He said he trusted the managers because they had the experience...and essentially I should too.