Who do you choose to manage CVX retirement fund and ESIP?
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I went through this 4 years ago, and had been through 2 advisors before finding the Wells Fargo Advisors team here in Houston a year ago. I am now more than satisfied because they have beat the S&P500 index performance over this past year even after my $8,000/month withdrawals. The only thing I could count on with the other advisors I have had was losing ground to the market. And the best thing is that they only charge a flat 0.25% fee unlike my other advisors who charged 1% or 0.75%. Try them out at 2813408800.
@2hyg, yes you should be applying for jobs and working on your resume, as you stated. your content does get old. I don't need a job but you may.
1mre: your self appointed content enforcement posts gets old: who are you to say what is an appropriate subject. Should you not be applying for jobs rather than trolling a lay-off site anyway? Just sayin...
I agree with the last poster. You guys should be made aware that Retirement & investment forums, web sites, chat rooms, and the like are already on the internet ad nauseam, if you know what that is and how to use the internet. No need to use a layoffs site full of disgruntled employees for that.
I heard that there is a site or section of this site where layoff related topics are discussed. Does anyone know where that is?
Do your homework. There are flat fee fiduciary financial advisers out there that will help you put together and manage a portfolio of low cost funds and ETFs for ~$5k-$8k/year. A Chevron retiree can easily have a $3-$5M nest egg considering the lump sum pension. Do the math on how much a 1% advisor will cost you.
The traditional 1% advisors all have arguments that they have some secret sauce that will more than pay for their fee and provide a net return that is better than the market averages. Challenge that. If it is too good to be true it probably isn't. It rarely happens in a single year let alone consistently over multiple years. If you have worked in the energy industry for your whole career you should be smart enough to figure that out.
A good flat fee advisor can keep you on track without requiring too much of your hard earned money. Not everyone is comfortable with making investment choices but you don't have to break the bank to get some basic help.
I don't blame financial advisors for asking for 1% fees but in my opinion they rarely if ever come close to justifying that cost. They count on lazy naive clients that blindly trust them.
I was with a .8% advisor for one yr with 1/2 of my money post retirement. They continually lagged my 60/40 allocation at Vanguard. If you are smart enough to work at Chevron then you are smart enough to get great investment performance by:
- knowing your risk tolerance
- invest in low cost index funds at Fidelity or Vanguard
- learn about retirement issues like SS and RMDs
My advisor, a firm that everyone would recognize, had me in funds with fees higher than Vanguard, and also purchased more cvx on my behalf. Are you kidding me?
12 mos of comparing them to my Vanguard and they were gone.
Your mileage may vary.
The 1% is a standard load for active management but the sad fact is the statistics are against you. Most active managers do not add enough value to cover their fees and in fact most have returns below their risk adjusted focus index. You pay a lot for the hand holding and almost all will be better with broad-based set it and forget it balanced funds from one of the big boys (Vanguard seems to do it slightly better than fidelity but it really does not matter). Really don’t look and don’t play timing, most folks that do this end up with worse outcomes. Find 4 or 5 morning star funds and let it ride long term.
I might use the same guy CJD. I am charged .94, but he has shielded me from alot of risky investments. I was also introduced to many psg 26+ retirees that are also his clients at the January dinner banquet.
If you are solely invested in mutual funds, your investment return is effectively reduced by the mutual fund fees.
Most outside advisors are picking individual equities and effectively handpicking stocks that form a "mutual fund" in exchange for their 1% fee. You advise your outside advisor on the % of your IRA that you feel comfortable being invested in equities and allocate % of your IRA to cash, bonds or cash equivalents.
I wasn't comfortable being a "small fish" investing in Fidelity and Vanguard. I prefer smaller firm where I get more individual attention to my portfolio. KEY: Make sure you get your money's worth if you are paying an advisor fee
I use a guy whose wife works in HR. I moved half my assets to him. I do pay .87 per year on the money he actively manages for me. However, most of my stocks CVX, PG, AAPl, MSFT, etc, are in a separate account that has no fee. He personally walked me through the NUA process, got me out of most of my CVX at 123, and found me the proper HR contact to help me with my retirement benefits when I had a massive issue. We speak every 6-8 weeks and I highly recommend using a professional for financial planning. He has been worth every penny and my wife loves working with him.
That being said, I have the other half of my assets at Vanguard. Low cost index funds in a diversified portfolio.
@rgc - when you do a non taxable rollover from Fidelity to Vanguard, don’t you lose ability to do NUA?
Put 100% of it in VTSAX and completely forget about it. I’m serious.
It is never a good idea to pay someone 1%, who then just picks mutual funds that have their own loads. Very few of those guys do better than the market after their fees are subtracted. If you want “set it and forget it” just select one (or a few) of the funds of funds vehicles at Fidelity, Vanguard, etc (e.g. retirement age or investment risk level balanced) ... much higher probability you will do better that paying someone to active manage a simple broad market portfolio.
I kept the majority of my retirement funds in my Fidelity 401k ESIP and did a non taxable rollover of about 1/3 to a Vanguard Traditional IRA. I like both institutions for the low expense ratios. Fidelity offers the basic mutual funds and the Vanguard IRA offers a great gamut of low cost ETFs to play the market. I’m using the Vanguard IRA to do most of my investing since there’s a high number of free trades I can execute per month. In both Fidelity and Vanguard, the settlement or sweep account is a federal money market that pays a higher percentage of interest each month than what other retirement account institutions offer their participants.
Sure leave it in Fidelity is as good a choice as any. They have a broad range of low fee funds and other funds of all sorts of flavors (high fee active aggressive, commodity focus...ready most anything you might want). Also beyond that you can buy just about anything within the Fidelity system for very low transaction fees. For me, a buy and hold low fee guy, I think Vanguard might be better because I already have a lot there in some of their internal only high value admiral funds... but fidelity does have similar.
Thinking of leaving put with Fidelity. Why pay .8 to 1% for someone to manage money already built. Seems everyone I spoke with has a different favorite.