My parents (64+65, both retired as of last month) have most of their retirement money with Fidelity Wealth Management. They have some kind of program where kids of their members can set up a wealth management account even if they don’t have enough money to qualify. It’s an actively managed account.
My parents have been bugging me to set up an account there - I think mostly because it’s convenient to transfer money to another Fidelity account, and my mom has been dealing with her dad’s estate for the last year so I think they’re actively trying to make things as easy for us as possible down the road
My instinct is to not want to do it - we already have a combination of actively managed accounts with Edward Jones, index funds with Vanguard, and a few other random accounts. My base of financial education mostly came through MMM and his advocacy for index funds only; plus I just feel generally suspicious of putting all my money in one fund or company.
I guess I’m thinking I’ll set up a basic account with them just for the sake of my parents being able to transfer money easily, but not actually move any of my other accounts under their umbrella. I’m not sure if there’s any additional minimum balance rules or anything else to consider.
Does anyone have experience with Fidelity Wealth Management? Am I missing anything? Is my inner 14-year-old just having a knee-jerk reaction against doing something my parents are bugging me to do??
I have no experience but would have the same knee jerk reaction. That being said, I’m also deeply affected by MMM here.
It sounds like you already have actively managed accounts. Do you like that experience? Are you satisfied with your access to professional financial planning?
What’s the benefit to you to this account besides making things easier for your parents (which certainly has value)?
Are there any limitations (have to keep money in account for X period of time, etc)?
The worst return I ever got was from an actively managed account! not at Fidelity, but I don’t trust them, they get their fees regardless of happens to your balance. And my taxes were a nightmare due to the shitload of various elements of my account.
I have been retired 10 years - my stash has tripled in that time. I don’t believe Fidelity or any other managed fund can beat that.
Fidelity as a whole is fine (it/Vanguard/Charles Schwab are pretty much even as far as funds)…apparently at some point along the line I ended up in their ‘private client group’ which means once a year they want me to come in and talk to them, I say I’m fine thanks and have no interest in more detailed money management either, and we all move on. So if you just wanted to set up an account for money transfers I doubt they’d bother you, and as last I looked brokerage accounts didn’t have minimums, although specific investments might.
Having said that, one of my coworkers who retired last year basically did shove his entire portfolio at one of their wealth management people, and he’s been pretty happy (and he has/had just as many spreadsheets as I did while working, so I doubt they’re doing a terrible job, although the fees are enough to turn me off).
my perspective (admittedly biased) is that if you have money with EJ that it would be better to get it over to be managed by Fidelity, but it depends on what exactly you have with EJ and tax implications of getting it out. But that is based on the things I’ve seen on Reddit, and your EJ person may not be a problem.
Thanks, all! I’m solidly meh on our active managed EJ accounts; we made them when we were pretty young adults and I just haven’t put the work in to look at transferring things away from them.
My sister has already made an account with them; I think my next step is to check in with her on how it went/what info she got from them, then decide from there if I want to proceed.
Hey Folks, We have Fidelity through a work stock plan. We have no actively managed investments and sometimes the brick-and-mortar locations are handy. No real complaints, but every time your portfolio passes certain round numbers, you can expect to get a call about reviewing your investments.
Most importantly, you can transfer stocks/shares between financial institutions with no tax implications as long as you do not sell anything. This is called a “Transfer In Kind” and can be done in between any of the big brokerage houses. It takes more steps than a standard trade and requires actions from the two brokerage houses. When we did multiple retirement accounts from previous jobs, it was handy to walk into a Fidelity and deal with it all there in one visit. Hope this helps.
I have accounts at Fidelity. I like a lot of their tools – Full View is ok for basic money management, and their Retirement planner tool is quite robust.
I would NOT pay for money management services. At Fidelity or elsewhere. I have contemplated using a service like PlanVision, which will help you come up with a basic index-fund based plan for a minimal annual fee, but haven’t bit the bullet on that yet.