[manaboutown]

I am old enough to remember when trading costs were fixed...and they were high! I recall moving what little I had in the market to Olde Discount after May Day in 1975 at my astute boss's urging. I never again used Merrill Lynch or any other high cost brokerage company.

Although I do not know how compensation packages work in the financial industry stock brokers, or financial advisors as they like to call themselves, seem to get paid in part by the size of their customers' accounts. I am primarily a real estate investor but when I hit 80 sold off a couple properties. For years I had a small account at Schwab where I was (thankfully) ignored until I made a sizable deposit in 2022. Then I got noticed big time, greeted, called, invited to lunch, asked what they could do for me, all that concierge service stuff. To stop this, or at least put it on hold, I finally agreed to talk to a rep. During our conversation it came out that I had financial assets spread among several brokerage houses. He immediately urged, almost demanded, that I transfer all my accounts to Schwab. I refused and told him I remember Lehman Brothers and others and believed in spreading my financial assets among several of his competitors. By the way, at that time Schwab held long term Treasuries and interest rates were going up so it had to be squeezed and sweating it out. On top of that its clients were pulling money out of their Schwab bank accounts and putting it into T Bills, money market funds and CDs.

Over the years I have held both individual stocks and mutual funds. I actually was licensed and sold mutual funds in 1965 and 1966 so I knew back then about the various high fees. This was 10 years before Vanguard started on May Day 1975.

I even traded commodities for a time but gave it up after needing to call in from a pay phone under a bull moose head on the wall in a hunting lodge in Maine during deer season. I more than broke even - lucky me - but I could not handle the stress and I was young!

At present I am still mostly in real estate but have invested about half of my after tax RE sales proceeds in short term T Bills. The rest I put into individual stocks - I can't kick the habit - and ETFs. If I felt I needed a financial advisor I would go to an hourly rate fee only outfit having some depth of talent or team and not a highly and expensively advertised outfit like Fisher, Edward Jones or Raymond James which would happily rake off 1% or more of my financial assets in their accounts every year. (If my assets made 10% in a year they would get 10% of my return. If my assets earned 5% they could get 20% of my return. If my assets earned 1% in a year they would take 100% or more of my earnings. No thank you!) I would also choose someone I got along with and trusted. I would look for someone who had satisfied clients in my age group and financial situation, quantitatively and qualitatively. An individual advising owners of $100M portfolios would have no interest in me as my account would be peanuts to them. I would seek to find someone with experience and expertise at my financial level.