Bored,

I'm an advisor as well. I think bahbah is probably a mediocre advisor, certainly doesn't come across as the worst.

The problem is that most people are far too emotional with their money. They want to dive into whatever has been hot and have no idea what diversification is. Or they want to buy short term bonds because they think Obama is going to ruin us all.

Someone looking for a fa needs to find someone upfront about how they are paid, ideally someone who is legally held to a fiduciary standard. Also I would prefer my advisor have advanced certifications, at least cfp if not cfa, and also I would prefer they work for an independent firm.

I'll admit that a CFA is probably decent with money. For people with a large net worth it's definitely valuable to either a) learn about this stuff on an advanced level or b) pay a cfa some money. I kind of group this with attorneys and cpa's...

Nothing about this means that you need any kind of adviser if your net worth is <2M dollars. Just buy a target date fund and leave it be.

As a charterholder, I agree with you. But 85% of people have no idea what a target date fund is and would sell it at the first hint of fear. That is the point I am trying to get across. They are incapable of holding through a full market cycle. People are irrational and are very risk averse, they often have to be talked into taking risks that they need to take. That is why advisers exist.

I think one of the main points where we disagree is that I believe there are a lot of FAs out there that will beat ETFs long term with their fees included. I understand that 1% a year is huge but I think most people are better off paying it and a lot of advisors charge less than that.

I'm not saying you should pay for financial advice given by just anyone. Ideally an FA would be recommended to you and you'd find someone you think knows what he's talking about and someone you can trust.

I don't think you are dumb and we both know you are not by yourself in your thought process of FAs. ~95% of FAs give the rest of FAs a bad name.

Wow, this thread really got derailed.
I'd like to get it back on track and add my own personal experience.
I'm a physician who was sold a $750,000 whole life insurance policy about 5 years ago when I was fresh out of residency.
After much deliberation I exited the policy this month with a loss of about $15k.

What initially sold me on the policy was thinking that I would use it in estate planning-that I could pass it on to children without them incurring an estate tax hit.
But as time has passed, I realize that the combined estate tax exemption of $10.8 million is more money than I would like to leave to my kids (if in fact I reach that amount), so that reason does not apply any longer.
As an investment, the policy was sold as analogous to the bond portion of a portfolio. But this again didn't make much sense to me when I thought about it, as there aren't any "magic" investments in their portfolio that make them safer than bonds while guaranteeing their stated returns. They're exposed to market risk, and on top of that I'm paying the cost of commissions, so I figured I'd do better simply by investing that money in something like Vanguard's Total Bond Market Index Fund.

So, in the end, I learned an expensive lesson, but one that I feel I nipped early enough in the bud to save me some money down the line.
I agree with those that offered the White Coat Investor recommendation. The information there is invaluable.

Just saw this thread back on the first page. Thanks for all the advice early on, not sure what happened to the thread after that : )

In the end, my wife and I are both risk adverse to large risks and willing to get nickel and dimed a little bit to hedge, so we prob ended up buying too much life insurance. But guess in the scheme of things term life is pretty cheap so likely not the worst financial mistake ill make in my life

I think she qualified for the absolute best rating class which is crazy to me given all her family medical problems we reported on the application, and I bought a 250k 30 year term policy on her because she will be working at least part time. I bought somewhere around 750k 20 or 25 years on myself with plan to buy another 1.5 million or so after I finish training and we buy a house/have kids. Our total monthly premium is around 60 dollars I think.

Thanks for folks who suggested white coat investor, I like his line about whole life policies being "instruments designed to be sold, not bought".

Another dilemma, lets say we have around a 10k surplus this year. The highest rate on either of our student loans is 6% so my initial thought was to just stick it into student loan repayment.

But on the other hand was considering putting into Roth IRAs for a couple reasons,
1) to build up lawsuit protected assets (i believe my state is very generous in protecting IRAs)
2) i wont be able to qualify for roth IRAs in a couple years and I imagine the backdoor loophole will be closed so that avenue of asset protection may be closed for me later
3) there is some chance whatever job I get will pay back some substantial percentage of my student loans

so with that in mind starting roth IRAs may seem preferable to paying student loans, thoughts?

Can you make after tax or ROTH contributionsto your 401k? I dont foresee the backdoor conversion being stopped as that would disallow conversion and theres no chance the government will stop that money stream. If you cant make ROTH contributions to your employer plan, then do aftertax. Once you leave the company, you can roll the entire after tax basis even if its $10s of 1000s of dollars in to a ROTH IRA (the growth must go to a Trad or rollover IRA, however).