How Much is That Doggy in the Window?

By Brad Thomason, CPA

​​If you offer something attractive to a child and ask do you want to buy this, the child will say Yes.
 
If you offer something attractive to an adult and ask do you want to buy this, the adult will ask how much it costs.
 
Note that persons below a particular age can and do act like adults.  Note too, that persons far above a particular age may act like children.
 
(Despite the fact that this would be a great jumping off point to discuss the politics of many progressive initiatives, that's not where we're headed.  Not a political blog, after all.  We'll stay in our lane.  But the similarity is interesting.  Anyway…)
 
Many people find the idea of hiring an investment advisor attractive.  They will say that they like the idea of guidance and expert input.  In actuality it is frequently the case that what they like best is the idea of handing off an unattractive task to someone else (I have people to take care of that sort of thing…); and maybe setting the stage to have someone to blame if things don't go well.
 
There are lots of reasons to be your own chief financial counsel.  I have addressed these elsewhere and am not going to try to cover them all again here.  Instead I'll just focus on one aspect:  monetary cost.  Frankly, it may be more than reason enough.
 
Many advisors set their fees based on the size of your portfolio.  A standard approach is to charge 1% of "assets under management."
 
If a 50 year-old with $800,000 asks How much is this going to cost, the advisor will answer - truthfully - $8,000.
 
Eight grand doesn't sound like so much to pay for a better shot at a successful retirement.
 
The problem though is that $8,000 is the one-year cost, not the full cost.  Remember, retirement is a decades-long discussion.  Not to mention the fact that hiring the pro may not actually increase your odds of success, in the first place.  But I digress.
 
Let's do some quick math (which means that if you take the time to do the actual math you'll discover that my short-cuts actually understate the full cost; but they are easier to follow and I think they'll make the broader point, just the same).
 
From age 50 to age 60, with some modest appreciation, total fees paid could end up around $125,000.  Even with no growth, $8,000 a year for a decade is eighty grand, so that’s not such a huge estimate…
 
Let's assume you decide to take over at 60, and there are no more fees paid out (otherwise, this is going to get ridiculous; although plenty of financial firm clients are over the age of 60, for sure).  The $125,000 you paid out is not there to compound.  Had it been, when you retired at 70, it could quite plausibly have grown to be $250,000.
 
If you retired at 70 with the sort of money we're talking about, it could well be another ten or even fifteen years before you got around to spending this hypothetical portion of your portfolio (which, again, you don't have, because it went to fund your advisor's retirement instead of yours).  Maybe twenty.  
 
In that time, even accounting for a serious down-shift in rate of return (because you wisely reduced your risk exposure after having won the game of properly endowing your retirement), it could double again.
 
How much does that advisor in the window cost?  $8,000?  Yes.  $500,000?  Quite feasibly, yes again.
 
Attractive things can become automatic possessions when someone else is paying the tab.  That's why ten-year olds don't have to ask for the price.  But I suspect you are neither ten, nor in a situation where another person is underwriting the tab for your wants.