Professor Burton Malkiel of the Rebalance Investment Committee on how investment advisors mislead retirement savers. More tips that help you retire with more.
transcript
I joined Rebalance because what it does is everything that I believe in. It believes in broad diversification, which is something I have believed in all of my life. It believes in low expenses. If you go to a broker and the broker puts…the broker will tell you, “It’s okay. No commissions. We’re going to really take care of you and we’ll have a so-called wrap fee of two percentage points.”
Well, that comes off in addition to the expense ratio of what that broker buys you or what that investment advisor buys you. So you get expenses plus expenses, and there’s very little left for the investor. So it’s just…what Rebalance does is exactly the kind of thing that I believe in. And let me just mention one other thing about investment advisors. Not only will they charge these extra expenses, but they are conflicted. When they want to put a mutual fund into your retirement account, many of the high-expense mutual funds will pay that advisor some extra amount to sell you that mutual fund. So they tend to be conflicted and they tend to put funds in your portfolio that they get the most income from.
And what I love about Rebalance is very, very low overall fees, using index funds, taking advantage of dollar-cost averaging, taking advantage of rebalancing. It’s exactly the kind of thing that I believe in, and I’m just delighted to be a part of it.
