So, if you accumulate $500, the $12/year to use Acorns equates to 2.4% of your savings!

It all depends on current interest rates - it hasn’t been that long (relatively speaking) since money market funds were paying 6.0%/year. Granted, mortgage rates were 8.0% and inflation was more too, but it’s all relative. :)

Watch out for the fees from Acorns. I haven’t directly investigated it, but in financial industry articles I’ve seen references to the cost vs. the amount of money being handled as excessively high.

It depends on the type of account we are talking about. Retirement (“qualified”) accounts like 401(k), IRA, 403(b), Roth IRA accounts all have a beneficiary designation form. These accounts bypass the probate process and go directly to the beneficiary, tax-free. Without a beneficiary, it’s a more difficult process (so…

Yes, a professional is often the answer. :) You are well on your way, VictorH. Remember, if you put $150k into a house, that money isn’t gone forever - it’s just equity in a home now. You would need to have a way to get at that equity at retirement if you count it as an asset (sell and downside, line of credit,…

It depends (hence my frustration with rules of thumb and generalizations). :)

Oh, boy, the joys of on-line retirement calculators. Let’s see, what is it ignoring?

Agreed, but they should be an option for those who are actively wanting help. For those who aren’t, you get into the arguments on “forced savings”, investment defaults, and more in order to save some people from themselves (and many do need that!). :)

We’ll have to then. :) Get a good policy from a mutual company, with at least average health, and you can create a tax-advantaged bucket of money for retirement that (unlike other retirement vehicles) can be accessed in an emergency, provides competitive pre-tax returns to other conservative investments (thus allowing…

Sorry, WL policies can be good too. :) Same reasoning - right product company, right scenario, awesome solution. Either wrong product company or wrong scenario = website article.

What you are describing is a variable annuity. They offer “subaccounts” which are essentially mutual funds (run by the fund companies themselves) that you can invest in. The “keeps the rest” part are the expenses - some of them are ridiculously expensive, but there are also inexpensive ones too - one I use with…

I would also submit that advisers can be hugely beneficial in helping people remain accountable to themselves and their future selves. If I knew I would end up as a CFP, I would have taken more psychology classes in college!

You are forgetting the importance of proper insurance to protect those investments (life, disability income, maybe LTC if you’re older, P&C, etc.). The importance of proper legal documents. The importance of good health insurance.

Annuity is a very broad term - like “car”. There are fixed annuities (like CDs), fixed indexed annuities (newer product), variable annuities, and different flavors of immediate annuities.

They would be part of it, but few of them deal with distributing money across differently taxed vehicles for the future - most CPAs I know report the past but don’t deal much with the future. I deal more with how to diversify tax exposure for different tax structures in the future.

Many people’s lives are not that simple. Proper insurance, tax reduction, legal planning, investment management, budgeting, etc. all play roles.

Not necessarily. I do not sell any products (fee-only), yet I still recommend both permanent insurance and annuities to clients when needed. Have they been misused by some? Absolutely! But that’s not the product’s fault. When used in the right situations, they can be fantastic.

If you are a commissioned adviser, you get a commission based on the amount purchased, not the number of transactions. Only the broker/dealer and the custodian make money on the transaction level. So in that particular example, the commission would be the same and the adviser would likely do the one purchase (less…

So a client can get “equitable or remedial relief” as determined by a court. That’s not a percentage tax, that’s a judgement by the court. That quoted section pertains to employee benefit plans only, so this applies to someone advising a 401(k) plan, but not an individual’s account nor their IRA account (neither fall…

Anyone who holds themself out as a CFP must abide by their Code of Conduct, part of which is that they must act as a fiduciary at all times. Failing to do so could result in a suspension or revocation of the right to use the designation, and for most of us we didn’t take the 6 required classes, study and pass the 10…