Advice for college student: Should I hire a financial adviser or just invest in index funds?
"Couple of clarifications to start off: Index funds and ETF's are essentially the same investments.  ETF's allow you to trade during the day but also make you reinvest your dividends manually instead of doing it for you.  Compare VTI and VTSAX, for example.  Basically the same returns with very slight differences in how they are run.  Because they are so similar it doesn't matter which you choose. Either index funds and ETF's can be purchased through a regular taxable brokerage account or through an IRA or Roth IRA.  The decision of what fund to use and whether to use a brokerage or IRA are separate. Whole market index funds will get you exposure to US equity but consider also diversifying into international equity, bonds, real estate (REITS), and emerging markets.  Any broker can give you advice on that score or you can get free advice from, for example, Future Advisor.  Now the advice: For most people in your situation, you current tax rate is currently very low.  This makes a Roth IRA a very reasonable idea.  You can contribute $5,500 for 2015 if you do it before April 15 and you can contribute $5,500 for 2016.  Repeat each year.  You won't be able to get all your money into a Roth, but anything you can do now will save you money on taxes in the long run.  You put after-tax money in a Roth IRA and then you don't pay taxes on it or the gains when you take it out. You can use Roth IRA funds for college, for a first home, or for retirement. A traditional IRA is not recommended in your case.  That would save you money on taxes this year, when presumably your taxes are already low. Since you won't be able to put all your money in the IRA, you can put the rest in a regular taxable brokerage account (if you don't just want to put it in a savings account).  You can buy the same types of things as you have in your IRA.   Note that if your stocks (in your regular brokerage account) go up over the course of a year and your income is low enough to be in the 10 or 15% tax bracket and you have held the stock for at least a year, you should sell before the end of the year to lock in your gains and pay taxes on them at the capital gains rate of 0%. This will prevent you from paying a higher rate on those gains later.  Conversely, if you lose money in a year, don't sell. You can sell and lock in losses during years when your taxes are high (presumably, after college) to reduce your tax burden in those years (this is called ""tax loss harvesting""). Sounds like crazy contortions but the name of the game is (legally) avoiding taxes.  This is at least as important to your overall wealth as the decision of which funds to buy. Ok now the financial advisor.  It's up to you.  You can make your own financial decisions and save the money but it requires you putting in the effort to be educated.  For many of us, this education is fun.  Also consider that if you use a regular broker, like Fidelity, you can call up and they have people who (for free) will give you advice very similar to what you will get from the advisor you referred to.  High priced financial advisors make more sense when you have a lot of money and complicated finances.  Based on your question, you don't strike me as having those.  To me, 1% sounds like a lot to pay for a simple situation like yours." "Exactly what you do with the money depends on various personal choices you'll have to make for yourself.  Investing your money in Vanguard index funds such as the ones you mentioned is certainly one smart move.  However, I think you're quite right to be suspicious of an advisor with a 1% fee.  In many cases, such advisors are not worth their costs.  The thing to remember is that, typically with that type of fee structure, you always pay the costs, even if the advisor turns out to be wrong and your money doesn't grow. One thing to check is whether the advisor you mentioned is paid only by the fees he charges (a ""fee-only financial planner') , or whether he also makes money via the sales of financial products.  Some advisors earn money by selling you financial products (such as mutual funds), which can create a conflict of interest.  You can read about fee-only financial advisors and choosing a financial advisor on Investopedia." "Two things to consider: When it comes to advice, don't be ""Penny wise and Pound foolish"". It is an ongoing debate whether active management vs passive indexes are a better choice, and I am sure others can give good arguments for both sides. I look at it as you are paying for advice. If your adviser will teach you about investing and serve your interests, having his advise will probably prevent you from making some dumb mistakes. A few mistakes (such as jumping in/out of markets based on fear/speculation) can eliminate any savings in fees. However, if you feel confident that you have the resources and can make good decisions, why pay for advise you don't need? EDIT In this case, my opinion is that you don't need a complex plan at this time. The money you would spend on financial advise would not be the best use of the funds.  That said, to your main question, I would delay making any long-term decisions with these funds until you know you are done with your education and on an established career path. This period of your life can be very volatile, and you may find yourself halfway through college and wanting to change majors or start a different path. Give yourself the option to do that by deferring long-term investment decisions until you have more stability. For that reason, I would avoid focusing on retirement savings. As others point out, you are limited in how much you can contribute per year. If you want to start, ROTH is your best bet, but if you put it in don't pull it out. That is a bad habit to get into. Personal finance is as much about developing habits as it is doing math... A low-turnover index fund may be appropriate, but you don't want to end up where you want to buy a house or start a business and your investment has just lost 10%...  I would keep at least half in a liquid, safe account until after graduation. Any debt you incur because you tied up this money will eliminate any investment gains (if any). Good Luck! EDITED to clarify retirement savings" "Though @mehassee mentioned it in a comment, I would like to emphasize the point that the financial planner (CFP) you talked to said that he was a fiduciary.  A fiduciary has an obligation to act in your best interests.  According to uslegal.com, ""When one person does agree to act for another in a fiduciary relationship, the law forbids the fiduciary from acting in any manner adverse or contrary to the interests of the client, or from acting for his own benefit in relation to the subject matter"".  So, any of these Stack Exchange community members may or may not have your best interest at heart, but the financial advisor you talked to is obligated to. You have to decide for yourself, is it worth 1% of your investment to have someone legally obligated to have your best financial interest in mind, versus, for example, someone who might steer you to an overpriced insurance product in the guise of an investment, just so they can make a buck off of you?  Or versus wandering the internet trying to make sense of conflicting advice?  In my opinion, a fiduciary (registered CFP) is probably the best person to answer your questions." If you use a financial planner not only should they be a fiduciary but you should just pay them an hourly rate once a year instead of a percentage unless the percentage is cheaper at this time. To find a good one, go to the National Association of Personal Financial Advisers website, NAPFA.org. Another good resource is Garrett Planning Network: GarrettPlanningNetwork.com.
"This turned out be a lot longer than I expected.  So, here's the overview. Despite the presence of asset allocation calculators and what not, this is a subjective matter.  Only you know how much risk you are willing to take.  You seem to be aware of one rule of thumb, namely that with a longer investing horizon you can stand to take on more risk.  However, how much risk you should take is subject to your own risk aversion.  Honestly, the best way to answer your questions is to educate yourself about the individual topics.  There are just too many variables to provide neat, concise answers to such a broad question.  There are no easy ways around this.  You should not blindly rely on the opinions of others, but rather use your own judgment to asses their advice. Some of the links I provide in the main text: S&P 500: Total and Inflation-Adjusted Historical Returns 10-year index fund returns The Motley Fool Risk aversion Disclaimer: These are the opinions of an enthusiastic amateur.  Why should I invest 20% in domestic large cap and 10% in developing markets instead of 10% in domestic large cap and 20% in developing markets? Should I invest in REITs? Why or why not?  Simply put, developing markets are very risky.  Even if you have a long investment horizon, you should pace yourself and not take on too much risk.  How much is ""too much"" is ultimately subjective.  Specific to why 10% in developing vs 20% in large cap, it is probably because 10% seems like a reasonable amount of your total portfolio to gamble.  Another way to look at this is to consider that 10% as gone, because it is invested in very risky markets.  So, if you're willing to take a 20% haircut, then by all means do that.  However, realize that you may be throwing 1/5 of your money out the window. Meanwhile, REITs can be quite risky as investing in the real estate market itself can be quite risky.  One reason is that the assets are very much fixed in place and thus can not be liquidated in the same way as other assets.  Thus, you are subject to the vicissitudes of a relatively small market.  Another issue is the large capital outlays required for most commercial building projects, thus typically requiring quite a bit of credit and risk.  Another way to put it: Donald Trump made his name in real estate, but it was (and still is) a very bumpy ride.  Yet another way to put it: you have to build it before they will come and there is no guarantee that they will like what you built. What mutual funds or index funds should I investigate to implement these strategies?  I would generally avoid actively managed mutual funds, due to the expenses.  They can seriously eat into the returns.  There is a reason that the most mutual funds compare themselves to the Lipper average instead of something like the S&P 500.  All of those costs involved in managing a mutual fund (teams of people and trading costs) tend to weigh down on them quite heavily.  As the Motley Fool expounded on years ago, if you can not do better than the S&P 500, you should save yourself the headaches and simply invest in an S&P 500 index fund. That said, depending on your skill (and luck) picking stocks (or even funds), you may very well have been able to beat the S&P 500 over the past 10 years.  Of course, you may have also done a whole lot worse.  This article discusses the performance of the S&P 500 over the past 60 years.  As you can see, the past 10 years have been a very bumpy ride yielding in a negative return.  Again, keep in mind that you could have done much worse with other investments. That site, Simple Stock Investing may be a good place to start educating yourself.  I am not familiar with the site, so do not take this as an endorsement.  A quick once-over of the material on the site leads me to believe that it may provide a good bit of information in readily digestible forms.  The Motley Fool was a favorite site of mine in the past for the individual investor.  However, they seem to have turned to the dark side, charging for much of their advice.  That said, it may still be a good place to get started.  You may also decide that it is worth paying for their advice. This blog post, though dated, compares some Vanguard index funds and is a light introduction into the contrarian view of investing.  Simply put, this view holds that one should not be a lemming following the crowd, rather one should do the opposite of what everyone else is doing.  One strong argument in favor of this view is the fact that as more people pile onto an investing strategy or into a particular market, the yields thin out and the risk of a correction (i.e. a downturn) increases.   In the worst case, this leads to a bubble, which corrects itself suddenly (or ""pops"" thus the term ""bubble"") leading to quite a bit of pain for the unprepared participants.  An unprepared participant is one who is not hedged properly.  Basically, this means they were not invested in other markets/strategies that would increase in yield as a result of the event that caused the bubble to pop.   Note that the recent housing bubble and resulting credit crunch beat quite heavily on the both the stock and bond markets.  So, the easy hedge for stocks being bonds did not necessarily work out so well.  This makes sense, as the housing bubble burst due to concerns over easy credit. Unfortunately, I don't have any good resources on hand that may provide starting points or discuss the various investing strategies.  I must admit that I am turning my interests back to investing after a hiatus.   As I stated, I used to really like the Motley Fool, but now I am somewhat suspicious of them.  The main reason is the fact that as they were exploring alternatives to advertising driven revenue for their site, they promised to always have free resources available for those unwilling to pay for their advice.  A cursory review of their site does show a decent amount of general investing information, so take these words with a grain of salt.  (Another reason I am suspicious of them is the fact that they ""spammed"" me with lots of enticements to pay for their advice which seemed just like the type of advice they spoke against.) Anyway, time to put the soapbox away.  As I do that though, I should explain the reason for this soapboxing.  Simply put, investing is a risky endeavor, any way you slice it.  You can never eliminate risk, you can only hope to reduce it to an acceptable level.  What is acceptable is subject to your situation and to the magnitude of your risk aversion.  Ultimately, it is rather subjective and you should not blindly follow someone else's opinion (professional or otherwise).  Point being, use your judgment to evaluate anything you read about investing.   If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.  If someone purports to have some strategy for guaranteed (steady) returns, be very suspicious of it.  (Read up on the Bernard Madoff scandal.)  If someone is putting on a heavy sales pitch, be weary.  Be especially suspicious of anyone asking you to pay for their advice before giving you any solid understanding of their strategy.  Sure, many people want to get paid for their advice in some way (in fact, I am getting ""paid"" with reputation on this site).  However, if they take the sketchy approach of a slimy salesmen, they are likely making more money from selling their strategy, than they are from the advice itself.  Most likely, if they were getting outsized returns from their strategy they would keep quiet about it and continue using it themselves.  As stated before, the more people pile onto a strategy, the smaller the returns.  The typical model for selling is to make money from the sale.  When the item being sold is an intangible good, your risk as a buyer increases. You may wonder why I have written at length without much discussion of asset allocation.  One reason is that I am still a relative neophyte and have a mostly high level understanding of the various strategies.  While I feel confident enough in my understanding for my own purposes, I do not necessarily feel confident creating an asset allocation strategy for someone else.  The more important reason is that this is a subjective matter with a lot of variables to consider.  If you want a quick and simple answer, I am afraid you will be disappointed.  The best approach is to educate yourself and make these decisions for yourself.  Hence, my attempt to educate you as best as I can at this point in time. Personally, I suggest you do what I did.  Start reading the Wall Street Journal every day. (An acceptable substitute may be the business section of the New York Times.)  At first you will be overwhelmed with information, but in the long run it will pay off.  Another good piece of advice is to be patient and not rush into investing.   If you are in a hurry to determine how you should invest in a 401(k) or other such investment vehicle due to a desire to take advantage of an employer's matching funds, then I would place my money in an S&P 500 index fund.  I would also explore placing some of that money into broad index funds from other regions of the globe.  The reason for broad index funds is to provide some protection from the normal fluctuations and to reduce the risk of a sudden downturn causing you a lot pain while you determine the best approach for yourself.  In this scenario, think more about capital preservation and hedging against inflation then about ""beating"" the market." This depends on a lot actually - with the overall being your goals and how much you like risk.   Question: What are your fees/commissions for selling? $8.95/trade will wipe out some gains on those trades. (.69% if all are sold with $8.95 commission - not including the commission payed when purchased that should be factored into the cost basis) Also, I would recommend doing commission free ETFs.  You can get the same affect as a mutual fund without the fees associated with paying someone to invest in ETFs and stocks. On another note: Your portfolio looks rather risky.  Although everyone has their own risk preference so this might be yours but if you are thinking about a mutual fund instead of individual stocks you probably are risk averse. I would suggest consulting with an adviser on how to set up for the future.  Financial advice is free flowing from your local barber, dentist, and of course StackExchange but I would look towards a professional. Disclaimer: These are my thoughts and opinions only ;) Feel free to add comments below. "Most financial ""advisors"" are actually financial-product salesmen.  Their job is to sweet-talk you into parting with as much money as possible - either in management fees, or in commissions (kickbacks) on high-fee investment products** (which come from fees charged to you, inside the investment.)  This is a scrappy, cutthroat business for the salesmen themselves.  Realistically that is how they feed their family, and I empathize, but I can't afford to buy their product.  I wish they would sell something else. These people prey on people's financial lack of knowledge.  For instance, you put too much importance on ""returns"".  Why?  because the salesman told you that's important.  It's not.  The market goes up and down, that's normal.  The question is how much of your investment is being consumed by fees.  How do you tell that (and generally if you're invested well)?  You compare your money's performance to an index that's relevant to you.  You've heard of  the S&P 500, that's an index, relevant to US investors.  Take 2015. The S&P 500 was $2058.20 on January 2, 2015.  It was $2043.94 on December 31, 2015.  So it was flat;  it dropped 0.7%. If your US investments dropped 0.7%, you broke even.  If you made less, that was lost to the expenses within the investment, or the investment performing worse than the S&P 500 index.  I lost 0.8% in 2015, the extra 0.1% being expenses of the investment. Try 2013: S&P 500 was $1402.43 on December 28, 2012 and $1841.10 on Dec. 27, 2013. That's 31.2% growth.  That's amazing, but it also means 31.2% is holding even with the market.  If your salesman proudly announced that you made 18%... problem! All this to say: when you say the investments performed ""poorly"", don't go by absolute numbers. Find a suitable index and compare to the index.  A lot of markets were down in 2015-16, and that is not your investment's fault.  You want to know if were down compared to your index.   Because that reflects either a lousy funds manager, or high fees.   This may leave you wondering ""where can I invest that is safe and has sensible fees?  I don't know your market, but here we have ""discount brokers"" which allow self-selection of investments, charge no custodial fees, and simply charge by the trade (commonly $10).  Many mutual funds and ETFs are ""index funds"" with very low annual fees, 0.20% (1 in 500) or even less.    How do you pick investments? Look at any of numerous books, starting with John Bogle's classic ""Common Sense on Mutual Funds"" book which is the seminal work on the value of keeping fees low.  If you need the cool, confident professional to hand-hold you through the process, a fee-only advisor is a true financial advisor who actually acts in your best interest.  They honestly recommend what's best for you. But beware: many commission-driven salespeople pretend to be fee-only advisors.  The good advisor will be happy to advise investment types, and let you pick the brand (Fidelity vs Vanguard) and buy it in your own discount brokerage account with a password you don't share. Frankly, finance is not that hard.  But it's made hard by impossibly complex products that don't need to exist, and are designed to confuse people to conceal hidden fees.  Avoid those products.  You just don't need them.  Now, you really need to take a harder look at what this investment is. Like I say, they make these things unnecessarily complex specifically to make them confusing, and I am confused.  Although it doesn't seem like much of a question to me.  1.5% a quarter is 6% a year or 60% in 10 years (to ignore compounding). If the market grows 6% a year on average so growth just pays the fees, they will consume 60% of the $220,000, or $132,000.  As far as the $60,000, for that kind of money it's definitely worth talking to a good lawyer because it sounds like they misrepresented something to get your friend to sign up in the first place.  Put some legal pressure on them, that $60k penalty might get a lot smaller.   ** For instance they'll recommend JAMCX, which has a 5.25% buy-in fee (front-end load) and a 1.23% per year fee (expense ratio). Compare to VIMSX with zero load and a 0.20% fee.  That front-end load is kicked back to your broker as commission, so he literally can't recommend VIMSX - there's no commission! His company would, and should, fire him for doing so." You are young, and therefore have a very long time horizon for investing. Absolutely nothing you do should involve paying any attention to your investments more than once a year (if that). First off, you can only deposit money in an IRA (of whatever kind) if you have taxable income. If you don't, you can still invest, just without the tax benefits of a Roth. My suggestion would be to open an account with a discount brokerage (Schwab, Fidelity, eTrade, etc). The advantage of a brokerage IRA is that you can invest in whatever you want within the account. Then, either buy an S&P 500 or total market index fund within the account, or buy an index-based ETF (like a mutual fund, but trades like a stock). The latter might be better, since many mutual funds have minimum limits, which ETFs do not. Set the account up to reinvest the dividends automatically--S&P 500 yields will far outstrip current savings account yields--and sit back and do nothing for the next 40 or 50 years. Well, except for continuing to make annual contributions to the account, which you should continue to invest in pretty much the same thing until you have enough money (and experience and knowledge) to diversify into bond funds/international funds/individual stocks, etc. Disclaimer: I am not a financial planner. I just manage my own money, and this strategy has mostly kept me from stressing too badly over the last few years of market turmoil. Getting the right diversity of investments helps buffer you from some of the short term market swings. If you need advice it's worth spending a small part of that money on a consultation with a financial adviser, who can talk to you about your goals, your time horizon, and your risk tolerance and recommend a good starting distribution. (Free advice from brokers risks being biased by their commissions.) Once you have that plan, uou need to decide how to execute it. Low-fee index funds are a good way to get started until you learn more, and for many of us that's all we ever need. Then you need to decide whether to invest it all at once or dollar-cost average. I've heard arguments both ways; DCA does mean you risk missing some immmediate gains, but also reduces your risk of buying at a temporary high and taking some immediate losses. For me DCA seemed to make sense, but that's another decision for you to make. "You want a fee-only advisor.  He charges like an architect or plumber: by the hour or some other ""flat fee"". That is his only compensation. He is not paid on commission at all.  He is not affiliated with any financial services company of any kind.   His office is Starbucks.  He does not have a well lit office like the commission broker down the street.  He does not want you to hand him your money - it stays in the brokerage account of your choice (within reason - some brokerage accounts are terrible and he'll tell you to get out of those).  He never asks for the password to your brokerage account.  Edit: The UK recently outlawed commission brokers.  These guys were competitive ""sales types"" who thrive on commissions, and probably went into other sales jobs.  So right now, everyone is clamoring for the few proper financial advisors available.  High demand is making them expensive.  It may not be cost-effective to hire an advisor; you may need to learn it yourself.  It's not that hard.  Ever hear of a plumber who works totally for free, and makes his money selling you wildly overpriced pipe?  That's what regular ""financial advisors"" are.   They sell products that are deliberately made unnecessarily complex. The purpose is first, to conceal sales commissions and high internal fees; and second to confuse you, so the financial world feels so daunting that you feel like you need their help just to navigate it.   They're trying to fry your brain so you'l just give up and trust them.   Products like whole life and variable annuities are only the poster children for how awful all of their financial products are.  These products exist to fleece the consumer without quite breaking the law.  Of course, everyone goes to see them because they have well lit offices in every town, and they're free and easy to deal with. Don't feel like you need to know everything about finance to invest.  You don't need to understand every complex financial product that the brokerage houses bave dreamed up: they are designed to conceal and confuse, as I discuss above, and you don't want them.  The core of it is fairly simple, and that's all you really need to know.   Look at any smaller university and how they manage their endowments. If whole life, annuities and those complex financial ""products"" actually worked, university endowments would be full of them.   But they're not!  Endowments are generally made of investments you can understand.  Partly because university boards are made of investment bankers who invented those products, and know what a ripoff they are.   Some people refuse to learn anything.  They are done with college and refuse to learn anything more.   I hope that's not you.   Because you should learn the workings of everything you're investing in.    If you don't understand it, don't buy itl  And a fee-only financial advisor won't ask you to.  1000 well-heeled, well-advised university endowments seek the most successful products on the market... And end up choosing products you can understand.  That's good news for you." "When you hear advice to buy index funds, that usually comes with two additional pieces of investment discipline advice that are important: These two elements are important to give you relative predictability in your outcome 20 years from now.  In this old blog post of mine I linked to Warren Buffett talking about this, also  mentioned it in a comment on another answer: http://blog.ometer.com/2008/03/27/index-funds/ It's perfectly plausible to do poorly over 20 years if you buy 100% stocks at once, without dollar-cost averaging or rebalancing. It's very very very plausible to do poorly over 10 years, such as the last 10 in fact. Can you really say you know your financial situation in 20-30 years, and for sure won't need that money? Because predictability is important, I like buying a balanced fund and not ""pure stocks"": http://blog.ometer.com/2010/11/10/take-risks-in-life-for-savings-choose-a-balanced-fund/ (feel a little bad linking to my blog, but retyping all that into this answer seems dumb!) Here's another tip. You can go one step past dollar cost averaging and try value averaging: http://www.amazon.com/Value-Averaging-Strategy-Investment-Classics/dp/0470049774 However, chances are you aren't even going to be good about rebalancing if it's done ""by hand,"" so personally I would not do value averaging unless you can find either a fund or a financial advisor to do it for you automatically. (Finance Buff blog makes a case for a financial advisor, in case you like that more than my balanced fund suggestion: http://thefinancebuff.com/the-average-investor-should-use-an-investment-advisor-how-to-find-one.html) Like rebalancing, value averaging makes you buy more when you're depressed about the market and less when it's exciting. It's hard.  (Dollar cost averaging is easily done by setting up automatic investment, of course, so you don't have to do it manually in the way you would with value averaging.) If you read the usual canonical books on index funds and efficient markets it's easy to remember the takeaway that nobody knows whether the market will go up or down, and yes you won't successfully time the market. But what you can do successfully is use an investment discipline with risk control: assume that the market will fluctuate, that both up and down are likely and possible, and optimize for predictability in light of that. Most importantly, optimize to take your emotions and behavior out of the picture. Some disciplines for example are: there are dozens out there, many of them snake oil, I think these I mentioned are valid. Anyway, you need some form of risk control, and putting all your money in stocks at once doesn't give you a lot of risk control. There's no real need to get creative. A balanced fund that uses index funds for equity and bond portions is a great choice." "Between 1 and 2 G is actually pretty decent for a High School Student.  Your best bet in my opinion is to wait the next (small) stock market crash, and then invest in an index fund. A fund that tracks the SP500 or the Russel 2000 would be a good choice. By stock market crash, I'm talking about a 20% to 30% drop from the highest point. The stock market is at an all time high, but nobody knows if it's going to keep going.  I would avoid penny stocks, at least until you can read their annual report and understand most of what they're claiming, especially the cash flow statement. From the few that I've looked at, penny stock companies just keep issuing stock to raise money for their money loosing operations.  I'd also avoid individual stocks for now. You can setup a practice account somewhere online, and try trading. Your classmates probably brag about how much they've made, but they won't tell you how much they lost.  You are not misusing your money by ""not doing anything with it"". Your classmates are gambling with it, they might as well go to a casino.  Echoing what others have said, investing in yourself is your best option at this point. Try to get into the best school that you can. Anything that gives you an edge over other people in terms of experience or education is good. So try to get some leadership and team experience. , and some online classes in a field that interests you."