Retirement is a time to relax and enjoy the fruits of your labor. But how do you know if you’re being too cheap and missing out on all the fun? It’s time to explore the four signs that you might be being a little too frugal in your golden years, and how to strike a […]

Ever wondered how much your financial advisor is really pocketing from your retirement nest egg? Are you suspicious of those fees they’re charging? Let’s dive deep into the murky waters of financial advisor compensation and uncover the secrets they might not be sharing. We’ll expose the three most common fee structures advisors use and question […]

All our working lives, we dream of what we’ll do with the money we’ve saved and the newfound free time we’ve earned. Yet, upon reaching retirement, those dreams are sometimes replaced by something different: guilt. What gives? Retirement Account Guilt Happens to Almost Every Retiree Year after year, studies ask retirees about their greatest worry […]

Recently, a publication targeted toward financial advisors published an article wondering if advisor fees based on assets under management (AUM) would soon be extinct. In just two sentences, this quote halfway through the article sums up precisely why the AUM model has survived for this long: “It’s so popular because it’s easy, and advisors don’t […]

“Set it and forget it,” is the financial industry’s refrain for retirement success; as in, invest in mutual funds, don’t touch the money, and let the magic of compound interest carry you to the retirement of your dreams. There’s just one problem: what if what you’re “forgetting” is how much those mutual funds could cost […]

Maybe You Shouldn’t Hang Out with Eddie  In this adaptation from Golden Reserve Founder Greg Aler’s new book, Fire Your Financial Advisor, we examine the villainous role Edward Jones has played in creating a retail financial advisor industry that pushes the limits of greed.  When you were in school, your parents probably told you not to […]

Poll your friends and family about annuities and you’re bound to get a lot of adverse reactions. They’ll likely cite at least one of these three things :  They’re expensive and have big fees.  They don’t give you access to your money.  There’s no growth.  While these statements are true of some annuities, they’re not […]

Let’s talk about commissions. For many professions—like real estate agents, sales professionals, brokers and artists—it’s a compensation structure to which we’ve become accustomed. They make money when you make a purchase related to the services they provide. But when it comes to commissions and financial advisors—whoa, hold your horses.  We’ve been conditioned to think that […]

We recently heard a large, national firm use the slogan, “We do better when you do better,” and we couldn’t help but scratch our heads. On the surface it may seem agreeable; after all, if they’ve helped you build wealth, why not reward them, too? But when you think about what that means, it becomes […]

No one likes extra fees, especially when they are hard to understand or being intentionally hidden. You know the ones: the stealthy “service fee,” the suspicious sounding “surcharge,” or the “handling fee,” which is always a head scratcher. There are two fees we think all retirees should know about: investment fees and advisor fees.    Granted, […]