Should I pay Vanguard $1000 for a financial plan?

I have about $60,000 in retirement and personal investments at Vanguard and am trying to decide if I should use their investment planning service to map out my future savings and investment plan or shop around for a less expensive option. For folks with less than $100,000 invested the fee is $1000. Any thoughts out there?

You don't say if you have accounts elsewhere, but assumming your Vanguard assets are it -- I would just make use of the free online resources at Vanguard, and other providers' sites, to guide your planning until you accumulate more assets over time. If you invest some time educating yourself about asset allocation, etc. you may find you are comfortable forgoing paying a fee for these services.

Best of luck

You might try posting your question here: http://www.diehards.org/

i am happy to provide you the same generic plan that vanguard will for lets say ... $800. in the end please dont expect any education, but i will put a hundred pages in a nice binder with your name on it.

my beef with this is how many seemingly intelligent and informed people will pay call centers for something that can ONLY be done legitimately in PERSON.

i absolutely LOVE USAA. their property casualty insurance and their banking is bar-none in my opinion. however, the gall of them offering financial advice over the phone when they KNOW they are doing a disservice for their clients by doing so simply astounds me. vanguard is no different. they offer a competitively priced product knowing they cannot provide any of the "intangibles" that any other financial planner would provide as an included part of a financial plan. primarily education and secondarily feedback and elaboration.

bottom line, if you are going to pay a grand for a plan (which may be an appropriate amount) then do yourself a service and get the plan from someone personally who will be there to give you good service.

As a Vanguard funds owner, I did have a personalized financial plan done by a Vanguard planner. There was no fee as I guess I met the threshold to have it done complimentary. The process entailed my completing a lengthy financial questionaire, including my my risk tolerance in several scenarios and as well as financial goals and then returning the paperwork to Vanguard. The next step was a phone interview at an agreed upon time. The interviewer was professional, courteous, thorough and easy to talk to on the phone. I was satisfied with approximately 75% of his recommendations and followed through on them. Although I didn't follow through on the other recommendations, there was nothing wrong with them per se, rather I decided to pursue other options. Overall, I think the time and effort was well spent. I do, however, agree with an earlier poster that nothing beats a one on one format and you have to be willing to educate yourself some and decide what will work for you.

i am happy to provide you the same generic plan that vanguard will for lets say ... $800. in the end please dont expect any education, but i will put a hundred pages in a nice binder with your name on it.

my beef with this is how many seemingly intelligent and informed people will pay call centers for something that can ONLY be done legitimately in PERSON.

i absolutely LOVE USAA. their property casualty insurance and their banking is bar-none in my opinion. however, the gall of them offering financial advice over the phone when they KNOW they are doing a disservice for their clients by doing so simply astounds me. vanguard is no different. they offer a competitively priced product knowing they cannot provide any of the "intangibles" that any other financial planner would provide as an included part of a financial plan. primarily education and secondarily feedback and elaboration.

bottom line, if you are going to pay a grand for a plan (which may be an appropriate amount) then do yourself a service and get the plan from someone personally who will be there to give you good service.I agree 100%. There are a myriad of free calculators on the web that can answer most of the questions that Vanguard's plan, or any other generic plan, will provide. If you are really trying to cut costs, I might suggest the following course of action:

For each category of your financial planning, use the web's free calculators to make your own preliminary assessments, which might look something like this:

1) Retirement. To determine your funding requirements (how much do I need to put away), you use a retirement calculator and use conservative assumptions. Print off the report & stick it in a binder under "Retirement". Make a one sentence "hypothetical recommendation to yourself" based on its feedback: "I need to put away $300/month more to achieve my objective."

2) Insurance Needs. Same process. Use a free calculator for Survivor Needs (Life Insurance) or Disability Income Needs (disabilty insurance) and so forth . . . print the report . . . jot down a one sentence recommendation: "I need to increase my protection by . . . . and might want to focus on X type of product to cover that need, based on the article I read." Print that article, too. Put it in the same binder.

3) Estate Planning/Tax

4) Income Tax (harder to know which calculators to use, here, so you might skip this unless you have a really specific question/inquiry such as "should I use a Roth or a Traditional IRA" or "Should I convert my Roth"

5) Budget/Spending

6) Investments (there are a number of free allocation reports you can generate, including free ones right there on your Vanguard site).

7) Mortgage/Debt.

8) Education Funding (if you have kiddos).

You get the idea.

If you really focus, it shouldn't take you more than 30 minutes with each category . . . and you probably don't want to consider all categories anyway, if you're like most.

Once you're done, you'll have a rough draft plan with your own recommendations.

Then, go to www.napfa.org (http://www.napfa.org/) or the Garret Planning Network and locate an advisor who will review your plan and provide recommendations for adjustments, confirmations, new ideas, warnings, etc. You might need to work to locate an advisor who works fee only on an hourly basis. A lot of them are going to want to take your assets under management or charge you a fee based on your net worth and/or income. The Garrett folks are more set up for "hourly, as needed" advice. They should be able to do so in about 3-4 hours, tops - which shouldn't cost you more than $400-$800 (tops) . . ., especially if you don't ask them to produce a "pretty notebook" filled with their own financial planning software's fancy reports, which like Opai said, is pretty much a waste of paper and ink if it doesn't come with any personal advice.

If all goes well, you'll also have begun a relationship with a legitimate consultant with whom you might be able to develop rapport, a track record, and some history together. It is from these elements that financial wisdom springs forth. Going through Vanguard, you're going to get investment intensive/focused advice (not as comprehensive as you might like), you'll be limited to Vanguards funds (may or may not be best, but are damn fine for the most part), and it's highly unlikely that the CFP you're using will be there for an extended period of time in that capacity - to build the professional relationship that (like a fine wine) will get better and better with time.

That's my take, at least, on one way to get a lot of bang for your buck. You're going to invest some more time on the front end, on your own, but if you're here on this board, you're probably going to do that, anyway, right?

Good luck. I'd love to hear how you proceed and how it goes, by the way, so I hope you'll report back!

I say go to a bank.

If your bank doesn't do investments and financial planning, try Citibank. Make an appointment with a Smith Barney rep. (Used to work there, don't now) You have the assets to make them work hard to bring them over. The advisor will do a full plan for you if you ask. Free. If you like the advisor, and want to continue working with him/her, you should bring your money over. If you don't, hey, free plan.

Don't spend a thousand bucks on something you can do yourself on the internet. Man, I hate Vanguard.

$1000 for a plan and let me guess...I need to invest in the Total Stock Index with a pinch of International.

Heed these words Wamcdks,1k over the phone or Financial planner sitting at your kitchen table.HHHMMMMMMMM
i am happy to provide you the same generic plan that vanguard will for lets say ... $800. in the end please dont expect any education, but i will put a hundred pages in a nice binder with your name on it.

my beef with this is how many seemingly intelligent and informed people will pay call centers for something that can ONLY be done legitimately in PERSON.

i absolutely LOVE USAA. their property casualty insurance and their banking is bar-none in my opinion. however, the gall of them offering financial advice over the phone when they KNOW they are doing a disservice for their clients by doing so simply astounds me. vanguard is no different. they offer a competitively priced product knowing they cannot provide any of the "intangibles" that any other financial planner would provide as an included part of a financial plan. primarily education and secondarily feedback and elaboration.

bottom line, if you are going to pay a grand for a plan (which may be an appropriate amount) then do yourself a service and get the plan from someone personally who will be there to give you good service.

Citibank,N.A. is a great option,they will do a full 24 page FNA for you w/no money out of pocket.Consider them fin. planners not advisors,they are payed through future $$$ of investments.They are a member of Citigroup and have a great team through Legg Mason(recently know as Smith Barney),American Funds,Franklin Templeton Inv. and Van Kampen to name a few.Good luck
I say go to a bank.

If your bank doesn't do investments and financial planning, try Citibank. Make an appointment with a Smith Barney rep. (Used to work there, don't now) You have the assets to make them work hard to bring them over. The advisor will do a full plan for you if you ask. Free. If you like the advisor, and want to continue working with him/her, you should bring your money over. If you don't, hey, free plan.

Don't spend a thousand bucks on something you can do yourself on the internet. Man, I hate Vanguard.