When “Do It Yourself” Turns Into “Let Us Do It For You…For a Fee”

I spent much of the last long weekend in bed with strep throat – be careful out there, good weather means nothing to bugs! In bed means lots of time doomscrolling. It must have been about 3 pm when I came across the topic for today’s vent post: “Introducing Advisory Services.”

This tagline was plastered on my Instagram feed, in between makeup tips, puppies and easy recipes I will never make. It piqued my interest like the other three things rarely can. I clicked.

An online trading platform that claims to bring financial freedom to everyone, at a low cost, is suddenly offering dedicated advisory services. The same advisory services they initially encouraged users to avoid, when they built their platform (they used to say something to the effect of “don’t use your parents’ advisor”). Sounds great, right? Wrong. These dedicated advisory services are offered to those with over X amount of assets, at a fee. The very fees they aimed to avoid with their platform.

Since the dawn of time (ok, since the beginning of my own career), the DIY crowd of investors has been an interesting group to deal with (my dad included). They want to do their own trades, their own research, and take their chances when it comes to tax reporting and other more complex items. I normally have no issue with this. If you think you’re spending as much time, with as much education and as many resources as we have, then, all the best. All is well until it isn’t, which is usually when we get a call from said investor, who has realized that they are now working with their life savings, not a small amount, on the side to “gamble” in the stock market.

Personalized planning is incredibly important for many reasons. One thing we’ve heard repeatedly from clients is that we help them stay accountable to themselves and are proactive in bringing things up that we think will help our clients. Of course we do, that is what we are here for. A large part of what we do is keep up with advances and improvements in the industry and bring them to our clients where we see fit. What we DON’T do is push one-size-fits-all products or avoid work by hiding behind fee schedules.

As with everything else, it’s buyer beware. I was happy to see that a platform that spends most of its time putting the advisory services down is now offering advisory services. For a fee. To “high-net-worth” individuals. As Michael Scott from The Office says, “how the turntables…” To a good financial future!