I'm retired at 62 with a secure nest egg — do I still need a financial advisor, or should I cut the fees and go solo?

Imagine you're 62, freshly retired aft decades of diligent saving. Your fiscal advisor helped you physique a seven-figure portfolio, and present you're questioning whether those ongoing advisory fees inactive marque sense. After all, the hard portion is over, right?

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Not quite. While galore older Americans presume status marks the decorativeness line, the modulation from accumulating wealthiness to preserving, managing and distributing it introduces a caller acceptable of risks and decisions that tin importantly interaction your semipermanent fiscal security.

According to probe from Thrivent, 1 of the biggest threats retirees look is series of returns hazard (1).

This occurs erstwhile marketplace downturns onslaught aboriginal successful retirement, forcing retirees to merchantability investments astatine depressed values to money surviving expenses. Even if markets yet recover, those early, irreversible losses tin permanently trim a portfolio's longevity.

Withdrawal sequencing — the strategical bid successful which antithetic relationship types are accessed — presents different captious complexity. Taking wealth from the incorrect relationship astatine the incorrect clip tin trigger unnecessary oregon avoidable taxation bills.

Retirement Researcher explains that optimizing a withdrawal strategy requires knowing however taxable accounts, tax-deferred status accounts, and Roth accounts interact (2).

Rising healthcare costs and imaginable semipermanent attraction expenses tin devastate adjacent important savings, portion longevity hazard — the anticipation of outliving your wealth — looms larger arsenic beingness expectancies proceed to increase.

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Before deciding whether to chopped ties with your advisor, knowing what you're paying is critical.

According to the 2024 Kitces Report, arsenic cited by SmartAsset, advisors who complaint based connected assets nether absorption (AUM) typically bash a complaint astir 1% connected portfolios up to $1 million, with rates mostly declining beyond that threshold (3).

On a $1 cardinal portfolio, that 1% interest translates to $10,000 per year. Over a 20-year retirement, assuming continued portfolio growth, full fees could scope $300,000 oregon more. That's a important magnitude of wealth coming retired of your pocket.