Expert: Docs99 Date: 4/18/2007 Subject: IRA advice needed
Question Hi there, thanks for volunteering your time. We had a financial advisor over the house on the weekend to talk about our IRA. He suggests putting it in this newer Oppenheimer allocation fund. I think it’s a fund comprised of other funds? The class A has a 5.75% front-end load & 1.26% operating expenses. He keeps saying it’s better than leaving the money in CDs & we’ll never see the fees on our statements.
I just talked with a lady at work about this. She says she would never invest in such a fund & that no-load funds are the way to go. She gave me a printout of a Fidelity fund, no load with only .67% operating expenses. Now we’re really confused because the financial advisor still strongly recommends his fund while this lady at work strongly recommends no-load funds. Any advice would be crucial & greatly appreciated, as we need to make up our minds soon.
Answer Thank you for your query. You may want to look at different things:
1 Given that you are looking at your retirement, you may want to give your accountant or CPA a call and talk to her/him about the tax implications of any investment you may want to do.
2 You may want to ask how long the Financial Advisor has been in the business and which are her/his qualifications besides being licensed as a Financial Advisor. Also, you may want to ask the FA how much you may be charged for a thorough analysis the FA may be wanting to do. Some FA's may charge a certain fee based on the amount of assets involved or just a flat one. That is a fee billed to the client, unlike commissions that are built in and are paid tho the FA directly.
3 Remember that no load means no help at all. With no load funds you will be on your own, ie, no rep or FA to discuss and gather info to make an educated decision.
Hope this helps.
