Higher finance

[bill_schubert]

In the olden days, Charles Schwab was a 'discount broker', maybe the first. They advertised as making cheap trades in your stock portfolio. Their image was good but not ivy league. But the world moved their direction and quality software, which was their forte, became the coin of the stock market land.

When I wanted to consolidate my IRA and such I used TD Ameritrade as they had an office that I could take Dana to and show her where to go if I died. I didn't die and TD A was bought up by Schwab. The kept the same office and if she had to Dana could still walk in there. But I was online today looking around and found a couple of issues I wanted to deal with. I tried chat but the questions were too complicated and I got tired of typing. I called. And got a drone of a guy who, fortunately, just had the job of verifying me. I've not got my voice print on file along with my password so I can call and they will know it is me. Very cool.

After the drone I got a more account services kind of guy out of Orlando. He was great and we had a great time playing finance on the group w bench. We got some things done but I discovered that my account was managed. By a person. Woah, what a waste of time for my account and me. I asked what were my choices and he said he could transfer me to the 'Intelligent Investments' division. I SO wanted to go to the stupid investments division but he didn't seem to have that number. But I got transferred. And it was a warm hand off just like the first one was so I didn't need to start over but moved forward from where I was at that time.

I ended up with what I really do need. A dumb software managed account. Management by software is free. It is theoretically not as good as a human overseeing things but I'm not so confident that a human does all that well in the market anyway and free is a good number for me. Anything over 3.5% is better than my savings account so a low bar.

All in all it was the best interaction with a finance company I've ever had. I feel rock solid that if I die and leave Dana the account numbers she will be in good hands. Poor but in good hands.

Altogether very satisfactory.

Comments

[anais_pf]

I am convinced that human-managed funds are different from software-managed funds only in that the human takes a cut of every transaction, but sometimes the software does not.

[bill_schubert]

I think you're right. The stock market is run by software now anyway and while humans can make broad stroke, judgments are paid in enormous amount of money to do what some geek is. Probably already figured out how to do repeatedly for a lot less. My management software now costs absolutely nothing, which means a human would have to add a decent percentage of value in order to amortize their worth. Very young likely that I would happen with the amount of money that I've got in the account.

[msconduct]

I think you're right about the humans, and you might even go one better and get rid of the software management as well. The data seem to show that passive investment funds (throw it in and forget it) do better than managed ones and the only thing missing is the management fee.

[bill_schubert]

Yeah, this software is free and it watches a distribution that it will not be likely to change much. I'm with you, though, I've always advocated putting it into the S&P index and forgetting you have it.