Once I decided how, and where, I decided what - my asset allocation. After that, it has been a cakewalk. I manage my own very, very substantial portfolio (which contains 3 index funds across 7 accounts), and took over management of my mother's accounts as well.
Great stuff Miss FG! I totally believe you and I think right now it just boils down to getting it set up right and making the first move. So, regarding Fidelity and their recommended "management style", do you understand and agree with what they're telling me to do? They say they would re-allocate daily for me, but if I do it myself, they'd recommend that I do it at least weekly. They say that when one portion of my portfolio is doing great for that week, I should re-allocate it back to my original balance by trading for more of the lower performers and selling off the higher performers in order to stay ahead of the curve.
No, absolutely do not agree with daily reallocation. That is a huge waste of time and a nice little siphon of fees to their pocket. Rebalancing is pretty much a once or twice a year event usually, but I do it on a "as needed" basis which means I may not touch anything in well over a year. My personal trigger is if I am more than 5% out of balance, I'll buy/sell stuff to rebalance it back to my asset allocation. It's not worth it to bother with otherwise. To do so daily... I am just shocked that someone would tell you to do this daily or even weekly.
The adviser that suggested this is one to be laughed at and then dumped completely and no further advice taken from them; there is absolutely no possible reason that this would be a benefit to you or your portfolio - it is only a benefit to them for the fees they can make off you.
The big thing to check is what funds they're telling you to hold. I do Fido's index funds:
Fidelity Total Market Index Fund (FSTVX)
Fidelity Real Estate Index Fund (FSRVX)
Fidelity U.S. Bond Index Fund (FSITX)
None of these trigger any transaction fees to buy or sell. BUT if you rebalanced daily or even monthly, you would possibly be triggering transaction fees for doing so on short turnarounds. Fido funds generally are "NO TRANSACTION FEE" but have the caveat:
the fund may charge a short-term trading or redemption fee to protect the interests of long-term shareholders of the fund, which means frequent trading is stupid. The beauty of index investing is that you buy and hold "forever" and don't need to fuss around with funds dancing in and out of that one or this one... which is what they're trying to sell you on.
And if any of the funds they want to put you in actually have a transaction fee, then daily/weekly/monthly buying and selling is even more asinine to suggest, since you'd be chipping away $6-$15 a pop every time - that could be hundreds and thousands of dollars a year nibbled out of your portfolio for zero reason since trying to keep a portfolio's asset allocation in balance daily/weekly/monthly is stupid waste of time - unless the adviser is trying to get you to churn to provide them with more fees. This is actually called churning and is frowned upon in financial circles since it is basically them playing a shell game with your money in order to bilk you out of fees in the name of chasing better returns - it don't work and costs you lots.
Index funds are boring. You buy a few of them, and then let them sit there and chug away matching the market. They're not going to earn you crazy highs over what the market does - they just plod along and keep pace.
The advisers that told you to rebalance daily are going to be like a magician that is using misdirection to make you think magical things are happening and hope you're too dumb to catch what they're doing ~over here~ while they distract you ~over there~ with all the dozens of shiny funds they suggest to you. The more funds, the more moves suggested, the more you need to stay away.
I like Fido for my funds only because I don't let them try to "guide" me or manage anything. I had them do so for around 6 months while I got my head straight, but after that, I looked at what they'd done and saw dozens of buy/sell transactions. To the non-finanical person, this looks like they were furiously working hard at getting me into better funds and out of funds that were underperforming... but actually all they were doing was stealing fees from me with my permission while my portfolio performed very, very modestly (and would have been doing WAAAAAY better just sitting in a few index funds without churning all that time).