For my whole life I've thought of my dad of as "a savvy investor." He's made millions in the stock market and advises lots of family and friends on how to manage their investments. He handles other people's estates and taxes. In a non-official capacity, he wields control over a large sum of money. His training is in law, not finances.
When I was 14 and got my first job as a camp counselor, he encouraged me to save some of my income by offering to dollar-match anything I put into a Roth IRA. I bit, so he opened the account and selected a few mutual funds. I've been contributing and watching my money grow ever since. Recently, I've been taking control over my finances more (I'm 34 now) and analyzed my holdings to find that they were all managed funds with pretty high fees. One fund was .89%. I sold them all off and bought low-fee index funds.
I brought this up with my dad and his response was, "It's your money, you can do what you want. But I'd be worried that those funds can't keep up with the actively managed ones." Citing stats about the long-term performance of managed funds, even telling him about Orlando the investing cat didn't seem to have any effect. A fee calculator showing him what .89% could do to my portfolio over the long haul also didn't sway him.
My assets are still pretty small (we have about 220K invested) so the effects of the fees haven't been deleterious. But my dad has been growing his money for 40 years. It's hard for me to imagine how many hundreds of thousands (or millions) he's given up in his PNW.
Has anyone succeeded in convincing people (in real life, not here on mmm) to change strategies? Do you have an article or lit review that can speak with authority? I'm not worried about my dad. He's set for life. But it does irk me that he's advising so many other people and giving them polluted advice IMO.