I'm trying to help people to understand what they are doing with their money. Most people have NO IDEA what their investing costs are. They give up responsibility for their money and hand it to salesmen. How many of you have seen these conclusions from a recent study: "This is the first study ever to scientifically quantify the benefits that investors may enjoy if they work with financial advisors. The authors asked these essential questions: 1. Do advisors give clients access to funds that are harder to find and evaluate? The answer is yes, but as you will see, as a whole, advisor-selected funds underperform funds that investors select on their own. 2. Do advisors help clients find funds that are lower cost (excluding distribution costs)? After analyzing several trillion dollars worth of transactions, the answer is no. 3. Do advisors give clients access to funds with better performance? The answer is a resounding no. I know this is shocking--and it may not apply to you. But the scientific evidence shows that many of the other advisors in America not only underperform indexes--they underperform what most people do on their own if they don't have an advisor. 4. Do advisors provide superior asset allocation? After years of research covering trillions of dollars of asset allocations, the finding is that advisors do not provide superior asset allocation. Even without this study, one only had to look at how advisors overemphasized technology funds in the late 1990s and how many advisors are overemphasizing energy, gold, and foreign funds today. 5. Do advisors help correct bad investor behavior such as chasing fads and chasing performance? The sobering answer is no. In fact, the evidence shows that advisors even contribute to such behavior. Again, look at all the money advisors are pouring into energy, gold, and foreign funds." http://advisor.morningstar.com/articles/doc.asp?s=1&docId=4482&pgNo=1 Here ia a link to the actual study: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=616981 Scroll down the page to download. Yet, with a very few exceptions, this study is being ignored by the media! In addition, many people are paying 3% or more in investing costs (of course they never SEE or KNOW about these costs). A safe withdrawal rate in retirement is 4%....hummmm....