Episode 36
Avoiding Complexity: Why Simplicity Should Drive Your Investment Choices

Table of Contents

• Introduction
• Discussion on the Fiduciary Rule and Annuities
• Potential Benefits and Drawbacks for Retirement Savers
• Impact on Advisor-Client Relationship
• Impact on Sales of Annuities
• Role of Transparency and Simplicity
• Broader Implications of the Legal Battle
• Discussion on Interval Funds and High Fees
• Advantages and Disadvantages of Interval Funds
• Effect on Investor Behavior During Market Downturns
• High Fees and Their Impact on Returns
• Risks and Potential Rewards of Using Leverage
• Transparency and Investor Understanding
• Demand for Alternative Assets
• Discussion on Bill Ackman’s Bungled IPO
• Average Annual Expenses of Closed-End Funds
• Why Closed-End Funds Trade at Discounts
• Bill Ackman’s Missed Opportunities
• Potential Consequences of Proposed Rule Changes
• How Closed-End Funds Can Appeal to Modern Investors
• Common Thread Between the Articles
• Closing Remarks

Introduction

Madison: Hello, everyone, and welcome to Not Just Numbers Honest Conversations with a Financial Advisor and Lawyer. I am Madison Demora, and I am here with Mike Garry. Mike is a financial advisor and a CFP and the founder and the CEO of Yardley Wealth Management. He is also an estate planning lawyer and his law firm is Yardley Estate Planning. Hey, Mike.

Mike: Hey, Maddie. How are you today?

Madison: I’m good. How are you?

Mike: Great. Beautiful sunny day, summertime. Nothing to complain about.

Madison: Couldn’t be better. All right, so, Mike, we’re doing things a little bit differently today. Do you want to explain to our listeners how this episode is going to plan out?

Mike: Sure. Instead of having Maddie and I talk about one topic and then have a guest, since we don’t have a guest lined up, we’re going to talk about three different topics. Articles that we saw in the press recently that are related. And we’ll tell you how they’re related at the end of the episode. Filled in a little suspense.

Madison: Okay. All right. So, like Mike said, there is three articles we are going to discuss. They are all from the Wall Street Journal, and you can always find them linked in the description below.

Discussion on the Fiduciary Rule and Annuities

Madison: So first, we are going to start with an article titled Insurers Are Winning a Fight to Curb Retirement Saver Aids and this is by Jean Eaglesham. All right, so here’s the summary. The article outlines a legal battle between the insurance industry and the US government over a new Labor Department rule designed to protect retirement savers. The rule would require financial advisors to act in the best interest of clients when recommending products like annuities, which often have hidden fees and high commissions. The insurance industry opposes the rule, arguing it would limit consumer choice and hurt their profits. Critics believe the rule is necessary to prevent advisors from pushing costly products that may not benefit clients. Despite the initial court rulings in favor of the industry, that government is expected to appeal. All right, Mike, so what are the potential benefits and drawbacks for retirement savers if the fiduciary rule is implemented?

Potential Benefits and Drawbacks for Retirement Savers

Mike: Well, I think that there are a lot of benefits for investors. I think it would be a great thing. So we are registered by the SEC as investment advisors, so we are fiduciaries 100% all the time. And that’s quite rare, as I’ve said repeatedly over the last 25 years. The Department of Labor is trying to enforce fiduciary standard for retirement savers. And part of that would be that the insurers who sell annuities would have to act with the duty of loyalty to their clients in their best interests and with good faith. And so, it would have a hard time saying that an annuity that has an 8% commission, and the one person in the article said some go as high as 14% commission would be acting in the best interest of the client and that there’s no other reasonable substitutes for that product, I think they’d have a really hard time. And so, I think what would happen is savers and people who choose to buy an annuity would pay much, much less for that product.

Impact on Advisor-Client Relationship

Madison: So how might the new standard for financial advice affect the relationship between financial advisors and their clients? And in what ways could the rule change the way advisors recommend products?

Mike: So, I think that it would be a good thing. Now, the people who sell the products now don’t see it. Right. Because they see it possibly losing out on 8% commissions. Right. And it could be a lot. You sell a million dollar annuity, that’s $80,000. That’s a lot of money to make for a couple of signatures. Right. But you know, I started as a financial advisor at Merrill Lynch and was clearly not a fiduciary there. And moving to the last firm I worked at and our firm, being a fiduciary is liberating for the advisor. You know, you’re on the same side of the table as the client. You’re trying to do what’s best for them, and they know that, and they know that I’m not going to try to sell some product that has hidden fees or that’s going to tie them up. And it makes the relationship so much better. We’re on the same side of the table now. So even though those insurers or the agents or brokers who sell those products only look at the bad side now, I think, and there might be some pain. Right. Like if you charge 1% or 2% on a product instead of 8%. Yeah, in the short run, it’s going to stink for you, but I think ultimately it could be much better. And, Maddie, I’m sorry, could you please repeat the second part of that question?

Madison: Yeah, absolutely. And in what ways could the rule change the way advisors recommend products?

Mike: Yeah. I think that the rule change would make advisors be more careful and diligent in looking into the products that they recommend. And it’ll be more based on what is best for the client and what is not part of a sales contest or the highest commission that they can make. I think it’ll be a giant change for advisors, and again, I think it’ll be a giant change for clients. And again, I think ultimately it would be good for advisors and the relationships that they have with people, they just don’t see it yet.

Impact on Sales of Annuities

Madison: Yeah. Seems like it might be around the corner, though.

Mike: Yeah. It’s not ever going to happen. They’ve been fighting it forever, so I can’t see it. Maybe if the government wins ultimately in the lawsuit, but I can’t see it.

Madison: Yeah.

Mike: Not optimistic. And, you know, we’ve had talks in the past. I’ve written blog posts and done videos where Merrill, my old employer, said that when the Department of Labor initially said there’s going to be a fiduciary rule, which was scrapped during the Trump administration, they said they were going to be first a fiduciary. And then when it got scrapped, it was like an article in page seven of the Wall Street Journal with a little thing said, oh, you know what, we’ve decided this time we’re not going to be fiduciaries. I think that it would be hard for a publicly traded company to be a fiduciary because they have shareholders that they need to answer to. But I think there are enough smart people that they’ve figured out a way to do it, and I’m sure that they have figured out a way to do it. They just don’t want to because they’re always afraid of that short term pain. And if they have problems with revenues because they have to provide better products, then maybe they’re going to get hurt in the stock market, and then that’s going to hurt stock options, RSUs and all that stuff and the shares that they own. It’s not ever going to happen until they’re forced to do it. You know, in the last 25 years since I became an advisor, the vast majority of money in this industry has gone toward to Schwab, Vanguard, Fidelity and independent advisors. Money that used to always go to the Merrill Lynches, the Morgan Stanleys, UBS, Paine Webber, all the old brokers that your parents would have heard of. All that money used to go to doesn’t go to them anymore. Consumers have found out that there are cheaper products and there are advisors that put their interests first and they’re flocking to them. And I don’t know what it would take for those old garden companies to get up and notice and change, but it hasn’t happened. I can’t see it happen unless it’s forced on them. And I don’t think it’ll ever actually be forced on them. And so that’s where we’re at.

Role of Transparency and Simplicity

Madison: Yeah, it’s good to be knowledgeable before looking for a financial advisor.

Mike: Yeah, you should know. And people do now. When people reach out to us, they ask us all the time if we’re fiduciaries. And they’re starting to know that to ask if we’re fiduciaries all the time. Cause a lot of advisors out there say that they’re fiduciaries, but the reality is they’re not all the time. So if you wanna look, the easiest way to know if the advisor you’re checking out as a fiduciary, look at their website, and if they have like, tiny little disclaimer prints saying that securities are offered by such and such company and products are offered by some other company and they’re unaffiliated, that person is not going to act as a fiduciary to you. They just are not going to. Because of the relationships they have with those companies that are in that little size four font at the bottom of the website.

Madison: Yep.

Mike: Easiest way to know.

Broader Implications of the Legal Battle

Madison: All right, so what impact could the rule have on the sales of annuities, particularly fixed indexed annuities?

Mike: Yeah, I think that the sales of annuities would change the giant projection that they’ve had now. So, 2024 was a record year that crushed 2023 that was a record year. You know, hundreds of billions of dollars of annuities sold. I think that if an advisor had to worry about the government checking to see if what they sold was really in the best interest of their client, I think a lot of those products would become a lot cheaper or they would go out of business. They would just stop selling them.

Madison: Yep. So why do you think the insurance industry is so confident that it will win the legal battle?

Mike: Because they always have. There’ve been short instances of time where it looked like they might lose. But they haven’t.

Madison: Okay.

Mike: Yep. And they’re gonna, they framed the decision as choice. You wanna give people choice. It’s the same thing that other industries that have fallen out of favor will say. You wanna give smokers a choice. You want to give gamblers a choice. Yeah.

Madison: Okay. Alright. So what role do transparency and simplicity play in helping savers make informed decisions?

Mike: Well, I think those are the two of the most important things. Like what is the product you’re buying, and how complicated is it? You know, like, if something’s complicated, I generally would steer clear of that. We want simplicity and transparency. What is it? How does it work? If you can’t explain it very simply, it’s probably too complicated of a product, and I’d steer clear.

Madison: Okay, good advice. What are the broader implications of this legal battle for the future of financial advice in the retirement sector?

Mike: Well, I think the broader implication is that if the government were to win and advisors would be held to a fiduciary standard, I think that it would make a lot of logical sense for other times when advisors have relationships with clients that they should be held to a fiduciary standard. Right. And, like, I think that advisors should always act as fiduciaries. You know, and that’s a struggle. It’s a war we’ve been waging for a long time. So I think that that’s the big thing. And so we’ll see. I’m not optimistic, but, you know, you never know.

Madison: Yeah. We will see.

Mike: Keep fighting. Keep hoping.

Madison: And even if it doesn’t, just hopefully, you know, the people just get more educated and know what to look for.

Mike: Yeah. The amount of people that know to look for a fiduciary advisor has grown dramatically in the last ten or 15 years. And hopefully that keeps going. And, I mean, ultimately, that would be the other thing that would make them change. Right. If they just couldn’t get any more business, that would make them change. Although that’s not the case. Right. If they sold more than $200 billion of those high priced annuities last year, a lot of people are still buying them. And that’s why we make this podcast, try to get less people to buy those products.

Madison: Yeah. So have you seen an increase in people.. Like, you know, you have your prospects come in. Have you seen an increase of, you know, asking if you’re a fiduciary all the time. Was it common, you know, when you first started, compared to now?

Mike: So when I first started, no one knew what it was and no one ever asked. But they did ask about being fee only. Which is generally a part of it. Most fiduciary advisors are also fee only. But somewhere around ten years or so ago, I think people started to ask about fiduciary a little bit more often, and we get asked fiduciary now more than fee only, and it definitely has increased. And I think, you know, people do a little bit of homework and look at a couple articles, you know, go online. They see the difference. You know, it, you know, there’s conflicts of interest in every business model, but there are many fewer when the person you’re acting with has a legal obligation to act in your best interests.

Madison: Well, that’s good news. You know, people are getting educated on it and the word’s getting out. So that, that’s great news.

Mike: Yep.

Discussion on Interval Funds and High Fees

Madison: Alright. So I guess we will switch gears. We will go move on to the next article. So this one is titled The Fees on These Funds Will Leave You High and Dry, and this is by Jason Zweig. Alright, so here’s the summary. The article criticizes interval funds, which limit investor withdrawals to periodic intervals. Marketed as a way to prevent panic selling in liquid assets, these funds often come with high fees that can significantly reduce returns. They commonly invest in private credit and real estate using leverage that increases both potential returns and risk. The article warns that some managers charge fees on borrowed funds, potentially encouraging riskier investments. It questions the value of interval funds given their high cost and limited liquidity compared to more transparent and liquid alternatives like high-yield bond ETF’s. All right, Mike, so what are the potential advantages and disadvantages of the limited liquidity offered by interval funds? And how does this structure compare to other investment vehicles like mutual funds and ETF’s?

Advantages and Disadvantages of Interval Funds

Mike: Sure. So there are a couple of big differences. So for these interval funds, they buy things that are not nearly as liquid as stocks and bonds. So they will buy private loans, they’ll buy real estate, and they’ll buy things with margin. So they’ll borrow money to buy more of it. And those are things that are not easily sold. They can’t sell quickly. So liquidity is a measure of how much loss there would be if you had to sell something immediately. So if we were having to sell a publicly traded stock, say we needed to sell Apple stock, it is as liquid as possible. I mean, there’s a lot of shares trade hands every day, and there would be no loss in value of what we’re trying to sell, if we had to sell some. That’s why most mutual funds and ETF’s are okay with having constant liquidity. And it’s not great. They don’t love it, because every day, if money’s pouring into the fund, people are buying more, they have to buy shares, even if they don’t think it’s as good a deal as it might have been a couple of months ago, or if the fund is doing poorly, or the stock market is doing poorly, and people want their money and they have to sell something, it might not be an opportune time, and so they have to make sales. And I think every manager of a mutual fund and ETF struggles a little bit with the money coming in and going out like that. The interval fund, though, limits that by limiting the amount of money that can go out of the fund, usually like 5% per quarter or something. And so that’s something that is easier for them to deal with and less disruptive. And they need that, they say, because if they have a big commercial real estate, you know, transaction, or they own a bunch of properties, and they have some loans that are non-traditional, meaning, like, they’re not part of a bank, or between, you know, like a consumer and what they, you know, a product that they buy, it’s not that easy to get rid of those things, right. You know, you don’t want to have to like, if you have a fund, and they own 20 hotels, and a lot of people want their money out, you don’t want to necessarily have to sell a hotel, and if you do, you can’t sell it in a day. So it’s a very different structure. And that’s the reason why you’d have different daily liquidity for mutual funds, and ETF’s versus quarterly liquidity for those kinds of funds.

Effect on Investor Behavior During Market Downturns

Madison: How might the limited redemption options in interval funds affect investor behavior during market downturns? And do you think this structure helps or hinders investors in managing their emotions and decisions?

Mike: Well, I think, I’m not sure how it actually works, but I think the idea is that if, you know you can only get your money out a certain time and that it’s supposed to be a long term investment, hopefully that makes people think like, okay, well, I can only get 5% out at the end of the quarter, I’m just going to have to stick with this because I know there’ll be ups and downs. And hopefully it’s a good thing, although I don’t know. I’ve never bought one.

High Fees and Their Impact on Returns

Madison: Yeah. All right. So the article discusses the high fees associated with interval funds, including charges on borrowed assets. How do these fees impact investors returns? And why might fund managers structure fees in this way?

Mike: Well, they structure fees in that way to make more money. So that’s the easiest answer. And so, yeah, they’re high fees, might charge you some percent to get in. And then they charge several percent. And then they might charge more if they make money. Like, there was a quote in the article where it said it could be that the fund uses leverage or borrows to buy a loan and the loan pays 12%. But the part of that that gets down to the end client is only 5% because of the different layers of fees and the borrowing costs. Like the loan, it’s hard not to look at it cynically. Look, I went to law school, so I could be as cynical as anybody. Right. When they’re charging on the amount borrowed and the money they use to borrow, it makes them take risky bets, but it rewards that by letting them, it seems almost like double billing. Right. They’re billing on an inflated amount because they could buy more because of the loan. I don’t love that aspect, for sure.

Risks and Potential Rewards of Using Leverage

Madison: Yeah, almost kind of sounds a little bit like gambling.

Mike: Oh, it sounds a lot like gambling. But in this case, the fund managers are the house.

Madison: Yes.

Mike: What happens? Who loses? House doesn’t lose.

Madison: Yes. All right, so what are the risks and potential rewards of using leverage in interval funds? How does this leverage affect the overall risk profile of these investments?

Mike: Sure. I think it makes them riskier. Yeah. It just does. In investing, the only leverage that seems to be acceptable is the leverage people use to buy a house because you put the down payment and your gains are levered because you’re not investing all of the money you’re buying. But any kind of, like, stock, bond investing, borrowing money adds to the risk.

Transparency and Investor Understanding

Madison: Yeah. How transparent are interval funds about their fee structures and risk? Do you think investors fully understand the cost and potential downsides when investing in these funds?

Mike: They’re not transparent at all, and investors don’t understand the downsides. Thanks for that easy question, Maddie. I appreciate that sometimes.

Demand for Alternative Assets

Madison: Given the rise in popularity of interval funds, why do you think there is a growing demand for alternative assets? Are these alternatives worth the additional risk and costs compared to traditional investments?

Mike: I don’t believe that they are. And I believe that the rise is because advisors used to be able to sell products based on, like, mutual fund performance or other kind of performance. And now that the S&P 500 is out there and has had such great performance compared to most other managers, I think a lot of advisors are trying to sell alternatives as a different way of capturing client dollars. So they can’t say, we’re going to buy this S&P 500 fund and charge more for it, because investors can just do that on their own, but they can say, oh, we’re going to buy this, it’s not correlated, so it’s going to be less volatile than the S&P 500, and you’re gonna have downside protection. So they can’t in good faith say that they’re gonna buy these investments that are gonna beat the market. So what they’re gonna do instead is they’re gonna try to sell investors these expensive, complicated products to do something else. And the other things are like provide returns that don’t have as much risk, or provide returns that have some sort of floor, so there’s less volatility and there’s less chance they’re going to go down. I personally don’t think it’s worth it. I think having a globally diversified portfolio makes a lot more sense. And if client needs or wants bonds in the portfolio, that could do something to dampen the risk a little bit. But I think that having the volatility of a globally diversified portfolio is worth the risk. Now, I’m not saying the volatility of the S&P 500, because I don’t think most people really could take that. In the last 24 years, it’s gone down by 50% twice, and two of those times was within a decade, and it’s gone down 20 – 30% several more times than that. I don’t think people really want that kind of volatility, certainly not once they get within five or ten years of retirement. So I’m not saying just buy the S&P 500. I think it’s a nice start to a portfolio, but I think it should be complemented with small cap and value stocks and foreign and emerging markets, probably some real estate and some bonds, depending on the client.

Madison: Okay, so you said downturn protections. What is that?

Mike: Yeah, so what they’ll say is. So say one of those times, the S&P 500 went down by 50%. Right. So say you have a million dollars in S&P 500 fund, and it’s September 2008, and you look up February 2009 and you have $450,000 in that same S&P 500 fund. Well, nobody likes that. That stinks. Right. So people want to have the upside of the S&P 500, but they don’t want the downside. And so what some of these funds will say they do is buy you protection. So you might limit your upside a little bit, but you’ll limit your downside even more. And so maybe if the correction happens where the S&P goes down 55%, your fund will only go down 20 or 30 or 40%. And so people try to sell some sort of downward protection like that.

Madison: Okay. All right. How do interval funds compare to other high yield investment options, such as public high yield bond ETF’s in terms of risk return, and liquidity? Is the extra yield offered by interval funds worth the trade offs?

Mike: Yeah. So I don’t think that it is. Right. So this interval funds will offer higher yields, but you give up knowing what’s in them, you lose transparency, you lose liquidity for that yield, I don’t think it’s worth it. Some people do. And I’m sure maybe if you found one that had reasonable fees and it used, either didn’t use leverage or had leverage that was acceptable to you, I think it could be a part of a portfolio. But again, I just think that they charge so much for these products and they make it so hard to take money out. It’s hard for me to really seriously consider putting clients money in them.

Madison: Yeah. Alright. So how important is it for investors to be educated about the intricacies of investment products like interval funds? What steps can financial advisors and industry professionals take to ensure investors make informed decisions?

Mike: Yeah. So you need to be able to explain what a product is in a way that someone without product knowledge can understand. And you need to have a way of showing what the risks and the volatility are like. Not necessarily the volatility, but the risks, so that people can understand them, so that they can make informed decisions. And I think that so far, I haven’t seen any kind of language that would do that. But I think it’s hard. Right. Cause they’re gonna have some legal requirements from the states that they’re registered in, or the SEC or whoever is monitoring them, and then there’s gonna be limits by, like, their compliance lawyers as to how easy that language is to read. I think you’re stuck right now in a situation where you have products that are complicated and people don’t understand them. So advisors who sell them try to explain them in a way that makes them enticing and limit the downside that they discuss with clients. That’s what I think, anyway. Otherwise, I don’t see why these would be booming in popularity. I don’t.

Discussion on Bill Ackman’s Bungled IPO

Madison: Yeah, absolutely. All right, so we are moving on to the third and final article here. This one is What Bill Ackman Got Wrong with His Bungled IPO. And this is by Jason Zweig. All right, so here’s the article. The article critiques Bill Ackman’s canceled closed-end fund, Pershing Square USA (PSUS). Ackman intends PSUS to mirror his main hedge fund’s holdings. Closed-end funds, while suitable for long term investing, often have high fees and could be difficult to trade at fair prices. PSUS planned to charge a 2% annual management fee and a 1.5% sales charge, making it unattractive compared to low-cost ETF’s and mutual funds. Despite Ackman’s strong track record, potential investors were deterred by the fund’s expense structure, leading to its cancellation. The article argues Ackman missed an opportunity to innovate with lower fees and bypass traditional investment banking channels. It highlights broader issues with closed-end funds, such as high fees and reduced investor control due to recent rule changes. Alright. How do the average annual expenses of closed-end funds (2.83%) compare to those of stock or bond index funds (0.05% or less)?

Average Annual Expenses of Closed-End Funds

Mike: Well, I think you just said it. They’re, like, 50 times more expensive. And that’s a recent thing. I think that there were.. So index funds haven’t always been this cheap. They’ve always been cheaper than average mutual funds, but they haven’t always been this low. And then closed-end funds became more expensive, I think he was saying, like, maybe ten years ago when they started to use leverage and they became more expensive. I think the spread between the costs has gone up dramatically in the last ten years.

Why Closed-End Funds Trade at Discounts

Madison: Yeah. So why do closed-end funds often trade at a discount to their net asset value?

Mike: So that’s a good question. It’s probably because it’s based on supply and demand, and the demand is not out there. People don’t think they’re worth what the net asset value says, probably because of maybe not great returns and high fees. It’s interesting, even before the change in the closed-end market, when I worked at Merrell 25 years ago, my boss used closed-end funds a lot, and he would try to tell clients they were good, and he thought they were good because they sold at a discount to their NAV. He said, you’re getting $10 worth of companies for $9.80. It makes a lot of sense because there’s a discount. Um, but as the article explained, there has always been a discount, and roughly, like, 80% of closed-end funds are trading at a discount. And so it’s not a case where you’re going to buy tuna fish because it’s on sale, and you know you’re getting that discount. If you buy it because of the discount and hold it for ten years and it’s still trading at a discount, the discount did you no favors.

Bill Ackman’s Missed Opportunities

Madison: Yep. What opportunities did Bill Ackman miss by not innovating with lower fees and a direct to individual investors approach for PSUS?

Mike: You know, I think Jason Zweig made a great point. He said, you know, if he priced it at half a percent and didn’t have a commission charge, then I think people would have clamored for it. It would have been a new thing really to have reasonable fees on a closed-end fund. Then people would be able to get what, you know, something similar to the hedge fund that would have been so much more expensive. And he thinks would have ushered in a new era of innovation on Wall Street. He said instead, by bungling it and charging those higher fees and eventually like not even coming through with it, he said he just cemented Wall Street’s typical way of working and high fees and extra costs for the sale. It was a good point Jason made, and he made it much better than I did.

Potential Consequences of Proposed Rule Changes

Madison: All right. What are the potential consequences of the proposed rule changes by the New York Stock Exchange and Cboe Global Markets’ BZX Exchange on closed-end funds shareholders?

Mike: Yeah, it would be terrible. The proposed regulations would no longer require an annual shareholder meeting. So if you’re an investor in the fund and, you know, had some concerns or issues, there would be no meeting where shareholders can attend and voice those concerns. You would be left with either just being stuck doing what you’re doing or selling out. And maybe you can’t sell for tax purposes or you have a lot of other good reasons to hold and you can’t in any way voice your displeasure. I think it’ll be terrible for investors.

Madison: Yeah.

Mike: And just a bad idea in general. People should be able to voice their concerns with your fund.

How Closed-End Funds Can Appeal to Modern Investors

Madison: Absolutely. All right, my last question here. How can closed-end funds become more appealing to modern investors while maintaining their structure?

Mike: Yeah, they need to charge lower expenses, and if there’s any kind of commission charges, they need to get rid of those, too. You know, if they charged normal expenses and not the 2.83% on average, whatever, I think they would get a lot more people interested in them because there are advantages in the structure of buying and selling it. There aren’t the capital gains that you would have similar advantage of exchange-traded funds compared to mutual funds. But they’ve gone the other way of trying to make it complicated. More like an alternative investment and charging those higher fees.

Common Thread Between the Articles

Madison: Yep. Alright, well, that’s a wrap. So, Mike, is there a common thread between all of these articles?

Mike: There sure is. I hope people see it. These are all instances, right, where people have complicated products that they charge a high amount for, that they charge high ongoing fees for, that they make it hard to redeem your money. There’s no transparency. There’s no liquidity. There’s high fees. These are all things that should not be a part of your discussion when you’re determining what you should buy. You know, I’ve said it before, I’ll keep saying it, you should have a globally diversified portfolio for just about everybody who invests, and you should be able to buy and sell the funds when it’s right for you. You shouldn’t be locked up. Costs should be reasonable. And again, I don’t know who it was, but it was an old Fortune or Forbes editor who wrote years and years ago that I saw, I don’t know if I was in college or just starting in this business, like buy stocks or bonds or funds that buy stocks or bonds. Anything more complicated was made to enrich the intermediary, the fund companies. So stay away. Thank you for indulging me and going through three different articles, but, you know, they’re all pretty recent, and they all seem to, to me, have that common thread and just seem to make sense to do this at one time.

Madison: Absolutely.

Mike: Thanks, Maddie.

Closing Remarks

Madison: Okay, thank you. For more information on Yardley Wealth Management or Yardley Estate Planning, you can visit our website at yardleywealth.net, and yardleyestate.net. You can also follow us on socials at Yardley Wealth Management. This podcast has been produced by Madison Demora and Mike Garry with technical and artistic help from Poe Productions.