[Noah930]

Timely thread. We've had a financial advisor at Merrill Lynch for the past 6 years or so. Our advisor recently left ML, and he joined a new boutique firm. Obviously he's trying to get us to move with him. So it's given us a chance to re-evaluate our options: 1) stay with ML (fees expensive, so not likely), 2) move to the boutique firm with our advisor (nice guy, but Mrs. Noah is "meh" on him--fees are better there, though), 3) go to another advisor/firm, or 4) invest on our own (i.e. diversified selection of Vanguard funds and maybe dabble in a Ameritrade-type brokerage account on the side). I think the missus and I are leaning towards one of the latter two options.

edit: Oh, and to answer one of the OP's questions (and because the transparency doesn't seem to be there regarding this): Merrill charges us over 1% (maybe 1.25%?). The new boutique firm would charge us 0.9%. I don't know what the other firm will charge us, but my F-I-L has an account with them and he's being charged something like 0.75%. And Vanguard charges 0.3% for signing up with a FP.