Altruist Financial Advisors LLC
Fee-Only Financial Planning and Portfolio Management

Custodial Fees

 

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Registered Investment Advisers are prohibited by law from taking custody of your assets.  In other words, we are prohibited from ever being able to get our hands on your money, except for payment of fees, and then only if you authorize it in advance.

It is therefore necessary to utilize a third party custodian to handle your assets.  Altruist currently utilizes TD Ameritrade as its principal custodian, primarily due to their exceptionally low custodial/brokerage fees.

Unless other arrangements are made, ALTRUIST® Portfolio Management Service clients are generally charged for all custodial expenses incurred on their behalf.  These fees are levied by the custodian and charged directly to their account.  Altruist makes no profits from them.  A complete schedule of custodial fees is available on request. 

Note that virtually all fee-only Registered Investment Advisers pass on custodial fees to their clients.  The only such services which may not be subject to custodial fees are those designated as "wrap fee" programs (and "wrap fee" programs are generally to be avoided because they actually provide a disincentive to execute beneficial transactions, as well as being generally more expensive than non-wrap fee programs).

Follows is a condensed summary of the custodial fees most relevant to Altruist clients (fees are subject to change; follows are fees beginning 5/12/07):

bulletMutual Fund Transaction Fees.  Each mutual fund transaction incurs a custodial fee of $24.00 (for clients with a household value of $500,000 or more, OR clients who receive electronic statements and confirms; other clients incur custodial fees of $31.00).
 
bulletIndividual Equity Brokerage Fees.  Each individual equity transaction (e.g., buying shares of an Exchange Traded Fund) incurs a custodial brokerage fee of $9.99 (for clients with a household value of $500,000 or more, OR clients who receive electronic statements and confirms).  Altruist clients don't typically execute many individual equity transactions — nearly all investment recommendations are in the form of low cost, passively managed, no-load mutual funds.

Remember: virtually all fee-only investment advisors have custodial fees.  Most don't readily disclose them as we do.  The overwhelming majority of fee-only advisors use custodians who charge fees dramatically higher than those charged by our selected custodian.

 

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