Investing can be complicated business, that is why so many have someone else do it for them. This means that you have to pay them a fee, but if you don't know anything about money, stocks, investments, and all of that fun stuff, you are going to make more if you have someone knowledgeable handling your portfolio management for you. The hard part might be finding someone you can trust, and someone who will listen to what you have to say.
If you know how to handle your own portfolio management, you can save a lot of money by not paying fees to someone else. However, this can be hard to do if you have a diverse portfolio, and you have to spend a lot of time checking up each and every different stock you have. Even some who are knowledgeable about portfolio management have someone else doing it for that very reason. They feel the fee is reasonable because they don't have to take a lot of time out of their day to worry about it.
One way many deal with portfolio management is to have a 401K that requires very little input from them. However, there are still come choices that the employee must make. Some will ask what money you want to go into what type of investment. Those starting out often have very little in their accounts, so they put it all into low risk. After the money adds up, they can then have some of that put into higher risk investments to see what will happen. With the case of the 401K they can be pretty hands off, but you should still know what is going on and where your money is going.
When choosing someone to handle your portfolio management, you should find someone who will listen to you and take your calls, and also someone who has a reasonable fee. If you try to call and it seems they never answer, and they rarely call you back in a timely manner, you might want to assume that they are just too busy to handle your portfolio management like they should be. Find someone who can answer when you call, at least at a reasonable frequency, and seems to give a hoot about what you think. After all, it is your money and your future. You have a right to have input and to know what is going on with it.
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