Re: Investment Advice
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Go to the smartest, most conservative person you know personally. Ask him what he would do.
If someone asked me that question, I'd tell them to pay about $1,000 to have a long talk with a financial planner. You don't just need investment advice with that kind of money, you need a full financial plan that deals with tax issues, estate issues, insurance, etc. Setting everything up could cost (wild-ass guess) anywhere between $5k-$50k.
There's virtually 0% chance that anyone on this forum can tell you what to do. Do not go to someone who is simply a CPA or CFA - they need to have full financial planning experience.
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Excellent advice. Find a fee based financial planner who doesn't take commissions or kickbacks from their recommendations, or tries to charge you a annual fee based on your assets.
And it shouldn't cost anywhere near $5k. I believe a typical fee based financial planner will charge someone with a $100k portfolio something like $400. They will probably do more work for your larger portfolio since you'll have more tax issues, but not ten times more work.
But don't listen to me. Pickup the yellow pages, call a few financial planners. Do brief phone interviews ( and ask what their fees are before telling them how much money you have) and then meet in person with the top two or three. Don't pick based on price. Pick the most skilled and trustworthy person, as long as their fees are reasonable.
Remember, you will have a great deal of money for advisors and brokers to skim off of. If I was an unscrupulous advisor I'd put you in annuities and mutual funds where I could make hundreds of thousands in fees as kickbacks. I'd charge you an annual "wrap" fee of 1%, or $50k per year. If I was a bad broker, I'd move you in and out of stock recommendations and you'd pay for my new house with all the commissions I'd ring up on your trades.
It's probably not a bad idea to also talk to Merrill Lynch (and maybe AG Edwards) as well. I'm not a big fan of the high end brokers for my needs, but they handle a lot of high net worth investors and have institutional controls that should protect you from bad brokers. I believe their brokers can't recommends stocks unless they are blue chip stocks vetted by their research department.
Your most important goal shouldn't be to make more money, it should be to never lose money. That's actually Warren Buffett's number one rule, "don't lose money". The second rule is to not forget the first. You have enough money that even conservatively invested you should live well. A mix of safe short term bond funds and CD's alone should generate $250k a year on a $5M portfolio.
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