Fee Overload: How I Was Sold a Costly Pension Plan with Hidden High Fees and Poor Performance

I feel like we may be getting shafted by our financial advisor and unsure what to do next.

Some background info: My brother and I inherited a $1 million that was put in a trust in 2018. Since my brother and I were young and dumb, my mom was appointed as the caretaker of the trust and she gave it to here trusted financial advisor to invest/manage until we wanted it transferred. He manages other family funds as well (529s), including her retirement. So we thought it was fine. This amount basically makes up all of our assets.

Cut to now, I’m in mid 20s, my brother is slightly younger, and it’s time to transfer and split the trust. We go to meet this financial advisor, and we were thinking, hey he probably didn’t preform as well as the market, but there should be some gains here. We both thought we were going to stay with him and maybe just tweak our portfolio. Then the meeting happened, and I feel like we’re getting f*cked. I’m not financially literate though, and so I would really appreciate others perspectives to see if I am being crazy.

Reasons why I think we may be getting reamed:

• Over 6 years our total gains on our $1 million principal is $100,000One of the main reasons it’s that low is because, for the last 6 years, the portfolio has consistently been 70 % CDs and 30 % no cost basis at & t stock my grandparents bought in the 80s.
• He has our money invested this way because he swears the market is going to crash. Yeah, he has been timing the market INCORRECTLY for 6 YEARS. I asked if he would do anything differently at this point and he said no b/c it’s going to crash this year. I asked him what would his investment strategy be if it doesn’t crash this year, and he said it will crash and did not give me a straightforward answer.
• When I asked him what commission he was getting off a portfolio like this, he tried to tell me none since it’s not a fund like ETFs(which he gets 1%). After some persistence he finally told me he gets commission from the bank for every CD he buys/sells. Idk if that’s normal so any insight here is great. My mom’s portfolio that he manages is diverse and is mainly stocks and index funds. She is about to retire, yet he puts her in a riskier portfolio than us. And for us, with longer outlooks, he puts all our funds in cds because he swears the market will crash. If he really thought the market will crash, why didn’t he push for my mom to reinvest more of her funds in cds as well? This really bothers me and maybe there is something I am missing here, as I know little about investing. So please let me know.
• He spent the whole meeting talking about how the market will crash, showing as data and graphs as proof. This data is all public info, and I understand where he could be drawing conclusions like this, but if you’re wrong for 6 years, you’re wrong for 6 years. He went on for 40 minutes before I had to push the conversation towards our actual portfolio. Idk why but this really rubbed me the wrong way.

There is maybe more, but this is what I have for now. I asked him to call me once the first cd is up so we can discuss what to do with it, and he called today. I honestly feel like I should just ask him to transfer the funds to me and I’ll put it in an index fund. But this puts us in a situation where every time a cd is up I’m slowly transferring. Idk what to do.

I understand I was an idiot for not taking agency in this situation earlier. But all I can do at this point is focus on the now. My brother is more financially illiterate than me and my mom gets defensive when I start asking questions. So, what do you make of this? Am I reading this wrong or is he screwing us? If he is screwing us, from a range of incompetent to malicious, how bad?

I was paying an advisor $8k per year. He never beat the market and often underperformed. Lovely guy, but once I had enough time to look into it all (the lack of time is WHY I got an advisor in the first place), I realised I was being utterly reamed given the size of my portfolio.

We are invested with a big name financial investment company but have a good relationship with our financial advisor. Until today I never thought about how much it cost. The rate is 1.35%. I always thought that was 1.35% of the profit but apparently it’s the entire balance. Our rate of return last year was -8%. Yes that is negative.

Well on top of this we were charged our fee of $3600. I have no idea what to do. My husband and I both have IRAs a few stocks, a CD, 2 529s for our kids. How do I get this money out and how can I invest this. I had luck with vanguard in the past when I was single but had some tax issues once we got married that is when we went to the financial advisor. Edit: so the -8% is actually April 2022-April 2023. My actual rate for jan 2022-dec31 2022 was -23.4% plus they still charged the 1.35% so in actuality in 2022 I was down 24.75%!!!!! I feel like such an idiot.