AssetBuilder

Scott Burns is great and has been a distant mentor for my investing since the mid eighties. I owe much of my investing success to his articles in the Dallas News.
Unfortunately I cannot say the same for Asset Builder’s president. When they failed to execute a trade which resulted in a very long delay on that trade (I’m talking weeks and weeks), the result cost me real money. Instead of an apology, what I got was lots of excuses and my favorite response…“this is a low fee operation so you kind of get what you pay for” and «it’s only a paper loss».
I fired Asset builder and found a much better firm that also uses DFA funds, has cheaper fees to boot AND is actually customer oriented.

Caveat: Relying on Unilocal reviews for picking an investment or financial services firm is probably not a good long term strategy for success! Do your own due diligence and make informed decisions.
Summary:
— Check them out if you want smart low-​cost people managing your retirement dollars
— $ 50,000 minimum (sadly) to start an account
— Low expense /​high transparency asset management
— Very open about what they do and why they do it
— Your money is held in a custodial account at Charles Schwab & Co.
— Even if you have no intention of being a customer, the website has excellent info
I remember reading Scott Burns’ columns in the Boston Globe ages ago and got interested in his new company when my Dad sent me a link. Scott Burns is probably best known for creating and talking up his simple «couch potato portfolio» (google it for info…) back in the days when it was hard for an individual investor to find diversity and low fees .
I am not anything close to rich/​wealthy but I’ve been stuffing my retirement accounts to the max since my first job out of college and ended up with a number of 401K and SIMPLE-​IRA accounts along the way. Eventually all of the «old» accounts were consolidated into a single Rollover IRA held at Charles Schwab.
Started reading the AssetBuilder blog posts and forums and got sold on their transparency and fixation on low cost and managed risk. They are transparent enough on their website/​blog/​forum that an independent investor could simply copy their published methods without signing up as a customer.
The tipping point for me was learning that they keep client money in custodial accounts at Charles Schwab. Since my Rollover IRA was already there it felt like I was letting smarter people manage my money for less than I was paying in the hidden mutual fund fees and transaction costs.
Now in the post-​Maddof scam era this is even more important. While AssetBuilder may make trades on my behalf, all my statements and account info are serviced directly by Schwab &
. The separation of «management» vs. «holding» is a good thing in my opinion.
Just my $.02 of course, I’m not rich or even a particularly savvy investor. I just like AB because I’ve found the fixation on low-​cost & high transparency to be very refreshing.