2 /5 Caleb Toole: I would highly recommend looking into another option for your financial services. Cory is a nice guy, but I believe you can do better elsewhere for the following reasons:
1. Edward Jones costs are much higher than other options, which will eat into your investments. The flat rate for my services with Edward Jones was 1.35% (the fee based account). My friend met with a respected and trusted adviser in Tyler recently that only charged 0.4%. You can have a brokerage account at Vanguard that only cost 0.15%. Your net gains have a much better chance by avoiding such high costs at Edward Jones. There is a lot of information out there that will provide the data for you if you need to see it.
2. When I decided to transfer my funds from Edward Jones to a Vanguard Target-date fund (for the reasons mentioned above) I sought to do so in the way that avoided costs. I put in a lot of effort by talking to Vanguard and Cory to determine what my best option was, which ended up being to liquidate all of my funds at Edward Jones and transfer to Vanguard as cash. My funds were not liquidated by Cory as I requested. When the transfer request was made, funds that were transferable to Vanguard were transferred, and non-transferable funds were rejected by Vanguard. Essentially what this cost me is the transaction fee to sell each fund at Vanguard (which I worked hard at trying to avoid by liquidating) due to them not being liquidated beforehand (as I requested). Once I became aware that this had happened, I notified Cory to liquidate the non-transferable funds so that they would transfer. Now the non-transferable funds from Edward Jones are sitting in a money market missing out on potential gains (which could take up to two months to complete). I take partial blame for not more forcefully communicating the need to have them liquidated, but I trusted that as a professional adviser, Cory knew what was needed. I looked into transferring my funds back to Edward Jones to liquidate and then transfer back to Vanguard and was advised by Cory that it would cost $50/fund to sell at this point (beforehand it was at no cost). I asked if he could reimburse me the cost of having to sell my funds at Vanguard, and he said it was illegal for him to do so. While I acknowledge that may be true, it is very convenient for him. In the end I (the customer/consumer) had to pay the price for a transactional error I had no control over (liquidating my funds).
Therefore, my advice would be to vet your options thoroughly. In my opinion, the cost of Edward Jones is way too high to do business with. There are plenty of other financial organizations out there (Fidelity, Charles Schwab, Vanguard) that will provide the same service, at a lower cost, and most likely in a more professional manner. I am giving 2 stars instead of 1 star because I believe I have to take some responsibility for my actions. I should have shopped around more, and been clearer at the time of transferring my accounts.
