How To Adjust and Renew Your Portfolio

Portfolio rebalancing is just routine maintenance for your investments, similar to going to the doctor for a checkup or changing the oil in your automobile. Rebalancing includes selling some stocks and buying some bonds, or vice versa, so that your portfolio's asset allocation fits the level of returns you want to attain and the degree of risk you're willing to take most of the time.

While rebalancing does involve buying and selling, it is nevertheless part of a long-term, passive investing strategy—the type that performs best over time. In this essay, we'll go over what rebalancing is and why, how often, and how to accomplish it.

Why Rebalance Your Portfolio?

Rebalancing your portfolio is the only way to stay on track with your goal asset allocation—the percentage of your portfolio held in different investments, such as 80% equities and 20% bonds. Your target asset allocation is the percentage you want to hold in each investment so that you're comfortable with the amount of risk you're taking and on pace to generate the investment returns you need to meet your goals, such as retiring by age 65.

The more stocks you own, the more risk you take on since your portfolio will be more volatile and its value will fluctuate with market fluctuations. However, equities beat bonds greatly in the long run, which is why so many investors rely on stocks rather than bonds to fulfill their objectives.

When the stock market performs well, the percentage of your portfolio's monetary value represented by equities rises. If you start with an 80% allocation to equities, for example, it may climb to 85%, making your portfolio riskier than you expected. What's the solution? Sell 5% of your stock holdings and use the proceeds to buy bonds. That is an example of balance.

When the market is performing well, rebalancing may be difficult psychologically. Who wants to sell a profitable investment? They might go higher, and you might lose out! Consider these three reasons:

They could fall farther, causing you to suffer more losses than you are comfortable with.

When you sell an investment that has been performing well, you are locking in those gains. They're genuine; they don't merely reside on a screen in your brokerage account. And when you acquire an investment that isn't performing well, you're getting a good deal. Overall, you're selling high and purchasing low, which is exactly what every investor desires.

Rebalancing often entails selling only 5% to 10% of your portfolio. So, if the thought of selling wins and buying losers (in the short term) bothers you, at least you're just investing a little portion of your money.

Of course, you do not have to rebalance. The more strongly your portfolio is weighted toward stocks, the greater your long-term returns are likely to be. However, they will not be significantly greater than if you had a more balanced asset allocation, and the increased volatility may induce you to make financially risky decisions, such as selling stocks at a loss.

It might make sense for a totally rational investor (which no one is) to invest entirely in equities. Holding some bonds and rebalancing often is the greatest approach to stay on track with your strategy and get the best risk-adjusted returns over time for anyone who has an emotional reaction to seeing their retirement account balance drop when the stock market struggles.

During the 2008 financial crisis, investors were forced to rebalance out of bonds and into equities.Buying equities that were falling in value may have looked risky at the time. However, those stocks were purchased at a significant discount, and the extended bull market that followed the Great Recession repaid those investors handsomely.

Those same investors should be rebalancing now. If not, they will have grown overly invested in equities and will suffer more than necessary the next time the market falls. Because markets are cyclical, it's just a matter of time before their fortunes, whether good or bad, flip.

How Often Should You Rebalance?

There are three frequency at which you can rebalance your portfolio:

According to a predetermined schedule, such as once a year during tax time.

When your desired asset allocation deviates by a given percentage, such as 5% or 10%.

Within a specified term, but only if your target asset allocation has deviated by a specific percentage (a mix of both options).

The disadvantage of the first strategy is that you may squander time and money (in the form of transaction fees) rebalancing inefficiently. There's no purpose in rebalancing if your portfolio is only 1% out of sync with your strategy.

To determine how frequently to rebalance, you'll need to decide how much drift you're OK with—how far you're comfortable allowing your asset allocation stray from your target. In other words, if your target allocation is 60% stocks and 40% bonds, do you want to rebalance when your portfolio has drifted to 65% stocks and 35% bonds, or are you content to wait until it has reached 70% stocks and 30% bonds?

As it turns out, you may not even need to worry about when or how frequently to rebalance. A Vanguard analysis that spanned the years 1926 to 2018 indicated that "no specific rebalancing frequency and/or threshold is optimal for all investors." According to Vanguard's results, someone who rebalanced monthly would have nearly 1,000 rebalancing occurrences, while someone who rebalanced quarterly would have 372 and someone who rebalanced annually would have only 93. Nonetheless, the average annualized return and volatility were essentially comparable among the three groups.

 Vanguard suggests reviewing your portfolio every six months and rebalancing at a 5% threshold to get the optimal balance of risk management and expense minimization.

Taking it a step further, the Vanguard study discovered that you should never adjust your portfolio. On average, someone who started with a 60% allocation to stocks would end up with an 85% allocation to equities.

This person would not have spent any time or money rebalancing. Their portfolio's volatility was around 2.5 percentage points higher than that of an investor who did rebalance. And their average annualized returns were 8.74%, compared to 8.20%, 8.26%, and 8.19% for the hypothetical investors who rebalanced monthly, quarterly, and annually, respectively.

Another time to consider rebalancing is when your life situation changes in a way that affects your risk tolerance, such as the following:

Married a Multimillionaire?

You can safely switch to a more cautious asset allocation strategy. If you and your spouse handle your existing assets carefully, you could be set for life.

Became Disabled or Seriously Ill?

Again, you may want to rebalance into something more conservative because you want to be able to use the money you have left throughout your remaining time. You'll also require funds for medical expenses sooner rather than later.

Divorcing and Not Responsible for Child Support or Alimony?

With no one to provide for but yourself, you may decide to rebalance into a bigger percentage of equities because your risk-taking will have no impact on your family.

Planning To Buy a House in the Next Few Years?

You should rebalance your portfolio into more bonds and fewer equities so that you have plenty of cash to remove when you're ready to withdraw your down payment, even if the market falls.

Let's speak about how to rebalance now that we've covered what it is and why you should (probably, maybe) do it.

Look at Your Overall Portfolio

To gain a whole view of your investments, you must examine all of your accounts together, not just individual accounts. If you have a 401(k) and a Roth IRA, you're probably curious about how they interact. How does your whole portfolio look? Obviously, if you only have one investing account, you may skip this step.

Use one of these three approaches to create a consolidated view of all your investment accounts.

1. Spreadsheet

Input each of your accounts, each of your investments within those accounts, and how much money you have in each investment on a single sheet. Take note of whether each investment is a stock, bond, or cash holding, and then compute the proportion of your overall holdings that is assigned to each category. This isn't the simplest or quickest technique, but it could be entertaining if you're a personal finance nerd who enjoys creating spreadsheets.

Next, compare your holdings' allocations in each category to your intended allocation. If you have any target-date funds or balanced funds that include both stocks and bonds, check the website of the company that offers those funds (e.g., Fidelity, Vanguard, Schwab) or a research site like Morningstar, which we used to create the spreadsheet below, to see how they're allocated.

*0.89% of VBMFX's asset allocation is listed as "not classified."
Thanks to MoneyUnder30.com for the basic format of this spreadsheet.

2. Brokerage Software

Some brokerage firms allow consumers to view all of their investments in one spot, not just those held with that brokerage. Merrill Edge Asset Allocator and Fidelity's Full View are two examples.

You must provide your login information for each account whose details you wish to access. If you use Fidelity's Full View and have a self-employed 401(k) with Fidelity and a Roth IRA with Vanguard, you'll need to give Fidelity your Vanguard login information so you can see the combined asset allocation of your two accounts.

3. Apps

Apps like Empower Personal Dashboard, SigFig's Portfolio Tracker, FutureAdvisor, and Wealthica (for Canadian investors) can integrate with your existing accounts to provide a complete picture of your investments that is routinely updated.

These apps are available for free, with the hope that you will sign up for one of the company's commercial services, such as portfolio management. To see your combined asset allocation, you'll need to give these sites with the login information for your brokerage accounts.

If you don't want to share your login information between sites or don't think finding a way to check your total portfolio is too much work, here's another option: Maintain your intended asset allocation across all of your accounts. Check that your 401(k) and individual retirement account (IRA) have the appropriate percentages of equities and bonds. Then, when needed, rebalance each account.

Analyze Your Portfolio

Once you have a complete view of your portfolio holdings, examine these four things:

1. Overall Asset Allocation

How much of your money is in stocks, bonds, and cash, and how does it compare to your desired allocation?

 Pay close attention if you own Berkshire Hathaway stock. While officially a stock, it has significant cash and bond assets. If the software you're using isn't clever enough to recognize this, you may have to undertake some manual asset allocation calculations.

2. Overall Risk

Could you handle the level of risk if your portfolio consisted of 70% equities and 30% bonds? Do you not think you are taking enough risk if you end up with 20% cash, 30% bonds, and 50% equities to achieve your investment objectives?

3. Overall Fees

You would ideally like your investment costs to be as near to zero as feasible, and thanks to rising innovation and competition in the investing business, you may be able to reach this aim. The yearly cost ratio for the Fidelity Total Market Index Fund (FSKAX) is 0.015%.

All else being equal, the higher your investing expenses, the lower your returns. Loads for purchasing and selling mutual funds, as well as commissions for buying and selling equities and exchange-traded funds (ETFs), are other expenses to be aware of. Loads and commissions may cost less over time than annual expense ratios for long-term buy-and-hold investors.

4. Returns

Are the returns on your portfolio fulfilling your expectations? If they aren't, that's not necessarily a bad thing: what matters most are the long-term average yearly returns. That is why you should compare the performance of your portfolio's investments to similar ones.

Is your stock market fund tracking the index it claims to be tracking? You may find this information on Morningstar, which has set acceptable benchmarks for various funds and developed color-coded graphs to indicate how your fund has done in comparison to its benchmark.

Another option is that your portfolio's asset allocation is incapable of meeting your objectives. If your goal is to generate an 8% average annual return and your portfolio is made up of 80% bonds and 20% stocks, you have basically no chance of meeting it until you change your asset allocation to 80% equities and 20% bonds.

 If you find yourself with an overwhelming number of accounts at this point—for example, many 401(k) plans with various prior employers—consider consolidating them. Old 401(k) balances can be transferred to an individual retirement account (IRA).

Depending on the type of 401(k) you have or whether you're prepared to pay taxes to transfer to a Roth, the old plans might be traditional or Roth. The IRA switch provides you with complete control over your fees and investments. You can also roll your prior 401(k) balances into your current 401(k) if you enjoy your current employer's 401(k) and your current employer allows it.

 It is worth noting that 401(k) funds are more protected from creditors.

Learn What’s New

What you already have may not be the ideal alternative for achieving your goals in light of investment innovation. For instance, you may be holding an index ETF that is almost comparable to your mutual fund but has a lower fee ratio, say, 0.05%.

Is there any way this could be real? How is it possible to get an investment that is practically the same for a lot less money? Few exchange-traded funds (ETFs) impose 12b-1 (marketing) or sales burdens, in contrast to certain mutual funds. In addition, exchange-traded funds (ETFs) are not often actively managed by human fund managers who choose winners and losers; rather, they are passively managed, investing in all the stocks that make up an index. In part because of the reduced fees, passive management is more cost-effective and often produces superior results.

One more option is to transfer your funds to a robo-advisor. This can help you save money on fees and take care of all your investment management needs. A little later on in this piece, we go into further detail on robo-advisors.

What Should You Sell vs. Buy?

Finding out which investments to sell off is the next step. Your main objective should be to unload assets that are overweight. Your intended asset allocation may have become skewed toward stocks if stock prices have been outpacing bond prices. If you want to have a 70% stock and 30% bond portfolio, you should be holding 25% bonds and 75% equities. If that's the case, you should consider selling 5% of your shares.

Which stocks, including stock mutual funds and stock ETFs, should you sell? Start with these:

• Excessive fees on stock funds
• You don't understand stock funds.
• Stocks of firms whose business model you are unfamiliar with
• Stocks and mutual funds that are either too risky or not risky enough for your risk tolerance
• Stocks and funds that haven't outperformed their benchmarks or what you anticipated them to.
• Individual stocks that are overpriced, underperforming their counterparts, or do not have a favorable outlook

If it's bonds you’re looking to sell, consider these criteria:

• Bonds with a lower credit rating (the risk associated with these bonds has increased since you bought them).
• Bonds that are underperforming their benchmarks
• Investing in bonds whose returns are falling behind inflation
• Bond funds whose fees are excessively expensive, when a similarly sized fund may be obtained for a lower price.

If you don't have any of these characteristics, sell the investment with the lowest trading fee, such as shares in a no-transaction-fee mutual fund or ETF.

You'll have to wait for your sales to settle before you can make fresh investments. The time it takes for your sale to be finalized and your cash proceeds to appear in your account varies based on the type of investment purchased or sold.

Most traditional security transactions settle in two business days, which is referred to as T+2 in industry jargon—T is the day of the exchange, and the 2 denotes two business days. Remember that if you place a trade after the market closes, it will not be performed until the next business day.

Decide what you wish to buy while your sales are settling. The most straightforward solution is to purchase more of what you already have that you are underweight in. Examine your investment again and ask yourself, "Would I buy it today?" If not, look for a different investment that corresponds with your objectives.

Portfolio Rebalancing by Age/Goals

Portfolio rebalancing isn't really affected by your age or what you're attempting to accomplish with your portfolio. But, because asset allocation is the first step toward portfolio rebalancing, let's talk about how you might allocate your portfolio at different points in your life.

Age 25

You've probably heard that young investors should invest a large portion of their money in equities because they have a lengthy time horizon and stocks tend to perform the best over time. However, your appropriate asset allocation is determined not just by your age, but also by your risk tolerance. If a 10% decrease in the stock market causes you to panic and sell equities, you have a lower risk tolerance than someone who sees the same loss as a purchasing opportunity.

This brief Vanguard risk tolerance questionnaire might assist you in determining your risk tolerance and determining how to deploy your portfolio. A simple formula such as 100 minus your age to calculate the percentage of your portfolio to allocate to equities (75% for a 25-year-old) may be a good starting point, but you'll need to adjust that percentage to fit your investment personality. If you have a high risk tolerance and a lengthy time horizon, you can invest entirely in equities.

According to the Vanguard analysis, with a hypothetical portfolio invested from 1926 to 2018, average annualized returns might be as low as 5.4% for someone invested entirely in bonds and as high as 9.5% for someone investing entirely in stocks.

However, the difference between investing 100% in stocks vs 80% in stocks and 20% in bonds was only a percentage point, with the latter gaining 8.7% on average. Meanwhile, someone who invested 70% in stocks and 30% in bonds would have made 8.2%, while someone who put 60% in stocks and 40% in bonds would have received 7.8%.

What we can learn from these findings is the necessity of investing in something tried and true; perhaps don't put 100% or even 20% of your portfolio into Bitcoin, which is still considered highly speculative.

Because most people are more unhappy when they lose money in the stock market than they are when they gain money in the stock market, the best plan for you is one that makes you comfortable with the level of risk you're taking and helps you stay the course during market declines. So, if you're 25 years old and constantly hearing that you should put 80% of your money in equities, you don't have to. It's acceptable if you simply want to invest 50% in stocks and retain the other 50% in bonds.

Age 45

You may have gotten an inheritance from a parent or grandparent at this stage in your life and are wondering what to do with the money and how the windfall should impact your investment strategy. Another scenario that many individuals encounter around the age of 45 is the need for money to send a child to college—tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of dollars if you have many children or a private school-bound child who did not obtain financial help.

If you inherit assets like stocks, you must determine how they fit into your entire portfolio and rebalance accordingly. With more money, you may prefer a more conservative allocation because you don't need to take on as much risk to attain the growth you require.

If you inherit a large number of stocks, you may need to sell a large number of them and replace them with bonds. Or maybe you inherited a lot of bonds and want to invest in more equities. You should also consider whether the assets you've inherited are the kinds of items you'd acquire if you were investing your own money. And if you inherit cash, you may simply use it to buy the stocks and bonds you need to build your desired asset allocation.

Let's imagine you have a 529 plan, which is a tax-advantaged account that helps families save money for educational expenses. You can utilize an aggressive asset allocation with a high percentage of stocks when your child is 10 years or more away from college. As your child approaches college age, you should rebalance to make your asset allocation more conservative. Invest account contributions in bonds rather than equities.

Over time, the account's value should grow less volatile and more stable, allowing you to withdraw funds for your child's education without having to sell investments at a loss. Some 529 plans also provide age-based options that function similarly to target-date retirement funds but with a shorter time horizon associated with having children and paying for education.

Also, at 45, if you've been extremely successful and have kept a close eye on your expenditures, you could be on pace to retire early. If this is the case, you may need to begin rebalancing your portfolio toward a more conservative asset allocation. However, you may not want to—it all relies on your mindset about stock ownership during retirement, which is determined by your risk tolerance.

Your portfolio is deemed to be in the transition stage if you are 0 to 10 years away from retirement. Most experts agree that you should shift your asset allocation toward bonds rather than stocks—but not too much, because you still need continuing growth to ensure that you don't outlive your portfolio.

Instead of the 40% bond and 60% stock asset allocation that may be recommended for someone aiming to retire at 65, consider a 50/50 allocation. When you rebalance, you will sell equities and buy bonds.

Age 65

Age 65 signifies the beginning of retirement, at least for those who can afford to stop working. For people born between 1943 and 1954, the full Social Security retirement age is 66, while Medicare begins at 65. In any case, you'll be thinking about withdrawing retirement plan assets for income at this point in your life, give or take a few years.

At this age, rebalancing your portfolio may imply selling equities to gradually shift your portfolio toward a higher bond composition as you get older. The one caveat is that you don't want to sell equities at a loss; which investments you sell for income will be determined by what you can sell for a profit.

Diversification within each major asset class (for example, holding both large-cap and small-cap stock funds, international and domestic stock funds, and government and corporate bonds) increases your chances of always having assets to sell at a profit.

A retirement drawdown strategy should also be in place. Perhaps you'll withdraw 4% of your portfolio balance in year one and adjust that amount by the inflation rate each year after that. Because you're now accounting for regular withdrawals, portfolio rebalancing will demand a different method than before retirement, when you were simply (or largely) accounting for contributions.

You may also be withdrawing from various accounts, which may need rebalancing many accounts. To avoid tax penalties, you must begin taking required minimum distributions (RMDs) from 401(k)s and traditional IRAs at the age of 73 if you were born between 1951 and 1959, or 75 if you were born in 1960 or later.

You can rebalance your portfolio by selling an overweight asset class when you take RMDs. Keep in mind that unless it's a Roth account, you'll have to pay taxes on earnings withdrawals and pre-tax contributions.People with considerable assets outside of retirement funds might rebalance in a low-cost, tax-efficient manner by donating appreciated investments to charity or transferring low-basis shares (stock shares with significant capital gains on their initial value) to friends or relatives.

Now that you understand how the rebalancing process works, the next question is whether you should do it yourself, employ a robo-advisor, or seek the assistance of a genuine, live financial advisor. Consider the advantages and disadvantages of each in terms of skill, time, and money.

DIY Portfolio Rebalancing

Rebalancing your portfolio on your own, without the assistance of a robo-advisor or financial advisor, costs nothing. What it does cost you is time, and how much time depends on the intricacy of your assets and your understanding of how to rebalance. If you have one IRA with one stock ETF and one bond ETF, rebalancing will be quick and simple. The work becomes increasingly difficult as the number of accounts and funds increases.

The most typical rebalancing recommendation is to sell the investments you're overweight in (which will nearly always be stocks, because equities grow faster than bonds, as previously explained) and use the proceeds to buy the investments you're underweight in (which will almost always be bonds). However, a simpler way that may result in cheaper transaction costs is to use any fresh contributions to your account to acquire the investments you require more of.

If you receive a year-end bonus, a tax return, or a substantial gift, put it to good use. If you make a one-time donation to your IRA, divide it evenly between stocks and bonds to rebalance your account.

You may not wind up completely reallocating your investments back to your desired ratio, but you may get close enough to avoid incurring any transaction expenses from selling. However, many brokerage firms provide no-transaction-fee mutual funds and ETFs, so you won't pay anything to purchase and sell exactly what you need.

The major hazards of DIY portfolio rebalancing are not doing it at all and, if you're working with a taxable account, incurring taxes—especially short-term capital gains taxes, which have a greater rate than long-term capital gains taxes. Anytime you pay investment taxes, you reduce your net returns.

To summarize, here's an example of how this whole process works.

Allocation before rebalancing:

• Stock mutual fund value: $7,500 (75% of your portfolio)
• Bond mutual fund value: $2,500 (25% of your portfolio)

To rebalance:

• Sell: $500 of the stock mutual fund
• Buy: $500 of the bond mutual fund

Allocation after rebalancing:

• Stock mutual fund value: $7,000 (70% of your portfolio)
• Bond mutual fund value: $3,000 (30% of your portfolio)

One factor that could make this process more difficult is if the bond mutual fund you intend to invest in has a minimum investment of more than $500. If this occurs, you might buy shares of a virtually equivalent bond ETF with no investment minimum.

Furthermore, if you have to pay commissions to buy or sell, your entire portfolio value will fall below $10,000.

Automatic Portfolio Rebalancing

The simplest method to rebalance your DIY portfolio is to invest in funds whose managers conduct the rebalancing for you. Target-date funds, which are mutual funds that contain a basket of investments and have an asset allocation depending on your expected (target) retirement date, are an example of an automatically rebalanced fund. You are under no obligation to do anything.

A fund for investors with a goal retirement date of 2040, for example, might have a starting asset allocation of 90% stocks and 10% bonds. The fund's managers will rebalance the fund as needed to maintain the target allocation. Furthermore, they will adjust the fund's asset allocation over time, making it more conservative through 2040. According to Morningstar, the industry average for these funds in 2022 was 0.32%.

What about balanced mutual funds? These are similar to target-date funds in that they hold both stocks and bonds and aim to maintain a specified allocation, such as 60% equities and 40% bonds. That allocation, however, does not alter with time; balanced funds are appropriate for investors of all ages.

Robo-Advisor Rebalancing

Working with a robo-advisor needs almost little effort or talent on your part because the robo-advisor handles all of the work for you. All you have to do is open an account, deposit funds, and specify your ideal asset allocation or answer the software's questions to help it set one for you.

Costs are also low. Betterment, Wealthfront, and SigFig use ways to reduce the cost of rebalancing by avoiding or lowering short- and long-term capital gains taxes. When rebalancing your portfolio, one popular method is to avoid selling any stocks. Instead, when you deposit money or receive a dividend, the robo-advisor uses it to buy more of the investment in which you are underweight.

If, for example, your portfolio has shifted from 60% stocks to 40% bonds to 65% stocks to 35% bonds, the robo-advisor will utilize your deposit to buy more bonds the next time you add money to your account. You avoid any tax repercussions by not selling any investments. This is known as cash flow rebalancing

You can use this approach to save money on your own, but it only works in taxable accounts, not in retirement accounts like IRAs and 401(k)s. When you buy or sell investments within a retirement account, there are no tax ramifications.

Another approach used by robo-advisers to keep transaction costs down is to sell whichever asset class you are overweight in whenever you remove money from your account.

Furthermore, when your robo-advisor rebalances your portfolio, you will not suffer the commissions, transaction, or trading fees that you would if you did it yourself or through an investing advisor. These fees are not levied by robo-advisers. They instead charge an annual fee based on the value of the assets they manage for you.

Betterment, for example, charges a 0.25% annual fee on assets under management (AUM), with no minimum account amount. Because robo-advisors are automated, they may rebalance your portfolio as frequently as daily, ensuring that it is always in near-perfect balance.

Hiring an Investment Advisor

Portfolio rebalancing is one of the duties that someone who manages your assets will accomplish for you, along with designing an investment plan based on your goals and risk tolerance and proposing investments to help you meet those goals.

You can undoubtedly manage your investments and rebalance your portfolio on your own. However, some people lack the time, lack confidence in their abilities to learn what they need to know and complete the necessary activities, or simply do not want to deal with it. Others understand how to manage their own assets but make emotional decisions that reduce their profits. Hiring an investing advisor may be beneficial if you fall into one of these groups.

Hire a Fee-Only Fiduciary

This type of expert does not have any conflicts of interest, which prevents them from operating in your best interests. They are compensated based on the amount of time they spend assisting you, not on the specific investments they sell you or the number of trades they execute on your behalf.

When selecting a fee-only fiduciary, use the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority's (FINRA) BrokerCheck website and the Securities and Exchange Commission's Investment Adviser Public Disclosure website to investigate their background. You may be able to verify the background of an advisor at one, both, or neither of these websites, depending on the sort of advisor.

If they appear in one of these databases, you can view their job history, tests passed, credentials earned, and any disciplinary actions or consumer complaints they have received. You can also check an advisor's credentials with the certifying organization on occasion. On the CFP Board's website, for example, you may confirm an individual's certified financial planner credentials and background.

Cost Is the Biggest Drawback

The industry average cost per asset handled per year is roughly 1.0%. So, if your portfolio is worth $50,000, you will pay your advisor approximately $500 every year. You will also be responsible for any commissions and costs related with the investments in your portfolio. Any expenses, including those charged by an investment advisor, will affect your overall results.

Some consulting services strive to outperform the industry norm. Vanguard states that a $250,000 investment using the company's Personal Advisor Services, which costs only 0.35% of assets under management each year, would result in quarterly fees of $218.75, compared to an industry average of $625.

An Advisor’s Fee Can Pay For Itself

Investors get lesser returns than the funds in which they invest because they prefer to sell cheap and purchase high. A financial advisor's behavioral coaching can help you overcome this issue. Working with an advisor can help you stay on track, especially during bull or bear markets when your emotions may entice you to abandon your long-term investing strategy.

According to a Vanguard study published in June 2020, advisors may boost their customers' average annual returns by 3% by financial planning, discipline, and coaching rather than by outperforming the market

Another reason to employ an investing advisor is if it will be the difference between having an investment plan and doing nothing. The latter is detrimental to your long-term financial health.

You don't have to hire someone on an ongoing basis; you can hire someone on a project or hourly basis. Not all advisors work in this manner, but many do. And you may employ someone from anywhere in the country and communicate with them online, via Skype, or by phone.

 Some bank and brokerage staff and services may be compensated with commissions on the investments you purchase, creating a conflict of interest that may prevent them from recommending your best selections.

Of course, there are drawbacks to employing an advisor, such as the fact that many of them have investment minimums. You may not have enough assets for certain advisors to accept you as a client. Some services require at least $500,000 in investment.

The amusing thing about employing an advisor to rebalance your portfolio is that they will almost certainly use an automatic asset rebalancing tool (in other words, software). This software takes into account the investor's risk tolerance, tax goals (such as tax-loss harvesting and avoiding capital gains and wash sales) in the case of a taxable portfolio, and asset location (whether to hold certain investments in a nontaxable account such as a 401(k) or in a taxable brokerage account).

Yes, it's pricey, complicated software that you wouldn't buy on your own. However, robo-advisors use the software as well. Why not just employ a robo-advisor?

A Vanguard study published in May 2013 that examined 58,168 self-directed Vanguard IRA investors over the five years ending Dec. 31, 2012, discovered that investors who made trades for reasons other than rebalancing—such as reacting to market turbulence—performed worse than those who maintained the course.

If robo-advising does not prevent you from buying high and selling low, paying an individual investment advisor to ensure you stick to your investing strategy can be beneficial.

The Bottom Line

Since everything is fresh, rebalancing your portfolio for the first time could be the most difficult. However, it's a smart habit to get into and a talent to acquire. Its primary purpose is to improve your risk-adjusted returns, not your long-term returns.

Because it helps them stick to their long-term investment plan and prevents them from freaking out when the market goes south, most individuals think that rebalancing is a good way to take a little less risk. Therefore, increasing your long-term returns is possible through the discipline of rebalancing.