<prompt> Human: Im sure others have had this issue come up, but this is new for me. My retired parent has an IRA with Fidelity, and they are trying to sell her hard on their new Blackrock Diversified Income Portfolio 1.1 fee plus unspecified fees of underlying funds. Parent is getting upsold with the standard dont you want active management shtick, and Im having trouble convincing her to go instead with a few lower-fee income funds comprised of mostly bonds with some dividend-focused equities. Im not even going to address moving the money to Vanguard or somewhere les expensive, yet. Anyway, what are some ways to help convince someone in their 70s who knows almost nothing about wealth management to not fall for these kind of pitches? Ive tried to lay out the basics, but she keeps getting hung up on the perceived advantages of active and reactive and re-balancing and all of the terms the salesmen are using. I know I could let this slide for sake of the relationship, but its real money were talking about not to mention the principle of her getting taken advantage of. Sorry for the long post, but I could really use some advice.  <response>: There are four services your Mom or any investor needs at this point in their lives.1 define goals and discover risk tolerance. There are 5 basic goals: income, inflation protection, capital appreciation, capital preservation, and diversification. Her goal will be a mix of these, those most advisors dont describe it that way. There are 5 basic risks, portfolio longevity, emotional over reaction to market volatility, liquidity, default, and inflation. Again, most advisors dont spell them out like this.2 create an asset allocation and withdrawal schedule that balances those goals with the risk tolerance. Often this step is hard as it involves discovering your goals are not realistic for the level of risk you are willing to take in each type if risk.3 select a mix of investments to implement your asset allocation, set up automatic monthly withdrawals4 rebalance yearly at least, revisit goals and risk tolerance every other year or at major life events.1 is available for free on many websites, including Fidelity2 is also available for free on the same websites. At fidelity 1 2 are provided by a tool called the income planner.3also free from the same tools, most tools these days let you pick from passive or active for the underlying investments. The expenses of the fund or etf pay for the security selection.4 only free if you find a single fund solution that rebalnces automatically.The advisory fee charged pays for someone to walk your Mom through these steps and then execute steps 3 and 4. If your Mom is willing to give you trading authority or POA you can do those steps for her. A robo advisor will do it for 14 to 12 a percent per year. I suggest start by going through the income planning tools at fidelity, vanguard, and maybe a robo advisor. Then you and your mom can discuss if she wants to have you do the investment selection and rebalancing, a computer do it, or what fidelity is offering, which is a computer with a human to explain the output.It is cheaper do do it yourself, like most things . is it worth it to pay somebody to do it instead? that is an emotional question based on your relationship with your mother. 