<prompt> Human: My mom just asked me to take a look at her IRA because I had been talking about how well mine has done over the last year I just have 10k in a simple SP 500 fund, Im only 24 and dont really know what Im doing. Looks like she has about 300k in her IRA, with 200k in shares of about 60 different individual stocks and the other 100k in mutual funds.I dont know that much about investing but her portfolio seems to be managed pretty actively, with about 30 transactions a month buying and selling different stocks. They are taking an advisory fee of about 1.3 320 a month. Her financial planner used to be provided for free by her old employer, a multi billion dollar biotech company, but when she left a couple years ago she didnt bother to switch and now they charge her.She needs help but I dont know what to look for, if anyone can help me out. Thanks!  <response>: If she has 60 stocks but makes 30 transactions month, that doesnt sound like a very good idea. There is a usually a transaction cost for those trades, which could almost double that monthly cost.You might compare how the advisor is doing relative to a passive index fund, but its a pretty safe bet that the index fund would win over time. 