<prompt> Human: TL;DR: Are institutional retirement accounts better deals than what you can do on your own?My company brought in a third-party financial advisor and we could have a quick check-in meeting on our goals for free. The advisor doesnt work for our retirement plan company but had a hand in our company picking, so not totally separate either.I have a traditional IRA that Ive been rolling any work 401ks into, so its my biggest investment. I havent been at my company long enough to earn the matching perks yet, so Ive been putting my monthly retirement money into my IRA on my own in addition to the 4 I have to put in to be eligible for the company plan later.The advisor basically said not to do that and to put that money into my work-sponsored account, because the fees for an institutional account, 99 of the time, are much much lower and better than if youre doing it yourself.Was she right or am I better off using the Traditional IRA I trust?  <response>: Depends. My work gets access to institutional index funds with ER as long as 0.005 and no I did not miss a decimal point. The closest thing in retail is 0.03. So yes, for the same fund, large institutions can get better deals. But claiming 99 of companies get better deals is overly exaggerated. The question is whether you can get the funds you need e.g. target date, SP 500, international, bonds, etc. 