How to Make Your Investment Account Management More Efficient

How to Make Your Investment Account Management More Efficient

How can you improve your investment account management?

The answer is to consolidate your investments.

If your investments are scattered among different companies, it’s difficult to keep track of what you own, and you may even have duplicate investments.  Additionally, you may end up paying more in fees to maintain multiple accounts.

To manage your investments more efficiently, follow this chess strategy:

Consolidate your assets

After a chess team participates in a competition, they review their games and perform a “post mortem” together.  The coach and the players analyze the games so that everyone will play better in the future. This purpose of this is to learn from both the good and bad moves, to make the next game even better. The players consolidate their brain power (their assets), to become more effective.

This same teamwork applies to managing your money. Your coach (your financial advisor) and your team (your lawyers, accountants, and other professionals) should all look at your portfolio from different perspectives. Each angle brings a unique view to the overall picture.

Consolidate your brokerage accounts

If your assets are spread out among different firms, your financial advisor won’t know about all of your investments and therefore won’t be able to keep track of them. Without the entire financial picture, he won’t be able to advise you properly. Instead, use one firm – and one advisor – to oversee all your investment or brokerage accounts. Choose one main financial advisor to ACAT (automatic account transfer) accounts from the other brokerage firms into his firm. For example, you could consolidate your IRA accounts, 401(k) accounts, CDs, and bank deposits all into the same firm. This way, all of your assets will appear on one statement. Not only that, but when all your team players have access to the full picture of your account, everyone can be more productive.

Consolidating your assets will lead to more efficient account management.

Do you need help with consolidating your accounts so that you will know exactly what you have? Click here for a free form that can help you take the first step towards consolidating your assets.

Douglas Goldstein, co-author of Rich As A King: How the Wisdom of Chess Can Make You a Grandmaster of Investing, is an avid chess fan, international investment advisor and Certified Financial Planner (CFP®).