Quick Read – Suze Orman told a 54-year-old with $600,000 to skip Fisher and TMG Marketing and manage her own portfolio using index ETFs and dollar-cost averaging. – A 1.5% advisory fee drains $9,000 annually from a $600,000 portfolio, which is roughly 1,500 times the cost of…
ning SPY. – Orman’s benchmark for hiring any advisor: they must beat the S&P 500 by at least 5% per year after fees, or an index fund wins. – On the June 11, 2026 episode of Suze Orman’s Women & Money, titled “Caution, Caution, Caution!”, a 54-year-old caller laid out a problem many pre-retirees face. She has $600,000 to invest: $400,000 in a Roth IRA and $200,000 in a traditional IRA
She is weighing two firms, Fisher and TMG Marketing, both charging a 1.5% advisory fee, against managing the portfolio herself. Her words: “I’m too old to be starting over. Help, please.” Orman’s reply cut to the bone: “Nobody ever asks a question like this that they don’t know the answer to.
So before you hand over this money to somebody that you really maybe don’t know, why don’t you give it a try on your own?” The stakes of a 1.5% fee at age 54 A 1.5% annual advisory fee on a $600,000 portfolio compounds against the saver every year until the money is spent. With about a decade until traditional retirement age, that fee structure has real time to bite. The SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust (NYSEARCA:SPY) charges a net expense ratio of 0.000945%.