Home Forums Miscellaneous Topics Stock Market and Investing Move Money out of Edward Jones?

At my wifes insistence we put a good bit of retirement funds into Edward Jones . Over the last nearly 20 years I think it maybe has a 3 percent annualized gain. Granted, I'm conservative but its hard to stay in a boat with lots of leaks. If I change to something like Vanguard Total Stock are the capital gains going to kill me?

You should be able to get a statement from Edward Jones that shows the "basis" for the funds you have. The current value of the funds minus the basis is you capital gain subject to tax (usually 15%). You have to pay the tax eventually anyway. If it were me, I would get out of Edward Jones in a heartbeat and move the funds to Vanguard or Fidelity.

If you're moving 100% from one investment firm to another, and not taking any money out, I don't believe you'd have any tax liability.

Possibly. It depends on the investment. Edward Jones sometimes uses investments that the other investment firms will not accept and have to be liquidated. The other issue is that the EJ funds may have high loads associated with them and you are better off just selling them and buying no load funds at the new firm.

Is there a best time of the year to do this?

Just need to consider tax implications, if there are any. Talk to an advisor.

You would need to talk with an accountant. If you liquidate all in one tax year, it may drive you into a higher tax bracket but it depends on the specifics of your situation.

Step one is to get a listing of all you holdings at EJ along with their tax basis. Step 2 is to contact another firm (Vanguard, Fidelity, Scwab, etc) to see what of your holdings they can just pull over (no tax implications if you are just transferring shares from one brokerage to another. Depending on the size of the account, they may offer you a bonus to transfer your account.

In general terms, what are you invested in at Edward Jones?

Mutual funds?
Individual equities?
Bonds?

Or proprietary products only EJ offers?

If it's the first three, you can transfer with no tax penalties.

Since you are not impressed with performance, you are likely going to want to move things around when you get into a new investment house, and that may have tax implications.

If it's more than 500K, I think some places will place you with an advisor for no fee.

Edward Jones sell mostly American funds front-end load 4% so your upside down the moment you invest.Fidelity or Vanguard S and P fund 4 basis point fee and let it ride.

Stop. Get help from a professional. One that does not make money by selling you things. I do not think you invested conservatively. You took great risk. You gambled that low return “safe” investments would outpace inflation and outperform the market. You were wrong.You left many thousands of dollars on the table. That is in the past now and only the future should matter to you.

Nobody on an internet site can tell you how you should invest your money. A decision now to put it all in a stock index fund might be as bad, or worse, than the previous one. Your age, goals and overall financial situation will determine this.

On the upside, you did save some money. That puts you ahead of many of your peers. Get, and follow, good advice going forward. Your tax question can be easily answered by a CPA in your area. And commit to learning more about personal finance and investing. The basics are really not that complicated. Once you do this you’ll be better able to separate good advice from bad.

+1 - Spend a few bucks with a CPA before it costs you a lot.

I moved out of Edward jones.

Moved to fidelity

But I left some of the money in their proprietary mutual funds. The growth fund of America seems to be a winner.

I had some stock in fidelity that went through bankruptcy, Denbury. It changed to warrants…..they expired, they had a cashless exchange offer. Fidelity did nothing….I lost it all because I was ignorant about their message center.

So what I am saying is I have a different opinion on Edward Jones than I did when I left them. Perhaps talk to your Edward jones representative about your frustration.

American Funds is not a proprietary fund of EDJ. Will Fidelity not hold it? If not, you can have an account directly with American Funds and divest yourself of EDJ. No tax consequences in doing that either.

No fidelity let me transfer it.

I actually bought a little more of it lately.

The fidelity growth fund seems to be doing better lately with no front loaded fee, so I been buying that more.

Been quiet a run lately.

I do not like Edward Jones.

My wife's business was matching her contributions up to some percent of her income and using Edward Jones. The fees got too high and they were also going to deduct 1% each year. The only mutual funds they wanted to sell were front load and stock trade commissions were expensive. She was able to get the same deal with her employer and I was already using USAA with my self directed IRA so she moved over there with no penalty and USAA later got out of investments and by default we ended up at Schwab with no penalties and now we study the markets and do our own trading with little to no commission. Instead of mutual funds we use ETFs as they can be traded intraday just like stocks, and also buy individual stocks.

A Schwab representative told my niece they make their money by using the cash sitting around in the investment accounts and told her there was more of that available than one might think.

If you aren't dealing with a tax deferred account tax issues could very well crop up.

I changed jobs in 2010 and rolled my (20yr) 401K over into IRAs with Edward Jones. They've done really well for me, my worst year before 2020 was 12% gain, Early last year he talked me into buying into the tech stocks and the overall account gain for '23 so far is 34%. My portfolio is I think well balanced, roughly 60% mutual funds, 30% individual stocks & 10% bonds. My Rep. is driven and good at what he does, He stays in contact, calls me personally before making changes and works hard for me. Sounds like your portfolio is either way too conservative or your account Rep. is just lazy.

I don't know if Edward Jones has any kind of qualifications criteria for screening who can buy or open one of their concessions or franchises...whatever they may be. I knew a young woman who opened one in a nearby town...she was not grounded in financial advising, she was a tax preparer for a few years (she royally f...ked that up on my return) and then went to work in county government payroll office, laid off and all of a sudden she became a financial advisor...hmmm. She asked me to move my brokerage account to her new business, I asked if she was a fiduciary, and she said no. I suspect you don't need a very impressive resume at EDJ.

Yes, this seems to be the case, and obviously It's really bad for the company as a whole for the quality of service to be dependent on the individual advisor at any given office. I was recommended to this office/advisor by my taxman, they went to college together. I've talked to a few people who have moved their portfolio either to a different EJ office (there are 4 in this town) or a different firm all together, Saying that he was too aggressive. But as I said he's done very well for me.

The credentials of the EJ advisors seem to be variable. My MIL has an account with them and has had several reps over the years. One was a CFP who was pretty knowledgeable. Most were basically salesman who just used canned portfolios provided by higher headquarters. In addition to the Assets under Management fee, they also push mutual fund with sales loads -- part of which goes into their pocket. The also push index annuities that are profitable to them and not really a great investment for the customer in many cases.

My exact experience with them as well. F them . I transferred everything to Fidelity years ago .