Mutual Fund Show / Store / Adam Bold / 401K

I started listening to Rush Limbaugh many years ago, in 1992 or so. I enjoy him not because (as his critics often assert) he's making me a mind-numbed conservative robot, but because I'd found someone in the media that, for the first time, was articulating the way I felt about many issues. He also does so in a very entertaining way.

Well, about 4 years ago, I came across someone that had a similar affect on me regarding investing for retirement. His name is Adam Bold, and he hosts a weekly radio show called The Mutual Fund Show. It airs on KLBJ 590 AM in Austin Saturdays 11a-12p, but I prefer to listen to the recordings on his web site, which are edited down and distill 3 hours of radio in different cities into about 50 minutes.

The radio show is an outgrowth of his financial services company called The Mutual Fund Store. His is the first fee-based financial advice / management firm for middle-class investors instead of the wealthy (although they have wealthy clients too).

Most financial advisers to the middle class are commissioned sales people, that make a living by selling you investments from certain mutual fund / annuity families. They usually make an up front percentage / load off of putting you in a certain fund. This means the advisers' incentive is to sell you a certain fund, not to grow your money as best as possible. While some commissioned advisers may indeed have their clients' best interest at heart, the way they're compensated does not correlate directly.

Fee-based advisers like Bold's firm instead offer advise based on a percentage of the total value of your portfolio. Thus, as your money grows through their (hopefully) good selection of funds, then you have more money and they make more. They do not take any commissions from any fund family and thus their interests are to put you in the best funds possible. I love this business model, which promotes honesty and transparency and an incentive for them to provide you with the best investing advice possible. I like this much better than firms like Ameriquest or Edward Jones, which are commissioned advisers that typically only recommend funds which pay them better commissions, regardless of whether it's the best-performing funds.

The cool thing is that Adam goes on the radio (which is free) and recommends funds in the various asset classes. He of course, doesn't mention all of his recommended funds, but gives enough to help me make good selections for my 401k.

I'm very fortunate that at my company, we get the option to invest in a self-directed 401k plan. Most companies' 401k plans only offer about 10-20 funds you can pick from. But with our plan, provided you keep a minimum amount in one of the basic fund selections (which include some good ones Adam has recommended like the Julius Baer International Fund and the Calamos Growth Fund), we can put our money in just about any fund out there. We even can access funds that normally have up-front loads for net asset value (NAV), or load-waived prices.

I'll post more later about his investing ideas / philosophy. For now, let's just say you want to invest in funds without loads, and you want to stick with mutual fund managers who have consistently out-performed the market indices over long periods. And mom, if you're reading this, don't ever buy an annuity!