While I disagree with the first part of what you say, I sympathize with the second part. By paying a financial advisor, you're giving him money basically to do

While I disagree with the first part of what you say, I sympathize with the second part. By paying a financial advisor, you're giving him money basically to do the work/research for you so you don't have to (that's a totally worthwhile service for a lot of people). If you don't want to do the work of researching this yourself (and I don't want to sound judgmental, it's absolutely hard and overwhelming to start with), put money in a set date retirement fund. Basically, pick the year closest to when you want to retire, dump money in the fund, and it will diversify your assets for you, becoming more conservative as you get older. https://investor.vanguard.com/mutual-funds/target-retirement/#/ https://investor.vanguard.com/mutual-funds/target-retirement...