Best Way to Track Investments Without a Financial Advisor

DEFINITION

AUM Fee

Assets under management fee — the percentage a financial advisor charges annually, typically 0.5-1.5%, based on the total value of assets they manage. On a $500,000 portfolio, a 1% AUM fee is $5,000/year. On a $2M portfolio, it's $20,000/year.

DEFINITION

Time-Weighted Return (TWR)

A performance measurement that removes the effect of cash flows (deposits, withdrawals) to show how the portfolio itself performed. The standard for comparing your portfolio's performance against a benchmark like the S&P 500.

DEFINITION

Internal Rate of Return (IRR/XIRR)

A performance measurement that accounts for the timing and size of cash flows. Shows your personal return given when you actually invested your money. Your XIRR reflects what you actually earned; TWR shows what the portfolio strategy earned.

The Real Cost of 1% AUM

A financial advisor charging 1% of assets under management doesn’t sound expensive until you do the math across a career.

On $500,000, it’s $5,000 per year. On $1 million, it’s $10,000. On $2 million — which is not an unreasonable 401(k) balance for a high earner who’s been investing for 20 years — it’s $20,000 annually. Over a decade, that’s $200,000 in fees on a $2M portfolio, assuming no growth. With compounding, the foregone wealth from a 1% fee over 30 years can exceed 25% of your terminal portfolio value.

The question isn’t whether advisors provide value. Some do. The question is whether you’re getting $10,000-$20,000/year in value, or whether the primary service is portfolio monitoring that software now handles for $9/month.

What Investment Tracking Actually Requires

Portfolio monitoring — the thing that takes most of an advisor’s time on a routine basis — requires four things:

Account aggregation: Pulling balances from every account into one view. This is data collection, fully automatable.

Performance calculation: Computing your return against a benchmark, accounting for deposits and withdrawals. This is math, also automatable.

Allocation analysis: Breaking down your portfolio by asset class and showing drift from your target. Also automatable.

Concentration review: Identifying when any single position exceeds a risk threshold. Same.

All four of these functions are available in consumer wealth aggregation tools. The reason people pay advisors to do them is that, historically, there was no good DIY alternative. That’s no longer true.

What Wealth Aggregators Show

A modern wealth aggregator — Empower, Kubera, Thalvi — connects to your brokerage accounts, retirement accounts, bank accounts, and in some cases equity comp platforms. Once connected, it provides:

• Net worth dashboard: Total assets minus total liabilities, updated automatically
• Portfolio allocation: Breakdown by asset class, geography, sector
• Performance tracking: Your return over time, often with benchmark comparison
• Concentration analysis: Percentage of portfolio in any single holding
• Historical trends: Net worth over months and years

This is the monitoring layer. It’s what you’d check monthly in an advisor meeting, compressed into a self-service dashboard.

What Advisors Add That Software Doesn’t

Being honest about where software ends and human judgment begins:

Complex tax planning. Modeling AMT exposure from ISO exercises, planning RSU vesting sales across tax years, or deciding between Roth and traditional 401(k) contributions at high income levels requires analysis that goes beyond portfolio monitoring. A tax professional or fee-only advisor who specializes in equity comp is worth hiring for an annual review.

Estate planning. Software can track your assets but can’t draft a trust or coordinate beneficiary designations with your estate attorney. Estate planning is a one-time (and periodic review) service, not ongoing portfolio management.

Behavioral accountability. Some investors genuinely benefit from having a human who talks them out of panic-selling during market corrections. If that’s you, the cost of an advisor is partly the cost of coaching, not just monitoring.

Retirement income sequencing. Deciding when to claim Social Security, which accounts to draw from first, and how to manage required minimum distributions at 73 is genuinely complex. A one-time consultation at retirement is worth it.

Building a DIY Monitoring Routine

If you decide to manage monitoring yourself, here’s a sustainable approach:

Monthly (15 minutes): Open your aggregator. Note total net worth. Note change from last month. Check if any single position has drifted above your concentration threshold.

Quarterly (1 hour): Review full allocation. Compare to target. Rebalance if drift exceeds 5 percentage points in any asset class. Check expense ratios on any new funds you’ve added.

Annually (2-4 hours, optionally with an advisor): Review tax efficiency. Check whether your asset allocation still fits your timeline. Update beneficiaries on any accounts where circumstances have changed. Consider whether your target allocation needs to shift as you get closer to retirement.

This routine, supported by a wealth aggregator like Thalvi, covers the monitoring that an ongoing advisory relationship handles. It costs you time, not percentage points.