This office is like other Fidelity offices I have been to around the US.
It is not perfect but, I suspect that is because Fidelity (a privately owned company) has a very specific approach to working with investors and rarely vectors off from that approach.
Plus, SEC rules and, lawyers...
However, it is true that the advisors tend to be young and inexperienced and this did cause me some financial mess ups one time when I was new to investing! The advisor was fine but (I now see) they could have been a bit more aggressive in some advice they offered me. Instead of "Here is *why* you might considering doing this instead of what you are doing (which is also OK)." The advisor helping me just said "Maybe you might be better off doing this instead." Almost like it was them muttering to themselves. They offered no description of that other option and why I might consider it seriously because, it was NOW OR NEVER. (It *would* have been the better move, I now see, a few years later -- no matter the market performance!)
I brushed it off but, now I see, the young Fidelity rep was right. In all fairness, I was under a little stress at the time and eager to get the process over with.
Overall, I would not count on Fidelity to hold your hand in person. But the web site for customers is absolutely full of information and videos you can access which teach you many, many things about investing, retirement, and money management.
For those looking at Fidelity, and it would be a fine choice, especially with the new zero cost funds they offer, they have 3-5 specific options you can use as a customer:
You can pay them to manage your money. About 1% drain a year. Not the cheapest but not too expensive. If you have more than $1.5 million or maybe over 2 million, I think it would be reasonable if you just want to forget about it and have fun in life! Especially if you are retired.
The other option is some kind of robotic investment system they have. I think it is called GO? I dunno. The jury is still out on these robo investors industry wide.
Another is some kind of date based investment system for retirement savings. Staring with 100% stock fund and ending at retirement with something like a 60/40 or 50/50 or 40/60 stocks to bonds (you may live another 30 years -- some stocks still need to be held in retirement years) These cost a bit more but, seem to be working well for those that use them and just want to set and forget until they die.
Finally, you can just run the whole show yourself! If you do that, Fidelity is hard to beat IMO. They offer a lot of data to look at on the very complex web site. But, this options is really for someone with an MBA or finance degree or a person who just really likes this stuff!
If you think you can walk into the Fidelity office with $100,000, $800,000, or even $2 million in your old 401k or cash savings and get concierge investment advice, forget it! You are average or even "poor". If you are really, really loaded, then you begin to qualify for something we all kind of think we might be getting but, probably will not. But, if you are that loaded, you know that already and are not reading Yelp reviews! read more