Ramping Up Your Retirement Investments? How Can You Make Your Money Stretch Further?

If you spent most of your early career focusing on repaying student loan debt, purchasing a home, or starting a family, you may not have given much thought to your retirement accounts until much later. The benefits of early compounding are clear. However, ensuring you choose wise investments once you do begin contributing in earnest can go a long way toward maximizing the benefits of saving. Researching thousands of funds on your own can seem like a mind-boggling process, and you may not know where to begin. Read on to learn more about how you can make sure your portfolio continues to grow.

Consult with a fee-based financial adviser

Fee-based financial planning may be one of your most impartial options when it comes to your investment portfolio. Unlike brokers and bank-employed advisers, fee-based financial advisers aren't paid on a commission basis, but instead charge a fee for a set time during which they'll meet with you, discuss your investment goals and needs, and help you choose the right investments for your risk allocation and other individual factors. While you'll be able to receive "free" investment advice from other advisers without paying any up-front fee, these advisers often have a vested interest in getting you to invest in certain high-commission funds, regardless of whether this fund is really the right choice for you.

Before meeting with a financial adviser, you'll want to collect information on your current investments and spend some time thinking about your goals so that you can make the most of your initial meeting. You may then opt to meet with your adviser on a regular basis to tweak your investments or change your future course, or instead engage in a "set-it-and-forget-it" mentality and just continue to make contributions to your existing funds.

Look at expense ratios and transaction costs

If you're just beginning to invest and aren't certain you have enough assets to justify a thorough review, you'll want to start your investment selection by looking at fund returns and investment fees to narrow your selection. Some of these management fees are charged on a regular basis and are directly withdrawn by the brokerage from fund assets or dividends, while others are charged only upon redemption of the fund via sale. If you have a broker or non-fee-based investment adviser, you may pay an additional 1 percent or more on the funds under this management.

Some funds managed through brokerages (rather than individual brokers) also charge high management fees. While the average annual return of such a fund may be higher than similar funds offered by other brokerages, if the management fees eat up much of this total, you may wind up worse off than you would be had you invested in a cheaper fund with lower returns.

To get started looking at your options, contact an establishment like Family Financial Partners.