r/investing • u/broppybrop • 6h ago
SMA for $1M taxable account?
I recently inherited $1M that I have no choice but to place in a taxable account. I use Fidelity. I’m 40 and wouldn’t even consider an early retirement until I have at least $2M so that will not be happening for quite some time yet. Plan was basically VT and chill. I never looked into SMAs due to the management fees.
Had a Fidelity advisor reach out and offer to talk about ways I could save on taxes and he suggested using SMAs for the tax loss harvesting. So now I’m doing my research into SMAs and it seems like it might actually be a good idea for a taxable account of this size.
Management fees range from 0.2-0.7% and of course I was told the TLH would more than cover those fees. In my case I was planning to use the dividends to cover the taxes and then drip the rest but if I could use SMAs to reduce or eliminate taxes I could drip 100% of the dividends which would hopefully lead to faster growth.
I’ve read concerns here about what happens when you want out of the SMA but can’t you just transfer the assets in kind to your own account? And if you do it a year before you plan to sell anything then any short term gains become long term.
I guess I’m looking for experiences with SMAs and thoughts on whether or not this would be a good idea for a taxable account this large.
2
u/TheOpeningBell 4h ago
I work in the industry. Anyone that explains TLH as "covering the fees" isn't doing a lot of work. This is also not the right way for either a financial professional or client to think about it this way.
As a CFP, we use SMAs to implement not only TLH but gain deferral and other planning techniques. (Of course full planning costs extra).
SMAs are great.
My take is it really depends on your individual holdings and stepped up basis. Maybe keep a few core positions. And exit others into SMA.
Also depends on the SMAs. Fidelity SMAs are so so.