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Thanks stlutz and larry. These are great points. I believe I am getting institutional prices as the mgr is Breckenridge (via Fidelity) and they only manage muni portfolios. No one ever discussed with me what the length of my ladder would or should be and I was too ignorant to raise this before commi...

Larry, In theory the idea of a muni bond ladder makes sense for the reasons you identify. But I am finding it very difficult to watch my mgr build the ladder since this is necessitating the purchase of numerous high quality but long duration bonds (I already owned several muni bonds --500k total --o...

Thanks so much! I just ordered Larry Swedroe's bond book and I'll look at the MFS website. I'm glad you advised me about the secondary bond market. I have so much to learn.

Thanks for the insights. I think that for someone who wants to own individual muni bonds, there is something to be said for paying for the expertise (and greater inventory of bonds) and I suppose it makes sense to create a bond ladder if that's what they are doing. But I'm going to give more thought...

Thanks. What you say makes sense. I will ask some questions to get a better sense of what's being done and why. I believe the current muni mgr looked over the transferred bonds to make sure they met their stds. At least one bond was exchanged. Some of the soon to mature bonds were sold.

Thanks. I can't fault UBS. We had long discussions about my financial situation, goals, assumptions and I was on board with the allocation. In the end, though, I decided that I wanted to avoid the fees and the frequent trading and try to simplify my portfolio and lower the costs. But of course this ...

I'm new to the forum and learning a lot and realizing how many mistakes I've made. In 2010 (age 50), I left a high-paying job for a low-paying dream job. I had enough $$ accumulated that I decided to hire an advisor at UBS to manage half of it. The rest was at Fidelity and self-managed. Total $3.2 m...