In my recent contribution to Apache Polaris (PR #3385), I implemented a JDBC persistence layer that enables organizations to capture and store Iceberg metrics reports as first-class entities in their relational databases.

The Problem

Apache Iceberg’s metrics reporting API provides rich telemetry about table operations:

• Scan metrics: How many data files were read, how many were skipped due to partition pruning, planning duration, and more
• Commit metrics: Files added/removed, records affected, commit duration, retry attempts, and snapshot information

Prior to this change, Polaris processed these metrics through a pluggable reporter interface but lacked a built-in way to persist them for historical analysis.

Organizations wanting to track metrics over time had to build custom solutions.

The Solution

The contribution introduces a comprehensive persistence architecture that stores both scan and commit metrics reports in dedicated database tables. Here’s what the implementation entails:

Database Schema Design

Two new tables — scan_metrics_report and commit_metrics_report — capture the full fidelity of Iceberg metrics. The schema supports both H2 (for development/testing) and PostgreSQL (for production), with careful attention to:

• Multi-tenancy: Realm-aware partitioning via composite primary keys
  • Queryability: Indexed lookups by catalog, table, and timestamp
  • Observability correlation: OpenTelemetry trace ID and span ID columns for connecting metrics to distributed traces
  • Extensibility: JSONB metadata columns for future metric fields without schema changes

Clean Abstraction Layers

The implementation follows Polaris’s established architectural patterns:

1. SPI Layer (MetricsPersistence): Defines the contract for persistence backends with default no-op implementations
2. Manager Layer (PolarisMetricsManager): High-level interface integrated into PolarisMetaStoreManager
3. Service Layer (PersistingMetricsReporter): Request-scoped reporter that enriches metrics with request context before persistence
4. Model Layer (ModelCommitMetricsReport, ModelScanMetricsReport): Type-safe mapping between SPI records and database rows

Request Context Enrichment

One key design decision was to capture request context alongside raw metrics. Each persisted record includes:

• Principal name: Who performed the operation
• Request ID: Server-generated correlation identifier
• OTEL trace/span IDs: For distributed tracing integration
• Client trace ID: Optional client-provided correlation

This transforms raw metrics into auditable, debuggable records that can answer questions like “Why was this query slow?” or “What operations did this principal perform?”

Why This Matters

Persisting Iceberg metrics unlocks several use cases:

• Capacity planning: Analyze trends in file counts, data sizes, and operation frequencies
  • Performance optimization: Identify tables with high planning times or excessive file counts
  • Chargeback/cost allocation: Track resource consumption by tenant, principal, or catalog
  • Compliance auditing: Maintain historical records of data operations

Configuration

The feature integrates seamlessly with Polaris’s existing configuration system. To enable metrics persistence:

  polaris:
    iceberg-metrics:
      reporting:
        type: persisting

For backends that don’t override the persistence methods (like in-memory implementations), metrics are silently discarded — maintaining backward compatibility.

Conclusion

This contribution represents a step toward making Apache Polaris a more complete observability platform for Iceberg catalogs. By treating metrics as first-class persistent entities, organizations gain the foundation for sophisticated monitoring, optimization, and governance workflows.

Building a JDBC Persistence Layer for Iceberg Metrics in Apache Polaris was originally published in anands.net on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

The goal was to close a long-standing observability gap: connecting data-plane S3 access (CloudTrail) back to the control-plane catalog operation that produced the credentials.

This post is a focused update that builds on that work. In a follow-on PR, I added optional OpenTelemetry trace ID support, allowing Polaris to include a polaris:trace_id session tag during credential vending. When enabled, this provides an end-to-end correlation handle across Polaris request traces, STS AssumeRole, and downstream S3 activity.

TL;DR: Polaris can now (optionally) tag vended AWS credentials with the active OpenTelemetry trace ID so you can correlate CloudTrail events back to the exact Polaris request trace — at the cost of reduced credential cache reuse.

The problem: “I can see the S3 access, but not the request that caused it”

Session tags solved a big part of the attribution problem by injecting catalog context into the AWS session itself. But there is still a category of questions that can be hard to answer with just catalog identifiers:
• Which specific request (among many) led to this access?
• How do I stitch together application traces, Polaris logs/events, and CloudTrail?
• Can I correlate a compute engine’s audit/metrics event to the storage-level access it generated?

In environments that already use OpenTelemetry, the natural join key is the trace ID.

What changed: introducing polaris:trace_id

This PR adds a new, optional session tag:

`polaris:trace_id` — the OpenTelemetry trace ID of the currently active span (only when a valid span context exists)

When enabled, Polaris extracts the trace ID from the active OpenTelemetry context and attaches it to the STS session tags used in AssumeRole. As a result, CloudTrail events generated using those credentials can be correlated back to the originating Polaris request trace.

Why this is useful

With polaris:trace_id enabled, you can connect:

1. Polaris control-plane traces (OpenTelemetry traces for the API call)
2. STS AssumeRole events (credential vending in CloudTrail)
3. S3 data-plane events (GetObject/PutObject in CloudTrail)
4. and potentially downstream engine telemetry (if it also propagates or records trace IDs)

…using a single identifier.

This is particularly valuable for incident response and debugging: you can start from a suspicious CloudTrail event and quickly find the corresponding Polaris trace that provides the who/what/why context.

Validity and safety: can a trace ID be “invalid” for AWS STS tags?

When the trace ID comes from OpenTelemetry, it is effectively safe for STS session tag values:
• OpenTelemetry trace IDs are represented as a 32-character lowercase hex string
• That’s well within AWS session tag constraints (both allowed characters and length)
• Polaris only includes the trace ID when the OpenTelemetry span context is valid; if it’s not valid, the tag is omitted

So in practice, there is no meaningful scenario where an OpenTelemetry trace ID would be rejected as an STS session tag value due to formatting.

Configuration and operational trade-offs

Feature flags

The original session tagging capability remains behind its existing flag, and trace ID tagging is controlled independently.

Conceptually:

• Enable session tags (baseline):
INCLUDE_SESSION_TAGS_IN_SUBSCOPED_CREDENTIAL=true
• Enable trace ID tagging (optional):
INCLUDE_TRACE_ID_IN_SESSION_TAGS=true

Note: Trace ID tagging only has an effect if session tags are enabled.

The big trade-off: credential caching

This is the most important operational point.

A trace ID is typically unique per request. If you include it as a session tag, then the resulting vended credentials become effectively unique per request as well. That can dramatically reduce or eliminate credential cache reuse, which may increase:
• latency (more STS calls)
• STS cost (higher API usage)
• risk of throttling under heavy load

For that reason, the implementation intentionally makes trace ID inclusion opt-in and keeps the default behavior unchanged.

If your primary goal is broad auditability (who accessed what), the baseline session tags are often sufficient. If you need precise end-to-end correlation across traces and CloudTrail, enabling polaris:trace_id is a powerful option — just be aware of the caching implications.

Summary

• The original session tagging work adds strong catalog context to AWS STS sessions, making CloudTrail more actionable.
  • This follow-on PR adds an optional polaris:trace_id tag derived from OpenTelemetry, enabling end-to-end correlation across Polaris tracing, STS
  credential vending, and S3 access events.
  • The feature is intentionally gated because trace IDs are high-cardinality and can effectively disable credential caching.

If you haven’t read the original post, start here:

Enhancing Auditability in Apache Polaris with AWS STS Session Tags
https://blog.anands.net/enhancing-auditability-in-apache-polaris-with-aws-sts-session-tags-45a2a14b9cdb

Extending Auditability in Apache Polaris: Adding OpenTelemetry Trace IDs to AWS STS Session Tags was originally published in anands.net on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

In the world of data catalogs and governance, visibility is everything. Knowing who accessed what data and when is critical for security, compliance, and debugging. That is why I recently contributed a significant new feature to Apache Polaris to bridge a gap in audit trails: support for AWS STS Session Tags during credential vending.

I wrote this feature (merged in Pull Request #3327) to improve the way S3 access can be traced back to specific catalog operations. Here is a deep dive into the problem I was solving and how the new functionality works.

The Challenge: The “Blind Spot” in CloudTrail

When Apache Polaris vends temporary AWS credentials (via STS AssumeRole) to a client, that client then uses those credentials to access data in S3. While AWS CloudTrail logs every access to S3, there was previously a disconnect.

You could see that the temporary role accessed a file, but linking that S3 access event back to the specific Polaris catalog operation — like a specific user querying a specific table — was difficult. The CloudTrail logs for S3 access lacked the context of the originating request in Polaris. This created a “blind spot” for security teams trying to reconstruct a complete audit trail.

The Solution: AWS STS Session Tags

The solution I implemented leverages AWS STS Session Tags. When assuming a role, AWS allows you to pass key-value pairs (tags) that are attached to that temporary session. These tags then persist and appear in the CloudTrail logs for any subsequent API calls made with those credentials.

With this new feature, when Polaris vends credentials, it automatically attaches metadata about the current operation to the AWS session.

What Context is Added?

When enabled, the code attaches the following tags to the session, prefixed with polaris::

• polaris:principal: The authenticated principal (user or service) making the request.
• polaris:catalog: The specific catalog being accessed.
• polaris:namespace: The namespace involved in the operation.
• polaris:table: The specific table being queried.

(Note: If any value exceeds AWS limits, the implementation truncates it to 256 characters. Missing values are replaced with “unknown” to maintain log consistency.)

Implementation Details: Caching and Performance

One of the critical parts of this implementation was ensuring it played nicely with Polaris’s existing performance optimizations. Polaris caches credentials to reduce overhead.

However, if User A and User B both access the same table, they need different session tags (specifically the polaris:principal tag). I updated the AwsCredentialsStorageIntegration to include these session tags in the cache key generation. This ensures that while we still get the performance benefits of caching, credentials with different context tags are never cross-contaminated.

Why This Matters

1. Context-Rich Logging: You can now see exactly which Polaris user and table were involved in a specific S3 GetObject event directly in your CloudTrail logs.
2. Granular Auditing: Security teams can easily filter logs to see all data access performed by a specific principal or on a specific table, even at the storage layer.
3. Role Chaining Support: These tags are marked as “transitive,” meaning if the session is used to assume another role, the tags persist, maintaining the audit trail across complex permissions boundaries.

How to Enable It

To prevent unexpected changes in log volume or format for existing users, I placed this feature behind a flag so it is disabled by default.

To enable it, set the configuration:

INCLUDE_SESSION_TAGS_IN_SUBSCOPED_CREDENTIAL to true.

Conclusion

This update is a major win for enterprise-grade data governance. By leveraging native AWS capabilities, this feature provides a seamless way to maintain context from the catalog layer down to the storage layer.

I’m proud to have contributed this to the project to ensure that your data audit trails are as clear and complete as possible. Check out the PR if you want to see the code!

Enhancing Auditability in Apache Polaris with AWS STS Session Tags was originally published in anands.net on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

I’ve previously used Ruby and ExifTool to automate this process, and my Damage tool helped (https://github.com/obelix74/damage), but it still required manual tagging. Photo Mechanic Plus was another option, but with their shift to subscriptions, I needed something better. Ideally you want to generate meta information based on the image itself.

I explored AI with ArtHelper.ai by ArtStoreFronts, which automates metadata generation for my online gallery. If you are a photographer and want to use AI to automate your image metadata, I recommend you look at ArtHelper.ai. It has a lot of features, it is a hosted service and you simply use it as a consumer.

However, I needed something to manage my own images, a few hundred thousand images on my various disks at home. I don’t want to upload all these images to an external website (~12TB of data) and I can’t manually tag these all.

Inspired by a friend’s suggestion (Krishna Srinivasan), I decided to create my own image tagger.

GitHub - obelix74/image-tagger: AI driven image tagger library

First a video to show this in action:

What is it?

• It is a client and server software that you run on your computer, preferably a Mac (or a linux based system) — it will most likely work on Windows, but I have no way to test it.
• If you upload an image or point it to a directory, it will find all the images (including RAW), resize them and use Gemini AI API to extract the description of the photograph, a caption and SEO keywords. You need to sign up for Gemini AI API and get a API key and add it (the README.md file contains all the details). How fast this works depends on how much you are willing to pay Google.
• It is also a metadata database. Once it fetches the metadata, it will store the metadata in its internal database.
• It is also a search engine. Based on your keywords, it will search the database and return you a list of images that matches the search.

What it is not:

• It is not a hosted service. I will never host it. That means uploading photos, managing the service and maintenance. I don’t have the time for this. You should be savvy enough to follow instructions to run the server. If you don’t want to do this, please sign up for ArtHelper.ai. In fact, I have paid for that service for the next two years. I will continue to use it for features that I won’t implement here.
• No data is sent to any cloud service except Gemini AI. I won’t see any of your data. Your data stays local.
• There is no fee to use this, I allow any and all modifications to the software so long as it is for non-commercial use. If you add new features, consider raising a pull request against the repo so others can benefit.

As a programmer, this is my first software that was vibe coded 100%. I plan to use AI to code this and I use Augment Code for this. I am a huge fan of Augment Code and this would not have been possible without them.

Introducing the AI image tagger was originally published in anands.net on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

One of the benefits of joining ASF is the private Facebook group that has the artists from ASF. I am hugely inspired by the artists there. In particular, Matt and David are great role models. They both do the art show circuit. This is something that had interested me in the past, but was afraid of the both the logistics and the aspect of selling to others, in person that had stopped me from venturing.

I learned a lot from fellow ASF artists about art shows. This post is trying to summarize what I learned in doing my first art show. My first art show was the Livermore Artwalk and it went well :).

Canopy and walls

The first thing you need for an art show is a canopy and some way to hang photos. I went with a Extreme Canopy X6 Velocity ($795) of size 10 feet x 10 feet. 10 x 10 is the standard art show size. There are 10 x 6, 10 x 15 and 10 x 20 sites, but they are not common. I think your first canopy should be 10 x 10 and then you add (hopefully larger) canopies.

Question — why do you need such an expensive canopy and not a simple Coleman canopy from Costco? The answer is in the walls. I went with MeshPanels for Popups from FlourishPanels. I added stabars (the bars in the bottom of the canopy) and the brackets that it needs ($855).

MeshPanels can either be added to popup canopies such as the Extreme Canopy or you can buy the canopy from FlourishPanels themselves. The Trimline canopy from FlourishPanels seems heavier duty but is more involved to setup and tear down and I wanted to reduce the complexity.

MeshPanels has specific requirements on the canopy, since we will be hanging hundreds of pounds of prints directly on the walls of the canopy, we need a heavy duty commercial canopy.

You could choose to not hang the photos directly on the walls like I did, if you choose that option, then you need to buy display grids such as these from Amazon. Pick one that works for your needs and budget.

Since my canopy can be pitched on non-grassy surfaces that are windy, I also bought 4 x 33lb canopy weights ($360).

MeshPanels ships with S-Hooks ($5). I bought a bunch of these as well. The photos are hung using these S-Hooks on the mesh panel.

Note that you can, in general, use popup canopies for indoor shows without the top, but some shows might object, so that is a risk with using popup canopies.

Prints

I got metal prints of various sizes and finishes done by BayPhoto. I got a few canvas prints done by various vendors when I found a good deal online. I got paper prints of various sizes done by both BayPhoto and NationsPhotoLab. I got calendars and postcards done by PrintingCenterUSA. In general, a good idea is to stock these prints and build an inventory when there are print deals going on. Unfortunately, this means that you are going to hold inventory worth a few thousand dollars.

How many prints? That is a good question. In the display setup above, I get 10 feet x 7 feet area times 3 for the walls and then 2 more if you can hang prints outside. I had:

• 18x 24x36 canvas prints
• 10x metal prints of various sizes
• 75 matted prints (various sizes)
• 35 calendars
• ~90 each postcards set (8 each)

Too much? Too little? I don’t know yet. It is a LOT of inventory to carry on your books, that I know.

Mats

Paper prints need to be matted, provided a backboard and put in a sleeve or they will get damaged. It is best to buy show kits from GoldenStateArt for these and ordered in bulk. Yes, that is more inventory you will carry.

Labels

Every photo I display is labeled with a title, a brief description (I am getting away from this due to lack of space), medium of the print and cost. I also tag every single print with the QR code of the landing page in the website. I use the following sticker labels for this purpose.

• 1.5" square Avery labels
• 2"x4" 10-up stickers
• 3 1/3"x4" 6-up stickers
• 3" x 4" name badge inserts
• 4" x 3" name badge holders — for prints hung on the mesh panels, the stickers do not stick to the mesh panel, so I use the name badge insert and insert them in the holder and hang the holders using s-hooks

Avery and other providers have templates to create labels with the correct margins. Use them. For QR codes, I use the Avery online code generator for this. Use the standard templates or you will suffer.

Protecting prints

Metal prints get bent, scratched or damaged easily. For storing and transporting metal prints, you can either keep the packing material that came with the shipping and deal with the increased volume or use protective bubble wrap bags. I bought gallery pouches of various sizes for this.

I also bought 3 mil poly bags from U-Line to store the canvas prints. My metal prints used to get caught in the bubble in the gallery pouch, so I use a poly bag first and then insert the poly bag into the gallery pouch.

Lastly, I use canvas keepers from Jerry’s Artarama to store the canvas prints at home.

Displaying mat prints

I use canvas print racks to hold the matted prints for display.

Lights

Outdoor shows need no lights (at least during daytime). I have a couple of indoor shows that come up, so I bought these lights for the shows. I chose battery powered rechargeable lights instead of running extension cables over the canopy frames. I will know in a few weeks how the battery life is for these things.

• CosyEasy LED work light x 3
• Feit LED work light x 4 (2 sets of 2)
• Miady clip-on lamp x 6 (3 packs of 2 each)

I think I have sufficient lighting to cover a 10x10 site with redundancy so I can rotate the lights as the other one is charged. Let us see how it goes

Wagon

That is nearly 150 lbs of stuff that has to be hauled to the site. I bought a heavy duty wagon that is deep enough to keep the canvas prints and easy to lug around.

Bags

The canopy and mesh panels came with bags, but not the stabars. I bought long duffle bags for this purpose.

Payment

I setup a business account with Square. The free swipe display port adapter they gave did not work. Neither did iPhone tap to pay. So I bought a NFC reader that also handles chip insert from Square. In my testing, that seems to work reliably.

Accounting

Once you spend all this money, you need to get your accounting in place. I use waveapps.com. I also got a business credit card and business debit card and connected those online accounts to waveapps. I had to understand the basic concepts of inventory, cost of good etc. Took an hour, but I think I can automate my way out of this.

That’s it I think. If I am missing some item, please let me know in comments and I will add them here.

Dummies guide to art shows was originally published in anands.net on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Note that I am happy to forward my emails out of my personal domain. If that is a hard requirement for you (to not forward email out of personal domain), this is not the page for you.

My family uses Google workspace heavily.

• We all use *.anands.net email addresses. Few of us use it as a way to forward our emails, some of us use it as our primary email (login to gmail.com using *.anands.net)
• Some of us backup our documents to drive.google.com and photos to photos.google.com
• Contacts are stored in Google contacts
• We also use Google domains for domain management

Move your email

A few years ago, I stopped using my anands.net email using gmail. I logged into gmail settings and setup a forward rule to forward all emails to my personal gmail account.

I don’t remember what the trigger for doing this, but for a couple of us, this was where we started. This is not ideal, since I still use anands.net email address and the forwarding happens at the email client level (we will get to ideal state in the last step).

For my kids, they started using anands.net emails when they were too young to create their own gmail accounts, so they were using gmail.com but logging in using their anands.net logins.

So for them:

1. Create a personal gmail account

The first step was to create a personal gmail account.

2. Allow POP3 access in your personal domain email

In gmail settings, allow POP3 download for all emails.

3. Allow Less Secure App access in your personal domain email

Head to Google security: https://myaccount.google.com/security and enable less secure app access. You need to be able to POP emails out of your old account to your new account. This took me a while to do.

4. POP emails to your new email address

Login to your new email address at gmail.com, go to settings — Accounts & Import. Add a new email to import emails from.

The username is your personal domain. POP server, port and SSL enabled (see below).

If you allowed less secure app access, Gmail will do its thing and import your emails over a day or so.

5. Configure send email as in your new email address

If need be, you can setup your personal gmail address to use your personal domain email address.

At this point, you should be receiving all email in your new email address. You can also add a forwarding rule to your personal domain as I indicate in the first image above, but that is optional. Our goal is to get rid of google workspace.

Export data from personal email account

The data we needed to extract from personal email account is Google Drive, Google Photos and Google Contacts. You can either download the content from each of those manually, or you can use Google Takeout to extract the data. It is currently running for my kids.

Most likely, the photos will go to iCloud and documents will go to google drive on the personal email account.

Within 30 minutes of requesting takeout, my daughter got her content via multiple zip files.

Disconnect Google Workspace from Google Domains

Here are two domains from my Google Domains. anands.net is setup for Google Workspace. norcalhiker.net does not. Our goal is to get to this. The easiest way to do this is to add a email forward in google domains.

The easiest way to delink Google Workspace is to create an email alias at Google Domains level. When I went to Email for a domain and added an “Email forwarding” address, Google said that since I have Google Workspace configured, my forward won’t work. If I needed email forward, I need to delink Google Workspace. That is what I did. That delinked my workspace from my domain.

Email forwarding can be configured at each email (or alias level) here. Set this up here and at this step your personal domain is free of Google Workspace.

Update 1

Bulk uploading Google photos has been unfunny. Google does not have a bulk uploader anymore. Picasa does not work and their recommended solution, Google Drive uploads photos to Google Drive. You can pull them from photos (only photos, not folders) and it creates copies of photos. Idiotic.

There is an open source CLI , which can create duplicates if you run it repeatedly (which you will). There is a paid desktop solution which seems to work (at least the first 500 free uploads). It is a shame that Google does not have an easy way to upload photos (or transfer them).

Freeing your domain from Google Workspace was originally published in anands.net on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

This is the third and final post in the trilogy of pandemic travel posts. The other two are:

• International travel during peak pandemic
• What happens if you test positive when you travel to India

Should I travel to India now (Jan 13, 2022)?

That is a deeply personal question. A colleague of mine introduced the risk-reward framework to answer it. If you are double vaccinated and boostered, the health risks seem to be low, if you are infected with Covid-19. There are other issues to consider as well. Here is my perspective:

I think the goal of life is to minimize regrets and build lasting memories.

My goal was to visit my parents who were recovering from the stupid virus. I went back and forth on travel. My friends leaned on me to travel, given the situation and held my hand through my nervousness. This was a clear risk-reward situation and the reward was definitely worth it for me, so long as I manage the risk. I have talked about managing the risk in my two previous posts (linked above), only you can determine if the reward is worth it.

Will I catch the virus during travel?

Another colleague of mine is a numbers oriented person. We ran some numbers mid December. Even then, we figured that the probability of catching the virus was fairly high in transit. At the time of writing this post (mid January), as Omicron is starting to peak in the Bay Area and taking off in India, you can not deny the fact that at least some people are going to be infected during travel or during their stay in India. In fact, if you accept that it is the likely outcome of the trip, that should let you free of worry. Assume that you will catch the virus, now what? How does that affect your experience?

Will I be institutionally quarantined?

When I left for India mid-December, Indian authorities were just starting to gear up for dealing with Omicron. They started to test people on arrival and quarantine all positive cases. This was one of my biggest fears. I did not want to be institutionally quarantined. However, you can reduce the chance of this happening. In addition to the 72 hour RT-PCR test for travel, I did a 24 hour RT-PCR test and a 6 hour antigen test before travel. Even if you catch the virus on your flight out, the chances of you testing positive on arrival are slim. You can at least avoid testing positive on arrival.

Currently, all visitors to India have to do a RT-PCR test on day 7 of arrival and upload their data to the Air Suvidha portal. If you wear a N95 mask at all times, reduce your exposure (meals, airport etc), you reduce the chances of catching the virus. In the event of testing positive on day 7, given that you are double vaccinated and boostered, you can most likely get an exemption to stay home with a doctor’s note.

What airline should I travel?

As discussed, travel as direct to your destination as possible. Travel via an airline that supports rapid-antigen to fly back. At this point, it is mostly United airlines direct to New Delhi. England is going with no testing, I won’t travel British Airways for many reasons and this is just one more in that long list.

Should I travel by air within India?

If you do not have a choice, then yes. If you can avoid it, take a taxi. The goal is to minimize interacting with a lot of people. Some states in India require testing to fly, many don’t. In general, folks in India are cavalier about Covid. India has gone through hell with Delta, Omicron feels like a minor bump in the road. People are generally lax with masks and such. Your N95 will protect you, but if it bothers you (it did me), travel by a taxi. I took a taxi for the 500 kms road trip from Chennai to Coimbatore and back. I asked for a double vaccinated driver, wore a N95, asked him to wear his surgical mask above his nose (that is a big deal), no Air Conditioning and drove with my window down the entire time. Remember that you are at least as much a “danger” to the driver as he is to you. Be kind and it will be reciprocated.

Where should I get tested in India?

If you flew United, the best thing to do to fly back is to get the eMed test kit from United. The 6 test pack is $150. It takes 20 minutes to do the test with a proctor over video. You can upload the results to their portal and they will approve it before you leave your home. If you are taking a local flight to New Delhi, you may still need to do another testing, often 72 hours before (and not one day like for US). Find the local neighborhood lab and get a test 72 hours before. You will have ample time to get the results and not panic on the last day. United does not care about this test. The day before you leave, spend 20 mins and get the proctored test.

What happens if I get infected in India?

I wrote a blog about it. If you flew United, at most, you will be delayed by ten days. Reschedule. Retest using rapid antigen and most likely, you will test negative in ten days. Fly back.

How do I reduce exposure during transit?

I wrote a blog about it. If you wear a proper fitted N95 mask and be extremely careful about mask hygiene, your mask should protect you. That is the best you can do.

How do I reduce exposure in India?

This is a tough one. I only stepped outside for walks with my Father in the neighborhood (masked) and once to visit his Doctor. I understand that this is hard to do. My only suggestion would be to limit exposure to a lot of people.

How do I deal with the unknowns?

You can plan ahead for some of those. If you are concerned about which labs to get tested, call some ICMR approved labs ahead of time and talk to them. Most ICMR approved labs know how to handle travel tests. It is a solved problem.

Travel to India during peak pandemic — FAQs was originally published in anands.net on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

This is not advise on how to cheat the system. This is not advise on traveling while infected and be a danger to others. There are moral and ethical decisions to be made on your behalf and on behalf of the community. My elder daughter regularly challenges me on my moral and ethical choices in life. I try my best to not embarrass her in my actions and decisions in life. This is what I would do, based on my moral and ethical compass, that allows me to face my daughter without shame.

Update Jan 24

The following airlines accept letter of recovery to travel back to the US

• United
• American Airlines
• Air France / Delta
• Qatar
• Air India

The following airlines accept rapid antigen tests for travel back to the US

• United
• AA
• Delta
• Most European airlines (Air France, Lufthansa, KLM, BA)
• Air India direct — unsure. Need verification. Website says they support it, but I don’t have anecdotal evidence of this.

Understand CDC requirements for travel

Please read and understand the requirements defined by CDC for entering the United States during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Few key points.

• You are allowed to travel if test positive for Covid-19 infection, provided you have a Doctor’s note that states that you are safe to travel. CDC guideline says that after day 10, you stop shedding the virus. There are blood tests that can be done to verify you are not shedding the virus. A Doctor can diagnose you properly and deem you to be fit to travel and issue a note.
• Rapid antigen tests are acceptable for travel. Note that, as of December 1, 2021, CDC reduced the time required to test prior to travel from 72 hours before travel to one day before travel. Why did they do that? Because the incubation time for Omicron is 1–2 days, unlike prior variants. The 72 hour testing requirement as needed by countries like India and the UAE are antiquated and are not useful for stopping Omicron. But as you are aware, RT-PCR testing in the United States is severely backlogged. It is very hard to obtain a RT-PCR result within one day. Rapid antigen tests often take less than 30 minutes to complete and can be done quickly. Most European countries also allow you to travel with a rapid antigen test, not requiring RT-PCR tests. In fact, KLM used to do rapid antigen tests just before boarding to all its passengers. They would board passengers who pass these tests.

Differences between RT-PCR tests and Rapid Antigen tests

This is not a technically accurate description of these tests, but broadly speaking, RT-PCR tests are very exact and are designed to track any traces of the virus, dead or alive, in a person. These tests amplify the RNA of the virus in the test sample and identify even the tiniest virus (dead or alive) in a person. Rapid antigen tests are far more forgiving, but they miss people who are at an early stage of infection and are not shedding the virus actively. It is a compromise. CDC and the European countries have made a calculated compromise that Rapid Antigen tests are good enough for travel, to work and to meet others. United airlines, which follows CDC requirements, in fact recommends using www.emed.com, a proctored rapid antigen test for travel. It takes 20 minutes to test under a proctor, get a certificate. You can upload this certificate to United’s website and they will approve you for travel before you arrive at the airport.

Hence, my recommendation, if you are an American to always travel using an airline that supports Rapid Antigen tests. At the time of writing this, it is United Airlines, some European airlines and Air India out of New Delhi. I highly recommend you only fly these airlines.

Update Jan 12: A bit more detailed talk about RT-PCR

A friend forwarded this presentation that goes in depth about RT-PCR, the various factors involved and a threshold for tests.

https://www.linkedin.com/posts/hemanturdhwareshe_covid-19-rt-pcr-test-confusion-matrix-and-activity-6851910730715799553-mWBg/

What about other airlines?

Unfortunately, other airlines, such as Emirates, that I used to fly to India, do not honor CDC’s recommendations. The reason for that is when you transit through Dubai, you have to follow UAE’s Covid requirements. UAE’s Covid requirements are to get a negative RT-PCR test within 72 hours of traveling. The United States requirement is to get a test within one day. Emirates applies the worst of both cases and requires you to get a negative RT-PCR test within one day of traveling.

Why is this a problem?

Let us assume that you catch the virus either during transit or during your stay in India. Most likely, if you are double vaccinated and boostered, you are good for travel within two weeks. You will have a mild illness, you deal with it and get over it.

RT-PCR tests may test positive, for up to 90 days after an infection.

It is the exacting nature of RT-PCR that it may test positive for up to 90 days. That is why for almost all users, Doctors advise you to stop taking RT-PCR tests for months after your infection. It offers no information to them. Unfortunately, this will prevent you from traveling back on airlines, such as Emirates.

As discussed before, CDC allows you to even travel with a positive RT-PCR that is not older than 90 days if you produce a doctor’s note that you are safe to travel. Emirates does not honor the doctor’s note.

In most cases, a person who was infected with Covid-19 two weeks or more (within 90 days), is typically one of the safest people you can be around, during a pandemic.

I would not hesitate to travel with such a person or visit them. In fact, I just did.

You have caught the virus. Now what?

If you are flying in an airline that allows you to fly with a rapid antigen test (typically direct, non-stop flights from New Delhi, or rarely Bangalore — Air India, but please call them first to confirm), all you have to do is wait ten days.

Chances are, within ten days, you are cured. When your symptoms subside, get a rapid antigen test and if it tests negative, you are good to travel. So, at most, you are delayed by a couple of weeks where you recover and you can fly back.

If you are flying in an airline that requires a negative RT-PCR test, your life is a bit harder. You can test negative anywhere from ten days to ninety days (maybe if you are boostered, it happens much quickly, but I do not have any finite answers to this regard). If you keep testing positive in a RT-PCR, you are probably better off doing a rapid antigen test and if it is negative, to reserve a one way ticket using United airlines and fly back from New Delhi.

You would, most likely test negative in RT-PCR within a few weeks, but it is the uncertainty of how long it takes that bothers most travelers.

How do you get to New Delhi?

But how do you get to New Delhi? That is an unknown area to me. Once you have been in India for two weeks, you are treated as a local. You should be allowed to fly with just proof of vaccination. But if the local authorities determine that you had a positive RT-PCR result, maybe a Doctor’s note or explaining the CDC requirements might help. Or maybe use a mode of transport that avoids having to explain this.

Future travels

When I travel to India the next time during the pandemic, I will definitely fly United airlines. I will continue to take all the precautions I talked about in my previous post, but will limit my tests to Rapid Antigen tests, most likely a proctored test kit from www.emed.com, that United Airlines supports.

You (an American) tested Covid-19 positive while traveling to India. Now what? was originally published in anands.net on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Update Jan 12, 2022

New travel rules for international arrivals in India from today. Details here

Looks like 7 day home quarantine is now required, followed by RT-PCR test and mandatory uploading of test result to Air Suvidha.

Background

I have lived a fairly isolated and conservative life since the pandemic broke out in 2020. I had to visit my parents over the Christmas break and had to fight my fears to do the trip safely. I leaned on many of my frequent traveler friends for advise. This is a summary of what worked for me. This advise is based on my experience of travel to India, which is probably harder than traveling to say Europe, but this is just one person’s opinion, so take it for it is.

Risk Reward

One of my friends introduced the notion of a risk reward framework. If you can avoid travel during this time, do so. There are cases where you absolutely have to travel. It is personal and you decide if it is required to travel. There is a reward for traveling and there is definite risk in traveling. Only you can be the judge of if the reward is worth the risks involved. If you strongly feel that the reward is worth it, read on.

Get vaccinated and boosted

You can not fly to India and return to the US without a vaccination record. You can, with some significant workarounds, but if you are not vaccinated, this is the wrong page for you. Please ignore rest of this page and move on. It is ideal if you are vaccinated at least two weeks before travel.

Fly as direct to your destination as possible

Airports are the trouble spots for catching Covid. The air is stale, you end up mixing with all kinds of passengers who are traveling to different countries with different requirements. You can not avoid the source and destination airports, but you can avoid transit airports. I flew from San Francisco to Chennai via Dubai. My maximum exposure was at Dubai airport. There were unmasked people. Coughing people. Unmasked coughing people. During my return journey, the airline parked the flight further away from the terminals so they put us in crowded buses and drove us to the terminals. Unnecessary exposure. Avoid transits if you can. If you are flying to a destination country, try to fly at least direct to that country. In India, there are many flights into New Delhi. At least fly direct to Delhi instead of Dubai. You can avoid rules of the intermittent country and the crowds that come into an airport like Dubai.

Fly Business Class if possible

This is not an elitist advise. Fly Business Class if possible. It simply reduces the number of people you have to interact with during the process. You get special lines that are less crowded. You get special lounges that are less crowded. You are surrounded by few people when you are inside the flight. You get out first from the plane and you can exit the airports quickly (some airlines have a priority treatment for business class travelers luggages).

N95 respirators are a must

If there is one thing you need to follow, it is that N95 respirators are the only masks you should be using. You need a N95 respirator at the airports as much as you need them inside the plane. Interestingly, you need a mask that breathes well, since you have to wear them for long periods of time (16 hours for a Dubai flight). I was planning on wearing the Armbrust KN95 masks on the flight and I asked Lloyd Armbrust for advise. Lloyd suggested I look at the Gerson Duckbill Respirators because they breathe the most.

Lloyd Armbrust on Twitter: "Buy the Gerson N95 duckbill. We sell it but you can find it other places. Most breathable mask ever. Really hard to take on and off but if on a flight there is not better protection. I have slept with this mask several times. / Twitter"

Buy the Gerson N95 duckbill. We sell it but you can find it other places. Most breathable mask ever. Really hard to take on and off but if on a flight there is not better protection. I have slept with this mask several times.

The Gerson Duckbills are magnificent. I wore them for 36 hours straight (changed masks twice) during the onward journey and return journey. They are immensely breathable, NIOSH approved (for doctors) and do their job. I was able to sleep wearing them for hours. They are hard to put on and take off, but once you put them on and adjusted, you can leave them on. My acid test for good masks is to see if my eyeglasses fog. My weak point is under my eyes, that is where there is a gap in my mask. I can adjust the nose bridge on my Gersons tight enough so that there is no leak and my glasses do not fog. Find your acid test and stick to it. I always wore my glasses with the Gerson mask. If my glasses fogged, I had to fix the leak.

There is definitely a thing called “too much masking”. If you wear multiple masks, you may find it hard to breathe. If you find it hard to breathe, you are going to take off the masks to breathe. Every time you are off your mask, your exposure goes up. That is what you want to avoid. I would rather wear one good mask that allows me to breathe and be comfortable even with a tight fit, instead of multiple masks that I take off every hour.

Be intentional about mask breaks

Every time you take off your mask, you are exposed. I would be very wary of eating at the Airport restaurants. At least inside the airplane, there is air being pumped in constantly. Emirates says they change the HEPA filters every few minutes continuously. At the airport, you have no such guarantee. I simply did not eat any airline meals. I find it absurd that we wear multiple masks and shields and yet the entire plane takes them off for a good 30–45 minutes and we all eat at the same time. I had a few coughing people in my section of the plane, so I decided the risk of catching Covid was not worth the reward of airline food, so I skipped them.

I am not saying you should starve. I regularly fast 16 hours, so I just lived with it. I did carry some food cooked at home that I can eat quickly with me. When no one else was eating (an hour after meals were served), I had a quick snack to buy me a few hours. That is just me. You should do what works for you. Be very intentional on when you take off your mask. I took my mask off to drink water. I was careful that it was for very short durations and I put the mask back on quickly. I had one quick snack when no one else was eating.

Be busy in the plane

Unfortunately for me, this international trip was my first air travel experience in two years. It drove me nuts. Larry David and Curb Your Enthusiasm Season 10 saved my onward journey. I binge watched all episodes in one go (7 hours). I meditated with Jon Kabat-Zinn and watched movies on the way back. Find something to keep you occupied.

Plan your tests

I am writing this four days after I returned. These are the tests I had planned and taken. Each one for a reason. This is probably too much for some of you, but this is a guidance.

• 72 hours before departure: I took a RT-PCR test 72 hours before departure to satisfy India’s travel requirements. In the days of Omicron, this is pretty much useless. How many of you go straight to Costco to buy almonds aright after you give the test? How valid is that test anymore?
• 24 hours before departure: I took a RT-PCR test 24 hours before departure. This was intentional. There were rumors on being tested on arrival at Indian airports. I wanted to eliminate the possibility that I test positive on arrival and put on institutional quarantine. This test provided me with the confidence I won’t test positive on arrival. Even if you catch Covid on the flight, you are not going to test positive on arrival.
• 6 hours before departure: I took a at home antigen test 6 hours before departure. At this point, I was looking for reasons to cancel my trip. I decided to travel only after this test.
• Day of arrival at home: After two days of multiple airports, planes and a car travel, I arrived at my parents home. I had carried a few antigen test kits with me, but I also ordered antigen test kits and shipped to my parents home in India. I ordered Covi Find from Flipkart and my parents had them before I reached. I tested both my parents and myself using Covi Find on arrival. This was our baseline.
• Day 4 of arrival: I did a second antigen test on day 4. I had carried 2x emed.com proctored antigen tests. I thought I could use them for return, but did not realize that Emirates does not support them (more on this later), so I used this test to ensure I did not catch anything during arrival.
• Day 10: I was leaving my parents home in Coimbatore on Day 12. I did a RT PCR on Day 10 to make sure I was safe to travel out of Coimbatore. If I caught something, I would rather be at my parents home. This was a defensive test. This also allowed me to sort out how the system worked in India. Everything is done over Whatsapp. I never got my report via Whatsapp, so I had to stay on top and call the lab to get the report via email.
• Day 12: I was flying out the day after, so I had to take a RT-PCR test the day before to fly back to the US. I scheduled two RT-PCR tests on this day, just to eliminate any paperwork related issues. Doing this has a negative effect that you may get conflicting results. That is something you should consider.
• Day 2 after arrival: I had nausea the day after I arrived. I could not determine if it was due to jet lag, to rule out Covid, I used my second proctored eMed.com test and tested again.
• Day 4 after arrival: California Department of Health advises international travelers to test between days 3 and 5 of arrival. I had scheduled a RT-PCR test when I bought tickets. I tested on Day 4. I was in isolation at home till then.
• Day 7 after arrival: I am not there yet. Double vaccinated people with booster can test positive on day 7 after infection. I have scheduled an appointment already.

Too much? Probably. Did it give me peace of mind? Absolutely.

Post arrival

I have kids going to high school in person. I do not want to be the person who gives them Covid, so I isolated myself in a separate room in the home till my day 3 RT-PCR results arrived. I was wearing a mask if the door to the room was open. I was careful to not mix with my family till then.

Travel inside India

I had a choice of flying from Chennai to Coimbatore. Local flights in India are as bad as local flights inside the US. Folks in India have moved on from Covid (this was just before Omicron was taking off). The risk of catching Covid is directly related to the number of people you are exposed to. I decided to instead take a taxi, to reduce exposure. I was wearing my N95 respirator the whole time, had my window rolled down. I insisted on getting a driver who was double vaccinated. I insisted on the driver being masked fully (nose covered). Try to reduce contact with large numbers of people at your destination. Work around it.

Trust the N95 respirator

Irrespective of what others are doing, if you are double vaccinated and boostered, a N95 respirator works to protect you. Trust the mask. Wear it properly. Fit it properly.

Flying back to the US

This warrants a different post, but be aware that CDC requires a negative rapid antigen test to travel back to the US. This is important.

If you catch Covid-19, you can test positive for up to 90 days in a RT PCR test.

Why is this important? Emirates (and most Asian airlines) that transit through a different country follow the rules of that country. That often means a negative RT PCR result. In the days of Omicron, the chances of you catching Covid-19 anywhere in the transit or destination is high. RT PCR introduces an open-ended wait for return. This can be avoided by flying airlines that fly directly to the US and support rapid-antigen tests to fly.

United Airlines, American Airlines, most European airlines support rapid-antigen test results alone to fly back to the US. Air India says they do (but call them).

I highly recommend you ONLY fly on Airlines that support rapid-antigen tests.

International travel during peak pandemic (Jan 2022) was originally published in anands.net on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

TL/DR

An investment advisor who charges a fixed percentage on your investments may not have your best interests in mind. You can achieve better returns through simpler, less expensive means.

Why write this

Till recently, a significant portion of my wealth was managed by a fee based AUM (Assets under management) investment advisor. A fee based AUM advisor charges a fixed percentage of your assets as fees. For instance, my advisor charged 0.9% of the assets as fees each year. They charge this no matter what happens to my portfolio value, it does not matter if it grows significantly or shrinks significantly.

If your eyebrows are raised at this point and you conclude I am a fool, you are right. Rest of this post does not apply to you. This post is for people who use a fee based AUM advisor for various reasons. I also introduced over 40 different individuals to this advisor and my back-of-the envelope calculation says that is close to $10m in assets under management. I feel that I owe a responsibility to explain to those 40 people why I am not doing this anymore. This is mostly friends and family I care about, this should have been an email, but I suspect this can help others as well. Not many people are willing to talk loudly about their foolishness and mistakes.

It is not my advisor, it is me :)

Why did I hire an advisor?

I was afraid of money. That is the short answer. I had no formal education in managing money and I was afraid of investing and managing my money. It is entirely my fault that I did not level up my skills and knowledge to do the fundamental thing an adult has to learn — how to manage their own money.

I was mature enough to realize that I behave irrationally when it comes to money management and I react with emotion when it comes to money; early on in life I saw that I sold when the market went down and bought when the market went up. I was sensible enough to realize that that is not sustainable and has to change. However, instead of fixing it the right way (by learning how to manage money), I took the easy way out and handed over the reins of my accounts to an advisor. This advisor came highly recommended by people I trust and look up to, who still use them.

To be fair, the advisor more or less does what he advertises, which is to invest your money and return you some value. This post is to disabuse myself and others who may be in a similar position of what a AUM advisor does and what he does not, so your expectations are set correctly.

Money management is scary, until is not.

What are your advisor’s incentives?

Incentives matter. I thought I was a student of behavioral economics. I read all the Dan Ariely’s books. I read all books by Dubner and Levitt (of Freakonomics fame). I listened to the Freakonomics podcast and marveled at human psychology and how stupid people behave. Little did I know that those books were actually holding a big mirror to show my blind spots when it came to money. The books were telling me to watch out for my advisor’s incentives.

Your advisor’s incentives are to maximize his 0.9% returns.

Since the advisor makes more money if your money grows, they are motivated to increase your funds. However, it is only a fraction of potential gains. They are not motivated to increase your gains, they are only motivated to increase the base money under their management. The advisor will do everything he can to protect the base, even if it comes at your cost.

I also read that some advisors hold a ~5–6% cash position. What I did not realize is it is done so that the advisor can deduct their fees from the cash holding and that is legal. Another example why your advisor’s incentives are different than yours.

Your advisor might do the same mistakes you do

I don’t know how many people use a fee based AUM advisor to beat the market, but I know anecdotally people do use a fee based AUM advisor to protect them from the bottom falling out under them.

When the Covid-19 pandemic started, I was worried sick. I had read enough that I should not react to the market, but when the market tanked and every ounce of my brain screamed at me that I should immediately liquidate my 2040 retirement age fund in 401(k), I knew that I had to not react. I was paralyzed by fear.

I spoke to my advisor for advise and transferred my 401(k) to a Brokeragelink account, after liquidating my 2040 retirement fund and handed it over to the advisor. I was hoping that the advisor will avoid the mistakes a naive investor like me would do.

March, which, with the benefit of hindsight, was the absolute bottom. The advisor held cash for most of the year, buying back after the market had risen.

The responsibility of a fiduciary advisor in a moment like this, for a long term tax-free retirement account would be to stay the course. Forget about the account and revisit it a year later.

My 401(k) for the year that ended Jan 29, 2021 looks like this:

When I looked at the returns my advisor provided from March till December last year:

Returns on the 401(k) from March 2020 to Jan 2021: 33.67%
S&P 500 returns the same period with dividends: 75.62%

The advisor managed brokeragelink returned 33.67% for rest of the year when S&P returned 75.62% (with dividends). This a number that I got from the advisor’s own performance portal.

Your advisor will do the same mistakes you do, since they are human, and will charge you 0.9% for it.

If you are a boglehead or a believer of lazy portfolios or even if you had read Ramit Sethi, you know this is *exactly* what is expected out of active money management. The year 2020 is a magnificent example of why lazy portfolios work.

Another friend of mine gave a huge chunk of money to the same advisor. The advisor did not invest it using dollar cost averaging or value averaging, they invested the whole thing in one bulk. The market dropped immediately right after and it took years to recover. Is this something you expect your advisor to do?

Constantly measure your advisor’s returns

Often, it is impossible to find out what your advisor’s returns are. There are multiple conflicting numbers to measure returns. Your advisor will quote you numbers that will be completely accurate but useless to you. As a client, what you need is to easily find out how to measure your advisor’s returns. Often it is as simple as finding the $ difference between Jan 1 and Dec 31. Maintain a spreadsheet and compute it yourself.

Of course if you contribute multiple times mid-year to the same account, you have obfuscated your numbers for your own sake.

If you want to measure your advisor’s performance, leave an account untouched for a year, do not contribute to it. Look at the gains end of the year and compare it to what it was on Jan 1.

Beating S&P 500

If I had a $ for every time my advisor said he would beat S&P 500, I would have paid 9 cents to them each time.

I agree that you don’t measure an advisor’s performance over a year or two years. These are the returns of my advisor over a period of eight years. This is before the 0.9% advisor fee.

Apparently, it is almost impossible for an active investor to beat the S&P 500, consistently and regularly. I am sure there are investors who can do that.

Ignore the claims of advisors who say they can beat S&P500. Aim for average market returns over the long term.

Compound interest is not fun when it works against you

Compound interest is great when it works in your favor, it hurts when it works against you. Take a look at this managed funds fee advisor calculator: https://moneysmart.gov.au/managed-funds-and-etfs/managed-funds-fee-calculator.

For instance, if you start with $400,000, add $1,000 a month to it, for a period of 15 years, at a 7% return, giving 0.9% to your advisor, this is what happens to your funds.

Nearly 20% of your gains go to your advisor.

You almost pay a fifth of your gains to your advisor over a 15 year period under normal conditions. Compound interest sucks. You are enriching your advisor, not yourself.

For most ordinary investors, lazy portfolios work

There exist a significant population of investors who believe in investing in lazy portfolios. These are portfolios where you decide a set of very low cost mutual funds, invest in them, forget about them, login once a year to your account to rebalance to bring it back to your original decided allocation.

https://www.marketwatch.com/lazyportfolio has a list of such interesting lazy portfolios. The goal is to aim for average returns every year. Year after year after year. Let compound interest work in your favor, save on fees and let it grow.

I have a friend, who is very lazy with money. With invested money, it is a good thing. He had a 401(k) from 2007. He put it in a lazy portfolio of primarily a 2040 age retirement fund and a few other low cost mutual funds. He forgot about it. He heard my sob story and checked his 401(k) account today. This is what he sees.

He tripled his funds over a 14 year period by doing nothing. He setup his accounts one time, left the money there and forgot about it. That is the best way to invest.

Lazy portfolios work for most people. Average returns every year over 15 years will most likely beat active investing.

Setting your expectations right

I had a misconceived notion of what I was paying for. When I paid 0.9%, I thought I was paying for someone to manage my financial life. I wasn’t. I was paying for someone to manage my Fidelity account and return some money. That is what the advisor fee is for. The fee is not for the advisor to invest it in the best possible investment for my life’s needs. Likewise, when I pay the $700 tax filing fee, I am paying the advisor for the mechanics of filing the form and submitting it to IRS. I am not paying the advisor for tax advise on how to save on taxes.

Set your expectations right about your advisor. You are paying for the mechanics of doing a job, not a solution for your personalized needs.

You are not special

When I compare the asset allocation in my tax free accounts and compare them to the asset allocation in my taxable accounts, they looked very similar. If you start learning the basics of investing, you know that those two should be handled very differently. Worse, when I compare my asset allocation to my friends’ accounts, they look exactly the same, even though our life’s circumstances are very different and warrant very different investment approaches.

Your 0.9% fee is not getting you bespoke treatment. Your account is another entry in a bucket of investment portfolios in a cron job.

Money is awkward with friends

I introduced my best friends to this advisor. One of them quit this advisor in a couple of years saying some of the reasons mentioned above. Note that this is a friend I trust my life with. I am afraid of heights and this friend took me to the top of Mt. Whitney. He, along with a couple of other close friends, helped change the way I eat. He changed my lifestyle. Yet, when it comes to money, even your closest friends tend to not poke their opinion into it, they stay away. Money is a dicey subject.

When you see your friend shying away or saying things mildly concerning about your approach or investments, drill down and ask them to explain why they said that. Ask them to hit you with the facts and unfiltered opinion, and listen to them. Remember that your friends care about your well being, your advisor does not.

Trust your allies, hear them out. Seek out contrarian opinion. Embrace it. Get out of your cult-mode.

Watch out for conflicts of interest

As explained in the cleaning up your tainted IRA post, my investment advisor was also my tax filer / CPA. I ran into a conflict situation because of this dual nature. I wish my advisor had given me accurate tax advise on many occasions.

Watch out for your advisor’s conflict of interests.

Where does all this leave me?

I have learned my lesson, albeit many years late. I hope it is not too late. I will turn 47 in two months and I sincerely hope that I can set this ship in the right direction. I am headed down a path of creating lazy portfolios for me, along with reading as many books as I can. I hope to write more as I go through this journey.

Lessons I learned by using a Assets Under Management fee based investment advisor was originally published in anands.net on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.