Increasingly, discount brokers are offering many of the same services as the full service guys, and they’re doing it without the high fees or the pushy sales pitches.

Want to see how risky your current portfolio is? With E*trade’s Risk Analyzer, you can calculate that in a matter of seconds.

Want to know if you’re on track to retire in 10 or 20 years?

You can calculate how much you’ll need to retire, whether or not you’re saving enough and what would happen if you delayed retirement by a year or two with Fidelity’s online tools.

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With the Schwab One Estate Account, you can choose how you want your assets invested, get personal guidance on managing your assets and set up automatic distributions for beneficiaries, all with no account or set-up fees.

The fact is a full-service broker is a salesperson. Dress him up in a suit. Call him an investment advisor or financial consultant. It doesn’t matter. He isn’t trained to analyze the market. His job is to get you to buy and sell stocks, preferably as frequently as possible.

After all, full-service brokers are paid based on commissions. If they recommend a stock for you to hold on to for a year or more, they don’t make money. If they get you to trade every week, they get commissions every week.

Why Choose a Full-Service Broker

So why would anyone go with a full service broker in this day and age of ramped up discount brokerage services at rock bottom prices?

There are a few reasons:

1) You have a full-service broker who has made you money.

There is no substitute for good investment advice. Even zero commission trades can’t make up for bad investment decisions. (Read “Is a No-Commission Discount Broker for You?” to learn more.)

So if you’ve found a full-service broker who knows what he’s talking about, who’s actually given you good advice in the past…

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