I want to break away from my financial advisor, or hustler, judging by their multiple attempts to sell me on life insurance. Snowflakes: they’re managing a large asset lot, and I have another financial advisor...

Up until a couple years ago, I (39F) self-managed my after-tax assets. After expenses and pre-tax contributions in 401k and whatnot, I put my leftover earnings in investment accounts. Every month, I checked on them, adjusted the allocation every so often...

Over the course of 15 years or so, my investments grew immensely, to the point that I found myself with over $1M invested. Which, on the one hand, yay! On the other hand, I was paying thousands in taxes every April. I was also wondering if I was really optimizing the gains. So a couple years ago, I started looking around for financial advisors to give me more insight on where best to put my earnings and reduce the tax impact.

I then met this financial advisor, let’s call them Andy, via work. Thinking they can manage my money better than I can, I agreed to move the $1M+ assets to them. Since then, they kept trying to sell me on various life insurance products. They already suckered me with disability insurance, and now they want to get me again with permanent life insurance. Their argument was that it’s protected from market volatility, withdrawals will be tax-free, etc. They even said I could fund it by diverting some cash from my investment accounts. They bug me a couple times a year for "yearly planning". They take at least 1.25% from me in fees; I say "at least" because they gave a number range for their fee structure, even in the paperwork, and not an explicit number.

Around the same time I started working with Andy, I came in contact with another financial advisor through family, let’s call them Chris. I found Chris to be a bit more trustworthy; he explicitly stated his fee (1%), he came highly recommended with decades of experience, and he didn’t pressure me too much with hard sells. Now I have a couple of annuities with Chris, along with a Kai-Zen account (which I understand is another sort of tax-free term insurance). He also leaves me alone and only emails me for any changes.

I want to break my working relationship with Andy, and return to self-managing the assets that I entrusted them with. Honestly, I had a gut feeling from the beginning that they were a bit, um.... salesperson-y, and yeah I should have listened to my gut. And my tax bill wasn’t any less than the years that I self-managed. I still want to stick with Chris for the time being, since my contracts with them is only for a few years, whereas Andy’s thing is like, a long-term thing.

And honestly, I enjoyed self-managing! I loved checking on my investments every month and seeing how things are going, and fiddling with the allocation to match my target.

But the reason I haven’t left Andy... is $1M+ is a LOT to move out of the hands of a financial advisor. Both Andy and Chris said that someone of high net worth like me is better off having their assets professionally managed than try to self-manage. I get that argument, but I can also interpret that as "oooh you got the big monies, we want a piece of that pie too". Andy is one of those people who will question my decisions and try to change my mind by selling on the "best" solution (read: their commission-earning solution). And boy is the economy going through some, uh, interesting times - which further enforces Andy’s argument of "oh no, market volatility, luckily we have insurance options *wink wink*".

So..... what would the best course of action be here? Should I stick with Andy for the time being, and keep saying no to their next term life insurance sales pitch? Just grit my teeth and leave them? Alternatives?

P.S. - if it makes any difference, last year I bought a condo, so that’s gonna change my tax situation.