Good for you. I like to slap DIYs around a bit, and then offer the bait or "get out". Of course I'm nice. I miss the narrative stuff of cold calling:

" Yeah, you're paying Vanguard six hundred bucks. You lost two fifty. Tell you what, keep the account with Vanguard and pay me two thousand to spend some time with you. We'll take that Vanguard account to a new level. First of all, these Vanguard kids, the one you talked to who will be gone is six months, aren't allowed to give you real advice".   What's gonna happen to interest rates with all of this printing and borrowing of money? I like BND, but I wouldn't be putting all of my money into it right now. Did they talk about TIPS (oh, that's right, does Vanguard have a TIPS ETF). What about short term taxable or tax exempt - what happens to bonds when interest rates go up? What are we going to do with the dividends - we could fund your long term care policy with that. I could put you on a conference call with John Hanc*** or Genworth to evaluate your policy and figure a strategy to fund that. Oh, you don't believe in that, that's cool. I was helping a lady this week who was thinking of dropping her policy. To replace it, the premium would be three times what it is now. A lot of people are making claims, and the insurance company is on the hook, she's going to keep the policy, wants to keep her dignity and options open - Congress is talking about giving fifty bucks a day to help you live in assisted care or be taken care of at home - 20% of asssisted living facilities may be going into the red if health care passes - what is your strategy? I'm just saying, those dividends aren't just money sitting in your account, consider taking a look, let's see how feel. You want to be in control and sleep at night. People say they feel better about their money after we talk and work together on a few things.   Oh, did they mention VDE? I like energy because I think no matter what happens, good or bad, the price of energy is going up. You know, some moron in the Middle East gets some nuclear material and every dairy in the world is closed down for six months - we need to hedge your downside and make sure those stocks are paying dividends, that's the only reason to buy a stock is for dividends, did they tell you that? Blah, blah. Two thousand bucks, don't want to pay that, just move the money.   A CPA who likes real estate parked four hundred k a year ago with me called me up the other day. Money is in cash. I was reading some anonymous year end reports to him, " lady your age, seventy, has one third in stocks right now and she's up twenty seven percent year to day. Okay, 2008 was bad. We beat the heck out of the S & P with less risk than all stocks. I'm not taking any credit, this won't happen next year. I'm saying, you're sitting in cash and complaining? I don't want to hear it. You and I don't see eye to eye on this stuff. You're going to just keep sitting on this money, and thinking about buying some real estate, or whatever, which you like, schlocking around with rentals, my father in law was schlocking around with rentals until he was eighty, and then he died. I like dividends, like the dividend of a nice house, because you can live in it and enjoy it, I like seeing money accumulate in the sweep account, you've been missing out on that. You're a CPA, you know a lot more than I do about this tax stuff, I could learn a lot from you, but I like to keep things simple, you could do a lot with tax planning on this stuff, you and I could really fly under the radar and feel good about this money.    He says, I'm coming to see you after the holidays.