What do you mean by 'inactive'? Do you mean it was no longer 'actively' managed? If so, you're probably better off, unless they're still charging you fees. You're getting taken for a ride by middlemen who add no value. Put your retirement funds into a market index fund with low expense ratios. No oversight or maintenance and it will beat 95%+ of active managers out there. If you really want to supercharge your retirement account, go long on bitcoin with Swan or Unchained. A lot of people turn to FAs because they think this stuff is complicated, but it really isn't.
If you had money in the Roth IRA it shouldn't have become "inactive" in that you can't access it. I'd get another opinion. I'd call Vanguard or Fidelity for support and see if they can help you roll it over into a Roth IRA with them. Should be no fees (or very minimal) to do so. They can probably help get you started with the right funds to put it in too. If you are under 50 I would focus on a mix of stock based funds with at least 8% returns that have been around 10+ years. You can usually find this info pretty quickly by googling the fund or looking at the details in Vanguard/Fidelity etc.
If you are interested in reading at an active Community. Bogle Heads Personal Investments Investing - Theory, News and General Personal Finance (Not Investing)
Agree with others, if there are a lot of moving parts an FA or others like a CPA or Tax attorney can be very useful. But if you're just focused on normal investing or retirement without the fees and don't need all that, 401k, IRA using quality low-expense ratio Index funds, and dollar cost averaging will do fine. Books, YouTube University, and The Bogle community above are good resources as well.
by inactive they just stopped taking monthly draw out of the bank and it was just there doing nothing. I don't know what happened but at the time I was focused on getting out of debt that this seemed to be the least of my worries.
A few things for you... 1. Anyone who tells you what to invest in or not invest in, or whether you need an advisor or not, based on what you posted on this thread is really just telling you what's best for them, and not what's best for you. That requires a lot more information about you and your personal circumstances - where you are financially, how old you are, what you're aiming to do with your money, your own personal financial experience/background, how much time you're willing to commit, your risk tolerance, etc. Without that info, any advice you're getting is fairly generic and probably not suited for you. In theory, that's the benefit of paying a FA if you're not skilled at managing money, but it all depends on the FA and if they customize a strategy for you or offer more what's like in this thread, except for a fee. 2. Financial Advisors can charge you in all sorts of ways, but taking 20% of yout assets upfront is almost certainly not one of them. That said, I'm not sure I understand your initial post. But if you contribute $500 and the FA immediately takes $100, it's probably not good for you. Even at regular stock market returns, you're looking at 3 years to get back to breakeven, and that's assuming no additional fees on that money. And if they aren't charging ongoing fees, they have no incentive to really continue to do a good job. On the other hand, if it's a $100 fee per year regardless of how much money you put in, that's a very different calculation, just as an example. Without knowing anything about you or your circumstances, I'd say it's worth spending a few hours to fully understand what your current FA is actually doing fee-wise (either on your own or talking to them) and then independently figuring out what your goal and timeframe is for your money. That's at least a starting point to figuring out (1) whether your FA sucks and (2) whether you need a FA or if there are simple enough things you can do with your money to get it invested.
Ironically enough, I just got an answer to a question about a possible home sale and health insurance where the responder said I may want to contact a financial advisor to understand how to go about it and the pros/cons. So I guess I'll possibly be diving into the deep end next year.
You should probably figure that out, as well. From the way you're talking, you may just need help figuring things out. Shop around with other financial advisors. Ask each of them what they're going to be doing for you and how much you'll pay. The only thing I'll stick to like I said before is that the 20% chop at the front is still insane. Ask all the ones you interview for their complete fee structure. Also important : ask them if they have a termination fee if you leave them and what it would be. Agree with @Major, though, and it's the same thing I tell people about financial and health matters - a forum may be a good place to start investigating, but it probably shouldn't be the place where ultimate decisions like these are made. The majority of people here probably don't know you or your situation well enough to go too deep into answering your questions.
